The Return of the Invisible Handshake?

Economic theory has long explained "collegiality" as a productive practice where employees do mutual favors for one another and where the employer is part of the equation as well - not reducing wages during a recession a prime example.  This piece kindled thoughts of the earlier economic works.  But it may have something new - that an individual can establish a culture of favors simply by already behaving as if that culture exists.

Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead? - NYTimes.com via kwout

Ethics and Income Distribution

This is an excellent column for showing differing views about the causes of increased income inequality and the good and bad of it.

If everything is as  in the model of perfect competition, then the shares of income that go to capital and labor are entirely market determined.  The notion that people in power either exercise restraint or self-indulge and capture more income for themselves requires some degree of market power to achieve.

Our Broken Social Contract - NYTimes.com via kwout

Transfer Prices for Tax Avoidance

We will talk about transfer prices in the course, but for other purposes than this.  Yet Apple has made the practice of using transfer prices to move the jurisdiction of where profits are earned a high art, one that has brought huge attention to the issue, so you should be aware of it.

Apple’s Tax Strategy Aims at Low-Tax States and Nations - NYTimes.com via kwout

For posts about scoring exams, blog posts, etc.

This item is different than announcements.  It pertains specifically to matters concerning grades.

Reflections by me

On a regular basis I will post reflections about the course - how we seem to be doing, issues that may have arisen, on the economics we're studying, connecting to real world issues that are related, etc.  Since I require weekly writing by the students, I think it fair that I do some of that as well.

For follow up to the live class session

If we don't cover everything that was planned or, more likely, if some ideas occur to me after class that were relevant for the session, I will post here.  We can decide later to follow up with them in a subsequent class session or if we'll do that online.

Test Announcement

Announcements can be tracked as they appear or one can use that Announcement tag in the left sidebar to see all the previous announcements.

Test

Just to see how this appears on the screen.