Income and wel-being

It seems that positive relationship between income and well-being is established more and more. Look at this and its references.

James Heckman

It is nice to see a great site about James Heckman’s equation.

Independent Prosecutors

Do Independent Prosecutors Deter Political Corruption? An Empirical Evaluation across Seventy-eight Countries

Anne van Aaken, Lars P. Feld and Stefan Voigt

It is hypothesized that prosecution agencies that are dependent on the executive have less incentives to prosecute crimes committed by government members that in turn increases their incentives to commit such crimes. Here, this hypothesis is put to an empirical test focusing on a particular kind of crime, namely corruption. In order to test it, it was necessary to create an indicator measuring de jure as well as de facto independence of the prosecution agencies. The regressions show that de facto independence of prosecution agencies robustly reduces corruption of officials.

IMF on China

It seems that IMF too pushes for appreciations in China’s exchange rate. The report reviews China’s situation in recent downturn.

Libertarian Resources

Ludwig von Mises Institute put a valuable set of libertarian literature, including back issues of Liberty magazine online.

Save it here for the future

In the future, I will come back to this note. We can learn somethings about the effect of stimulus plans.

On Stimulus, from Mankiw

I like this piece a lot.

Book: Fundamentals of Intellectual Property

Fundamentals of Intellectual Property: Cases & Materials; Thomas G. Field Jr. (Franklin Pierce Law Center)

Abstract: The PDF is approximately the 20th revision of a conventional 470 pp. casebook. It has been used twice annually in 3-semester-hour survey courses since 1999. Except for a few years when it was published by Carolina Academic Press, it has been revised each semester. This edition will be used in the spring 2010.

The casebook, intended to serve the needs of legal specialists as well as generalists, flags common themes and critical distinctions among IP components. Over long spans, much that is truly fundamental has been constant, and many current IP debates still center on issues raised in the 1800s and earlier. The goal is to present the most important and durable aspects of the law. Pursuit of that objective has been facilitated by ongoing discussions with colleagues, current and former students and others similarly engaged.

Besides patents, copyrights, trade secrets and trademarks, brief attention is given to domain names and rights of publicity. Remedies are considered pervasively. Preemption and speech issues are treated separately as well as pervasively.

Organization and contents are informed by over thirty-five years experience with the subject matter and students at every level of technical and legal sophistication. A relatively complete table of cases is included but no index – the latter being unnecessary when the file can be searched digitally. Use of Roger E. Schecter’s comprehensive statutory supplement (West) or equivalent is suggested.

Paperback copies may be purchased for about $20.00 from a Concord, NH publisher (email author for details). A three-color cover is available, so the PDF can also be printed elsewhere for royalty-free, non profit use. The author appreciates being advised and will alert users to supplemental online materials.

Keywords: intellectual property, casebook, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, trademarks, domain names, rights of publicity, commercial speech, preemption

Stimulus Plans

In the ongoing debate over spending or not spending money, I found this piece by Edward Gelaeser interesting. I liked this part in particular:

But if America does embrace another stimulus round, we should limit the government’s role to being the big borrower rather than the big spender. Cutting payroll taxes for lower-income workers who have just been unemployed is an example of stimulus through borrowing, rather than spending. The government isn’t actually spending money on government services; it’s just borrowing the money and giving it to newly employed workers.

Ten Commandments for Fiscal Adjustment

It is worth to take a look, here.