Fijación de precios: ¿La hora facturable puede ser reemplazada?

¿Qué vale una idea?
It's the Economy - NYT



Como muchos de los contadores, Jason Blumer nunca quiso ser un contador, quería tocar la guitarra en una banda de hair-metal. Pero como la mayoría de chicos que quieren tocar la guitarra en una banda de hair-metal, Blumer finalmente se dio cuenta de que no había mucho dinero en la gira de bares y se paga en billetes de $ 20 húmedos de cerveza. Así que cambió de marcha y decidió seguir a su padre en lo que parecía ser uno de los negocios más estables alrededor. Después de la universidad, se compró unos trajes, se unió a una empresa de tamaño mediano en Carolina del Sur y procesó la nómina de sus clientes y de las declaraciones de impuestos. Él les factura por hora. Él odiaba cada segundo de cada hora.

Blumer, de 42 años, ha querido infundir un poco más de rock 'n' roll en su industria. Así que cuando finalmente se hizo cargo de pequeña empresa de su padre, hizo sus propias reglas: No habría hojas de tiempo, no hay códigos para la vestimenta y, lo más radical de todos, sin horas facturables. Estaba convencido, de hecho, que la hora facturable era parte de una serie de errores que saaron toda la diversión de su profesión. Para él, parecía una reliquia de una era económica muerta y que privaba a su industria de miles de millones en ganancias.

La idea de cobrar por las unidades de tiempo se popularizó en la década de 1950, cuando la American Bar Association estaba volviendo alarmada de que el ingreso de los abogados estaba cayendo precipitadamente detrás de la de los médicos (y, peor aún, de los dentistas). La A.B.A. publicó un folleto influyente "The 1958 Lawyer and His 1938 Dollar", lo que sugería que la industria debería evitar gastos de tasa fija y replicar los rendimientos rentables de fabricación de la producción en masa. Las fábricas venden widgets, la idea era esa, y así que los abogados debían vender sus servicios en, fáciles de manejar, unidades simples. La A.B.A. sugería una unidad de tiempo - la hora - lo que permitiría a una empresa bien administrada supervisar la productividad de su personal tal como mecánicamente una cinta transportadora lograba su rendimiento. Esto llevó a las generaciones de jóvenes asociados que trabajan por la noche con la esperanza de volverse socio y abusar de la próxima generación. Fue adoptado por un sinnúmero de otros profesionales de los servicios, incluidos los contadores.

Durante las últimas décadas, ya que la lógica económica de los Estados Unidos ha cambiado, el comercio mundial y la tecnología han hecho que sea casi imposible para cualquier industria que tiene mucho beneficio en la producción en masa de ningún tipo. (Empresas como GE, Nike y Apple aprendieron muy pronto que el dinero de verdad estaba en las ideas creativas que pueden transformar productos físicos sencillos más allá de su valor genérico o producto.) Fuerzas similares han arrancado a través de servicios profesionales, en particular la contabilidad, una profesión que, hasta hace poco, había cambiado poco desde sus raíces del siglo 16. El software como TurboTax ha hecho que el trabajo más básico valga poco. Contadores más baratos en la India, Irlanda, Europa del Este y América Latina han tenido constantemente en los tipos más habituales de la empresa, aunque no tan vorazmente como se predijo.

Al igual que Apple no quiere estar en el negocio de genéricos players MP3, Blumer no quería ser sólo un tipo más competencia para cargar unos pocos cientos de dólares a la hora de hacer su declaración de impuestos. Hace unos años, dijo, se dio cuenta de que la hora facturable socavaba su valor - que era materia de su profesión, lo que sugiere a los clientes que él y sus colegas fueron los contenedores intercambiables de unidades mensurables finitas que podrían ser canjeadas por dinero. Tal vez el mayor problema, sin embargo, fue que la facturación por horas incentivaba proyectos largos y aburridos en lugar de aquellos que requieren información valiosa y especializada que puede (y no debe) ser medida en el tiempo. Paradójicamente, la hora facturable animó Blumer y sus colegas a pasar más tiempo de lo necesario en el trabajo rutinario y no en los puestos de trabajo más matizadas.

