Probably many readers have seen this New York Times article, offering a lengthy and well-reported analysis in the Business Pages by David Segal of whether law school is a worthwhile investment. The analysis points to a couple of different factors, including: supply of lawyers outstripping demand, now and into the future; cost of legal education […]
Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson
David Skeel’s Excellent Book, and Comparing Discretion in the Financial Crisis and National Security
(Note: I was writing this on the plane without quite being able to see the computer screen, so I’ve gone back and corrected some grammar and spelling, and tried to make a couple of things clearer. I’ll post separately as well on the topic of national security and the financial crisis, and the role of […]
Death-Bet Insurance
Death-bet insurance involves a person taking out life insurance, and then turning around and selling the policy to a stranger – a hedge fund, for example, via intermediaries – who pays the premiums and collects after the insured’s death. Growing in popularity as a system of side-bets on the insurance markets, it has also been […]
21st Century Jobs 2: Integrating Robots into Social Life, Especially Nursing
(Note: This is the second in an irregular series on 21st century career tracks one might not have thought of before now. Running roughly around the January 1, or until I run out of steam or ideas. Impressionistic, anecdotal, and off the top of my head. Also note, not all of these posts are about […]
21st Century Jobs 1: Higher Ed ROI Planning?
(Note: In a series of posts running until around the New Year, and maybe beyond, I plan to rampantly speculate on new jobs and career tracks that might emerge in the next years and couple of decades. Straight from my fevered brain to VC!) The higher education bubble – both undergraduate and professional education – […]
Law and Regulation of Central Banking?
I am curious as to whether any law school offers a (seminar?) course on the law and regulation of central banking, either specifically on the Fed in US domestic law or else something like “comparative central banking” in the transnational law curriculum. I’d be interested in responses as to courses, syllabi, reading, and course topics. […]
Santa Showed Up at Mass Tonight
Santa Claus showed up at the end of the Children’s Mass at our parish church tonight (ably aided by Tod Lindberg). Santa (let it be noted for the official record) pronounced Your Correspondent “Nice” and presented him with a candy-cane. I’m not Catholic, and so am not schooled in the deep matters of Catholic theology. […]
Will Huitzilopochtli Bring Back the Sun?
The days have got progressively shorter and we fear this Fifth Sun is ending. The sun moves each day on a lower and lower arc across the horizon, and we beseech Huitzilopochtli, supreme god of the Mexica – especially on this night of the most inauspicious and unsettling sky sign in which the moon disappears […]
Hegemonic China? Five Remarks and Three Takes
I have been working on a preliminary presentation (“paper” would be nice, but so far not true) for a meeting in a couple of weeks at the Hoover Institution on hegemony, legitimacy internal and external, and, by implication, China. It arises out of my book manuscript on US-UN relations which, unsurprisingly, touches on the questions […]
Picture Books for Teaching Economics Concepts to Young Children
Greg Mankiw’s blog points us to a discussion about picture books that teach basic economic concepts to very young children, by Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, including recommendations offive picture books for children ages pre-school to age 8 or 10. She is an international economist mostly addressing women’s labor market issues, but with young children […]
The Conglomerate Book Club on ‘All the Devils Are Here’
Over at the business law professor blog, The Conglomerate, the book club has been reading Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera’s book on the run-up to the financial crisis, All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis. David Zaring introduces the book, his brief take, and the book club discussion here – then […]
Corruption in Greece and Ireland and the US? Responding to Drum and McArdle
A few days ago I posted on Chris Caldwell’s fine cover story in this week’s Weekly Standard on the eurozone crisis. In part the article and my post dealt with differences between Greece, on the one hand, and Ireland and Spain, on the other, when it came to corruption and some related issues. The original […]
Query: Do You Still Send Out Xmas or Holiday Cards by Snail Mail?
I have told My Beloved Wife that I think it’s time we gave up sending snail mail Christmas cards. It feels like some tipping point got reached a while back, and sending a card triggers this awkward response of the recipient feeling like they have to go get a Hallmark card to send back even […]
Lucia Perillo and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Award at the Library of Congress
I have just returned from a poetry reading at the Library of Congress, the awarding of the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt prize in poetry, hosted by Rebekah Bobbitt’s son, Columbia and UT law professor and my dear friend Philip Bobbitt. It was great. I was prepared for a (deadly) serious Encounter with the Arts, and Lucia […]
Derivatives Clearing Houses
Although I have a few reservations about the tone of the article being just slightly conspiratorial, Louise Story’s front page NYT story today on the evolution of derivatives clearinghouses is highly informative and very well done. The graphics showing how the bilateral trades would turn into centralized clearing are quite good and would be useful […]