Report from the NFF

It is now that time of year when I am enjoying the Nantucket Film Festival. My wife and I today saw The Big Sick. Despite the not very enticing title, we loved it. The film is based on the real-life romance of the two screen writers, emphasizing the difficulty of bridging cross-cultural expectations. It is more heartfelt than a standard rom-com, more comedic than a drama, more earnest than standard Hollywood fare. Most definitely recommended, especially for a date night.

Hamilton Tickets Redux

James Stewart takes a look at theater tickets on Broadway, a topic I discussed last year.  I love his ending:

Dynamic pricing and super-premium prices may be relatively new, but the scarcity of tickets for hit shows has a long tradition. Mr. Schumacher cited �My Fair Lady,� the �Hamilton� of the 1955-56 Broadway season. As Broadway lore has it, a man in the audience turned to his neighbor, an older woman, and asked why the fifth-row center seat next to her was empty. 

�My husband died,� she replied. 

�Didn�t anyone else want to come?� he asked. 

�No,� she answered. �They�re all at the funeral.�

Advice for Young Economists

Economists for Hassett

An open letter supporting Kevin Hassett's nomination as CEA chair.

On Taxes and Deficits

Click here to read my column in Sunday's New York Times.

A New Mankiw Publication

This one I am particularly proud of, though I cannot claim to fully understand it.

Why people prefer unequal societies

A friend points out that this paper is related to some themes I have written about.  The abstract (emphasis added):

There is immense concern about economic inequality, both among the scholarly community and in the general public, and many insist that equality is an important social goal. However, when people are asked about the ideal distribution of wealth in their country, they actually prefer unequal societies. We suggest that these two phenomena can be reconciled by noticing that, despite appearances to the contrary, there is no evidence that people are bothered by economic inequality itself. Rather, they are bothered by something that is often confounded with inequality: economic unfairness. Drawing upon laboratory studies, cross-cultural research, and experiments with babies and young children, we argue that humans naturally favour fair distributions, not equal ones, and that when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality. Both psychological research and decisions by policymakers would benefit from more clearly distinguishing inequality from unfairness.