Pero esos problemas complejos fueron los que Blumer quería resolver, y también sabía que sus ideas eran más valiosas que el tiempo que le llevó a evocar ellos. Así se identificó un nicho - profesionales creativos que lucharon para administrar sus finanzas, sus nuevas empresas se convirtieron en negocios maduros - y se esforzó por ayudar a sus clientes a tomar (y ahorrar) dinero suficiente que les gusto pagar una cuota significativa y sin preguntar por las horas que lo llevó a averiguar qué hacer. Blumer ha tenido tanto éxito en su enfoque que se ha convertido en una voz líder entre una banda nacional de los contadores que se llaman a sí mismos los Puentes del acantilado. Muchos Cliff Jumpers han abandonado el enfoque tradicional de facturar por hora para centrarse en soluciones de contabilidad no comunes para grupos específicos de clientes. Uno se centra en empresarios con la esperanza de vender sus nuevos negocios; varios trabajos con personas que se aterrorizan acerca de cómo iniciar un pequeño negocio.

Tal vez sin darse cuenta, los Jumpers Cliff están a la vanguardia de uno de los grandes retos de la economía moderna. Medir la productividad es fundamental para la política económica - es especialmente importante en las decisiones de la Reserva Federal - pero estamos cada vez más volando a ciegas. Es relativamente fácil de averiguar si las empresas siderúrgicas pueden hacer una tonelada de acero de manera más eficiente que en el pasado (que pueden, por mucho), pero no tenemos ni idea de cómo medir el valor económico de las ideas y la gente que viene con ellos. "En comparación con mediados de la década de 1900, la producción de bienes no es una parte tan importante de nuestra economía, pero seguimos a dedicar el 90 por ciento de nuestros recursos estadísticos para medir", dice Barry Bosworth, un economista de la Brookings Institution, que es un pensador líder en la productividad en el sector servicios.

Muchos economistas han tratado de descomponer a profesionales "trabajadores del conocimiento" en sus partes componentes. Está bastante lleno de abogados y contadores, Bosworth dice, pero es casi imposible con otras profesiones, como los médicos y los maestros. "Ni siquiera tratamos con la educación", dice. Mientras tanto, la Oficina de Estadísticas Laborales mide directamente la productividad de sólo el 60 por ciento de las industrias de EE.UU., lo que significa que casi la mitad de nuestra actividad económica es desconocida, incluyendo casi todos los sectores de más rápido crecimiento. Si la educación y el cuidado de la salud no son cada vez más productivas, lo que ya muchos economistas temen, será difícil saber si las políticas gubernamentales para mejorar los sectores están trabajando sin saber qué medir en el primer lugar.

Durante el siglo 20, la industria comenzó en pequeños talleres que crean productos artesanales únicos. Con el tiempo, se transformaron en plantas masivas que produjeron un incontable número de unidades idénticas. Ahora hay una síntesis. En la era de la especialización de masas, las empresas están utilizando las eficiencias de alta tecnología para hacer productos a medida que cada consumidor encuentre especialmente valioso. Esto tiene enormes ventajas para los consumidores y productores, pero el gran problema que crea es que no sabemos cómo hacer las matemáticas. Blumer, que, después de todo, es un contador, me dijo que establecer fórmulas y hojas de cálculo financieras simplemente no son compatibles con esta nueva forma de trabajo. Lo único que puede determinar cuánto cobrar a sus clientes surge después de pasar un montón de (no facturado) tiempo hablando con ellos acerca de sus necesidades. Pero ahora que está claro que la naturaleza fundamental del trabajo ha cambiado, es apropiado que un grupo de atípicos marginales de una de las profesiones más antiguas del mundo están ayudando a guiar el camino.

Adam Davidson es co-fundador de la NPR "Planet Money", un podcast y blog.

