A few years ago Baumol had a horrible op-ed in the Washington Post. He
said that any health care reform that involved global budgeting would
inevitably be translated into lower physician salaries. And why was
this bad? Because in the long-run the best and brightest students would
no longer go into medicine. With only mediocre human capital being
incited into the noble profession the quality of American medicine would
suffer irreparably in the long-run. Oh yeah, in fine print it was
mentioned that these conclusions were based on a study Baumol had done
under funding from the American Medical Association.
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Friday, May 29, 1998 1:57 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:298] spud-heads at work
I thought that William Baumol was a smart guy, however
ideological he might
be. But on pages 237 and 238 of his into textbook (written with
Alan
Blinder, a similar sort) he implies (without saying so) that
price controls
on potato prices contributed to the great potato famine. He
quotes some
hoary old guy (Mountifort Longfield) writing in 1843 instead of
even a nod
in the direction of Sen's analysis of famines...
I've got a bunch of MBA students reading this. I'm tempted to
veer from my
energy-saving strategy of "simply teaching the standard stuff to
get my 6
grand" to rant & rave about the reason my ancestors _really_
came over here.
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html
"It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