La organización y coordinación de factores productivos como avance tecnológico

Trabajo en equipo en el campo, una experiencia exitosa

Un grupo de productores funciona como una gran administración familiar. La Nación

Algunos productores ponen la tierra, otros los equipos y otros los insumos, luego se mensura económicamente todo ese capital y se prevé una rotación entre todos los campos. Al final de la campaña cada uno recibe la cantidad de granos según el aporte económico que haya hecho y lo comercializa libremente.

En este primer capítulo de Campo de Avanzada 2013, viajamos a Tres Arroyos, provincia de Buenos Aires, para conocer el caso de doce productores asociados en base a la confianza. Liderado por Humberto Groenenberg, el grupo planifica cada año, a partir de lo que cada productor aporta (campo, maquinaria, insumos o trabajo), un presupuesto común que integra todo el capital en una sola administración.

La idea se basa en atomizar los riesgos, aumentar la escala y optimizar las compras. El grupo trabaja como una gran administración familiar, pero los une la amistad y la confianza.

Video: La experiencia de productores asociados en base a la confianzaCampo de Avanzada es un espacio que apunta a conocer más sobre negocios, tendencias y tecnologías para el sector agropecuario

¿Se viene un futuro de trabajos a tiempo parcial?

MAULDIN: And Now Obamacare Is Going To Destroy More Full-Time Jobs...

JOHN MAULDIN, THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONTLINE

Business Insider 

A Lost Generation

It is pretty well established that a tax increase, especially an income tax increase, will have an immediate negative effect on the economy, with a multiplier of between 1 and 3 depending upon whose research you accept. As far as I am aware, no peer-reviewed study exists that concludes there will be no negative effects. The US economy is soft; employment growth is weak – and yet we are about to see a significant middle-class tax increase, albeit a stealth one, passed by the current administration. I will acknowledge that dealing a blow to the economy was not the actual plan, but that is what is happening in the real world where you and I live. This week we will briefly look at why weak consumer spending is going to become an even greater problem in the coming years, and we will continue to look at some disturbing trends in employment.

Last week, I noted at the beginning of the letter that an unintended consequence of Obamacare is a rather dramatic rise in the number of temporary versus full-time jobs. This trend results from employers having to pay for the health insurance of employees who work more than 29 hours a week.

I quoted Mort Zuckerman, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

The jobless nature of the recovery is particularly unsettling. In June, the government's Household Survey reported that since the start of the year, the number of people with jobs increased by 753,000 – but there are jobs and then there are "jobs." No fewer than 557,000 of these positions were only part-time. The June survey reported that in June full-time jobs declined by 240,000, while part-time jobs soared 360,000 and have now reached an all-time high of 28,059,000 – three million more part-time positions than when the recession began at the end of 2007.

That's just for starters. The survey includes part-time workers who want full-time work but can't get it, as well as those who want to work but have stopped looking. That puts the real unemployment rate for June at 14.3%, up from 13.8% in May.

As it turns out, the unintended consequences of Obamacare are not the only problem. Charles Gave wrote a withering indictment of quantitative easing this week (which we will look at in a few pages) and included the following chart, which caught my eye. Note that the relative increase in part-time jobs began prior to Obama's even assuming office. The redefinition of part-time as less than 29 hours a week and the new costs associated with full-time employment due to Obamacare simply accelerated a trend already set into motion.

An Ugly Secular Trend in Part-Time Work

Look closely at this graph. It turns out the trend toward part-time employment started in the recession of the early 2000s, paused only briefly, and then really took off in the recent Great Recession. This is clearly a secular trend that was in place well before 2008.

This development is very troubling, especially because it primarily affects young people and those with fewer skills. As I documented in letters last year, workers 55 and older are actually taking "market share" from younger workers. I went back tonight to see if that trend is still in place. The first graph below (the next few graphs are from the St. Louis Fed's FRED database) is one we are familiar with: the actual employment level over the last ten years. We are still two million jobs down since the onset of the last recession, some six years later. The only reason the unemployment rate has fallen at all is that several million people have simply left the labor force for one reason or another.

The next graph is the number of employed 25-54-year-olds. What you will notice is that the above graph shows about 7 million new jobs since the very bottom of the employment cycle, yet employment in the 25-54 age cohort has barely risen. Who got all the jobs?

That mystery is solved courtesy of the next chart, which shows the number of employed in the 55+ age group. Even acknowledging that there is a growing Boomer population does not account for the rather spectacular increase in employment in the 55+ age group. Can you find the recession in this chart? If the St. Louis Fed hadn't shaded the recession in gray, you certainly couldn't find it in the data. Not only did Boomers see a rise in employment, they took jobs from younger groups. If you dig down deeper, you find that the younger you are, the higher the unemployment level of your age-mates. I will spare you that exercise, as this is already depressing enough, unless you are 55+.

Note that I am not arguing that those of us over 55 should be put out to pasture. Many can't afford to quit working (especially when their kids are living with them!). I am just reporting on the facts. The only way to solve this is to grow our way out of it, yet whatever we are doing is not working.

The Emergence of a US Underclass

Let's turn back to my good friend Charles Gave's analysis, picking up in the middle of his work. He has divined a rather interesting reason for our current employment malaise. I am going to quote at length because this is just so good and deserves a wide audience in the current debate over monetary policy.

This chart [below] shows a steady increase in part time employment since the early 2000s back toward levels that persisted through the 1976-2001 period. The big change is the precipitous decline in full time jobs which started in 2002 and accelerated after 2008. It can be seen that the number of part time jobs has risen by 3mn, while full time jobs have decreased by a similar amount. This compositional shift is unprecedented.

The next step is to measure the difference in job growth for part time and full time workers. This is done by comparing the rolling seven year series for each classification of jobs and noting the differential. As this gap widens in favor of part time employment, we would expect a greater share of the US labor force to be earning lower wages. To test this proposition we compare this seven year differential measure with the median income level for US households.

The results are quite striking. The correlation between our differential measure for the kinds of jobs being created and the real median income was 0.82 between 1974 and 2013; from 1997 to 2013 it moved up to 0.95. This matters because periods when individuals have stable full time jobs are associated with rising median income, while incomes tend to decline in an unstable job market.

Put simply, median income has slumped because a very large share of Americans can no longer find proper jobs.

Behind this economic, political and social disaster, stand many factors such as technological change which has undermined traditional low-skilled employment and the rise of China as a fierce industrial competitor.

What is less well understood is the pernicious impact that US monetary policy has had on the US labor market.

A collapse in the US median income level has historically coincided with the Fed running a policy of negative real interest rates. The reason why unemployment tends to be lower during periods when capital has a real cost attached was explained in some detail in a piece written in early 2011. This dour relationship has been maintained over the last two years and median income has, as I suspected, continued to fall. Make no mistake, if monetary policy is not substantially changed, then median incomes will continue to fall.

When poor people cannot earn a return on their savings or on their labor they remain trapped in poverty. The effect is to subsidize what are effectively overpaid financial jobs and undermine employment prospects within traditional sectors.

As a result, periods of negative real rates tend to be accompanied by the Gini coefficient rocketing higher. Today, this policy is effectively leading to the emergence of a poorly paid and chronically insecure "lumpen proletariat". At least half of the US population may be moving deeper into a poverty trap, which, over the long-run, must negatively impact consumption. Moreover, I never saw a structural bull market in equities take place against a backdrop of falling median income.

So why is Bernanke doing it? It would seem for the same reasons that the Japanese did 20 years ago. He is protecting not so much the banks as the bankers. To cut a long story short and to paraphrase a famous quote: What is good for the US Investment Banks is bad for America.

Bernanke's policies are aimed at guaranteeing the prosperity of this elite, and as such he has been wildly successful. Paul Volcker, arguably the best ever central banker, cared for the interests of ordinary people over those of investment bankers. By contrast, Bernanke has helped create his own "lumpen proletariat" and a parallel class of the "super-rich." This will have many consequences, not all of them pretty.

• Marx is back! Class struggle will be the main political theme in the years to come. This is what happens when you entrust a common good such as money to an over educated technocrat who believes he is smarter than the markets.
   
• In a democracy it is bad politics to follow a monetary policy which favors the rich and condemns the majority to an ever more difficult life (witness damages caused by the euro). This is the "Road to Serfdom" towards socialism or technocracy rather than a sustainable capitalist economy.
   
• This system will become increasingly unstable: socially, financially, economically. Such unfairness breeds the conditions for political instability. Under similar circumstances, Theodore Roosevelt and the US Congress went after the "Robber Barons." Franklin Roosevelt acted 20 years later during the depression to separate commercial banks from investment banks. The obvious parallel in the crisis of our times is that President Obama is no Roosevelt.
   
• I have no idea how this problem is going to be addressed, but addressed it will be. My hope is that a normal monetary policy will resume in the near future lest we end up dealing with a vengeful demagogue some way down the line.

For this reason, I saw the potential for so called tapering as the first step towards a return to economic sanity (see Volcker's Return). Alas, I seem to have been wrong. Bernanke has the fortitude of a cheese cake, and once again, I misjudged him. The implications for job creation, fair income distribution and indeed the future prosperity of the US may be far reaching. I am worried.

A Lost Generation

We are watching the Fed employ a trickle-down monetary policy. They hope that if they pump up the banks and stock market, increased wealth will lead to more investment and higher consumption, which will in turn translate into more jobs and higher incomes as the stimulus trickles down the economic ladder. The kindred policy of trickle-down economics was thoroughly trashed by the same people who now support a trickle-down monetary policy and quantitative easing. It is not working.

We have a younger generation that is having trouble finding full-time work and developing the skills needed for the transition to more stable, higher-paying employment. The longer the situation persists, the more difficult making up lost ground and lost time becomes for them. As Charles wrote, we may be seeing a new underclass develop, which has disastrous implications for the country. This week President Obama gave a speech on the economy that sounded like a campaign speech except that he should not be running any longer. He blamed the rise of technology for the loss of jobs, the decimation of the power of unions for flat incomes, and the policies of his predecessor for the current malaise. The speech was a wish list of new programs and promises, yet nothing is getting done. He fails to engage with the most pressing problems of our time and doubles down on a healthcare plan that is a train wreck even his most ardent supporters are walking away from. Did you see the r ecent letter from multiple union leaders asking for a course correction on healthcare?

The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that 7 million people will lose their employer-provided health insurance at the end of the year. One would assume that those are almost all full-time workers. So instead of getting health insurance in some form as a benefit, they will likely soon be paying $1400 a year (minimum) in mandated taxes (the level set by the Supreme Court), and those costs will rise dramatically over the next few years, according to the current schedule. That is a HUGE tax increase for those people.

Young people who have no insurance and are making more than $10 an hour will be paying about $1300 a year, or close to 10% of their after-tax income. That blows a monster hole in their disposable income at those levels. There is no other way to look at this: it's a huge lower-middle-class tax increase. Yes, they get a benefit (health insurance) that someone somewhere in society was already paying for, but they personally did not have these costs before.

The unintended consequences of the healthcare bill are going to be vicious. Not only is there a tax increase on the rich and on small employers, there is a tax increase on young people and the middle class. And it's a tax increase that comes in the middle of the slowest recovery on record. It is possible that we grew at less than 1% this last quarter. And the burden piles on top of a secular shift in employment practices that is making life more difficult for the younger generations.

We are getting close to the point where not only are there no good choices left, but the difficult choices are starting to look pretty bad indeed. And no one in DC is talking about the budgetary choices we are going to be forced to make. The recent drop in the deficit is temporary, fueled by people taking income in 2012 and paying taxes at a lower rate. That "tax dividend" is just about done. Deficits are going to be the number one topic in 2016, with jobs a close number two. Hide and watch.

Maine, Montana, and San Antonio

I have been in Newport, Rhode Island, at the Naval War College, where I attended a small Summer Study Group for the Office of Net Assessment for the Department of Defense. My mind is on overload trying to absorb all I heard and learned and to fit all that into my limited understanding of how the world works. It is a very complex world that the US military finds itself in. Shrinking budgets and an expanded menu of options and demands mean difficult choices. Factor in rapidly changing geopolitical and technology environments, and the challenges become even more complex. When I think of the limits our budget process is going to force on our set of choices, the situation does not make me comfortable.

The one thing that did make me feel good was the caliber of the people I met. They were most impressive. Admittedly, those in the room were among the best and brightest in the military; nevertheless, it was comforting to see the quality of thought and training going into the decision-making process. These are scholars with wide-ranging educational backgrounds as well as warriors proud of their service. I have to tell you, I do not get that same level of comfort when I am in a roomful of political leaders. There are some good ones but not enough of them.

I am in New York for a few meetings before I head on to Maine. My partners in Mauldin Economics, David Galland and Olivier Garret, will be here Wednesday; and as a special treat I get to have dinner with Jack Rivkin on Tuesday. I may even try to attend a meeting of the Friends of Fermentation if they allow teetotalers to show up. My youngest son, Trey, will fly up to meet me here, and we'll head north on Thursday morning. It will be good to be with friends and talk about the issues of the day at Leen's Lodge, amidst the beauty of Grand Lake Stream . Then I'll be home for a week before heading out to join Darrell Cain at his summer home in Montana. My fall schedule looks to be light on travel for some odd reason, and that's ok with me. I need some catch-up time.

And speaking of Mauldin Economics, I continue to be impressed by Grant Williams' ability to see through the smoke in the market today and pinpoint where it's headed. This skill lets him spot investment opportunities that others tend to overlook. You get his Things That Make You Go Hmmm… for free as a subscriber to my letters, but if you haven't yet subscribed to his excellent monthly advisory, Bull's Eye Investor, I recommend you do so. You can sign up now at a 50% discount by clicking this link: http://www.mauldineconomics.com/go/bwXwl/MEC

It is time to hit the send button. Have a good week and enjoy your summer. I intend to.

Your worried about the kids analyst,

John Mauldin
subscribers@MauldinEconomics.com

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mauldin-obamacare-will-hurt-jobs-2013-7#ixzz2aRtvg2C5

Usando Blogs en Economía

Using Blogs in Economics

Contact: Paul Ayres, Intute Social Sciences, University of Bristol and Bhagesh Sachania, The Economics Network, University of Bristol

Updated version published February 2009, published in CHEER journal Volume 20, pages 32-37, ISSN 1358-5363

1. Introduction

" 'I certainly have not found a comparable way to get my ideas out. It allows me to have a voice I would not otherwise get,' Mr [Brad] Setser says. Blogs have enabled economists to turn their microphones into megaphones." -"The invisible hand on the keyboard", The Economist, 3 August 2006

So what is this thing called blogging and why is it important? While arguments may rage over the precise definition of blogging, a blog is in essence an online diary style website. Short articles are posted in chronological order, with the most recent one at the top of the page. Simple software enables writers to fill in a form, press a button and update their website, producing quick and easy publishing on the web without the need for technical skills. The Economist has become so taken by the concept, that it has a suite of blogs of its own.
What is the case for blogging among the economics community? One of the most famous blogging economists, Brad DeLong of the University of California at Berkeley, says that blogging gives him access to an "invisible college" of people who will react to his opinions, point him to more interesting things, help him to raise the level of debate on economic issues and bring it to a mass audience. He neatly sums up blogging as "turbo charging of the public sphere of information and debate", which he hopes will make him smarter and more productive.
Blogs do this by being interactive. This takes many forms including: providing links to other websites, papers or blogs; allowing readers to comment on articles; via acknowledgements to other bloggers for leads to interesting pieces of news; or by critiquing each others writing, producing a network of links, relationships and interactions across the web.
Blogs have been in existence since the late 1990s according to blog pioneer Rebecca Blood, but it took another few years for blogs to go mainstream, with the US Presidential election of 2004 seeing them start to be used as a major source of online news. The vast majority of blogs are written by girls in their teenage years or by males in their 20's, and they write about their daily lives and interests. Blogs behave in accordance with the "long tail" theory whereby a small number of blogs enjoy a large amount of influence, which has led to their increasing prominence in search engine results and readership.
How do you take the first steps into this brave new world of blogging? Hopefully, this guide will provide some useful pointers. It will start by taking you through the mechanics of blogging, choosing appropriate software and offer some advice on how to start writing, as well as highlighting, the potential pitfalls of sharing your thoughts with the world online. Finally we will focus on specific uses of blogs in economics and some case studies of how they are used in teaching, before looking at the future of blogs and blogging as a developing technology.

References

• "Blog" / Wikipedia
• Blogs / from The Economist
• Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality / Clay Shirky
• The Internet and Campaign 2004 / Pew Internet Research Center
• The Invisible College / J. Bradford DeLong
• State of the Blogosphere, 2008 / Technorati.com
• Weblogs a history and perspective / Rebecca Blood

2. Software options

Once you have decided to start writing a blog, how do you go about it? You'll need access to some blogging software, so the key questions you need to ask yourself are:

• Do you have technical support available to help you?
• Do you want to decide how the blog looks yourself?
• Do you have specific needs? For example, to support multiple authors, enable you to add categories or password protect the blog

There are three main options in terms of setting up a blog:

1. Hosted solutions

Hosted software is where a company has set up blogging software for you on the Internet, enabling you to sign up for an account, log in to the system, and start blogging straight away. There is a large range of hosted solutions out there, which vary greatly in terms of quality, features and whether you wish to pay for them.
The key advantage of a hosted solution is that you do not need any technical skills or intervention to start blogging. This means that you can get writing immediately and it is a good way to introduce yourself to how blogs work and the mechanics of posting articles and receiving comments.
You will be restricted in terms of the look and feel of the blog - usually in the form of templates provided by the company. You may also be restricted in terms of the functionality a particular blogging software package may provide - whether you can add multiple authors, assign categories to posts or set up more than one blog.
Three of the most popular hosted blogging solutions are:

Blogger

Blogger is free and owned by Google - all you need to get started is a valid email address and to register at their website.
Professor Greg Mankiw of Harvard University, uses Blogger for his website.

WordPress.com

A hosted version of the open source WordPress blogging software (see below), that is free to use, but some extra features like using your own design template or getting a personalised web address can be paid for.
The Everyday Economist uses WordPress.com

TypePad

TypePad is the hosted version of the Movable Type blogging software (see below) that is produced by the company Six Apart. It has a range of pay monthly cost options, with the cheapest offering one blog produced by a single author, ranging to a package offering multiple authors and an unlimited number of blogs.
The Cafe Hayek blog uses the Typepad blogging platform.

2. Installed software

This option will require that you have some blogging software, access to a web server on which to host it and the technical skills to manage the web server / blogging software or the time and skills of someone who does. The intricacies of web server maintenance and the various technical skills needed to run them are outside the scope of this article, but your best option is to consult within your institution as to what support is available from your department or information service.
The advantages of this option are that you have control over the look and feel of the blog, can add extra authors or blogs easily and can add extra features yourself. However, you may be limited by the license terms of the software you have downloaded, be dependent on the technical skills of someone else or be restrained by your institution as to the types of software you can install.
Two of the most popular blogging software packages are:

WordPress

WordPress is an open source blogging platform. It is freely available and has a dedicated community of developers working on new features that can be easily integrated into the software, via plugins or widgets that add extra functionality. The design of the blog can be changed at the click of the mouse, as WordPress keeps design and content elements separate, and it does this by using themes that can be downloaded from the Internet.
The Freakonomics blog of Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner uses WordPress

Movable Type

Movable Type is a proprietary blogging platform developed by the company Six Apart. Originally freely available, Movable Type now has a range of low cost pricing options allowing you to download the software. While a free version is available for a single user in an educational setting, if you wish to create multiple blogs, allow multiple authors or provide the tool to your students, a license fee will be payable.

3. Institutional options

Your institution may already provide a blogging platform that you can have access to. If your institution has a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) such as Blackboard, WebCT or Moodle, these VLEs can come with a blogging module already built in. This has the advantage of being integrated with an existing system which you and your students may already be familiar with, but the functionality offered within these systems is usually less than you would receive when using a piece of dedicated blogging software.
Another possibility is that your institution offers a dedicated blogging platform. This is not widespread in the UK at present, but the example of the University of Warwick has shown what can be possible. It may be worth asking your library, computing or information service whether they have a recommended blogging product they support or whether they have plans to implement one in the future.

Find out more

You can compare some of the options detailed above and a few more, using the Blog Software Comparison Chart provided by the Online Journalism Review.

3. Writing and managing content

Whichever software option you choose, most blogs will have a similar set of features. This part of the guide will tell you about the mechanics of blogging, i.e. how to blog, and some pointers on what you might like to write, i.e. what to blog.

How to Blog

Like many niche activities, blogging has its own terminology, which may seem off putting to those new to it. A typical blog will have some or all of the following characteristics:

Posts

Posts are the individual articles that make up the blog. They have a title and main body of text, which you produce simply by filling in a form in your blogging software and pressing a button to submit or publish the article on your blog.

Comments

Most blogging software allows readers to comment on posts. Readers can suggest corrections, clarify information or simply add their opinion on the post. Entries are normally time stamped and include the author's name and other details. Another useful feature is that they can also be threaded allowing readers to comment on comments.

Blogroll

A blogroll of links is another key aspect of blogs. It usually directs a reader to interesting links that relate to the theme of the blog; and link to fellow bloggers. This provides the reader with an opportunity to discover new and interesting sites. The blogroll usually appears down the side of the blog, on every page of the site and is managed using the blogging software.

Categories (tags/ subjects that the entry discusses)

Categories enable posts to be organised by subjects (or tags) and help readers to find information about a specific topic quickly and easily. Individual posts can be assigned into several categories, often just by ticking a box when writing them.

Archives

Archives are links to chronological collections of posts, enabling a reader to go back through time and see what has been posted on this blog in the past. They can be arranged by day, week or month, depending on how frequently the site is updated.

What to Blog

Blogging, like other forms of online communication (e.g. email) has its own set of social conventions. It's important to be aware of the following when writing or commenting on blogs:

Think about your audience

Potentially anything you post can read by a global audience. And a post might be archived or cached and therefore impossible to remove. Think carefully about posting contentious or provocative material, it may spark a rise in readership, but it could make you unpopular online.

Clear communication

Perfect prose isn't necessary but you should aim for clear, simple language. Try to avoid non-standard abbreviations and too much jargon.

Credit sources and respect copyright

Avoid quoting large extracts from a source without the consent of the copyright holder. Credit original authors appropriately, include a link, sometimes called a HatTip, to other bloggers if you are discussing their views.

Check the validity and accuracy of your information

Don't always take online information at face value, particularly if it deals with contentious issues. Check facts against more than one authoritative source.

Correct mistakes and post updates

Mistakes are inevitable. You might discover them yourself or readers may highlight them. Correcting them adds credibility to your blog and makes it look more professional. If possible leave the original entry intact and make corrections by adding extra material. Try to avoid rewriting or deleting posts, since others may rely on them via links.

Don't make 'spam' comments

Some people may regard simply posting a link or simple statement without any relevant information as spam. Make sure your comments are meaningful and relevant. Make sure you delete any spam comments on your own blog.

Identify yourself and be available

Try and ensure that your readers can contact you if necessary. If you do post comments on other blogs, it's good practice to identify yourself and provide information about how you can be contacted (usually an email address). Unattributed comments might be considered as spam (see above). If you don't want a comment to be attributed to you then you should consider whether you really want to make it.

References

• Giant blogging terms glossary / Quick Online Tips
• How to be heard / Stephen Downes
• List of blogging terms / Wikipedia

4. Risks

Blogging as a form of academic publishing does come with its own risks, which you should consider fully before committing to writing online.

Effect on your job, or your next job

People have lost their job as a consequence of what they have written on their blogs, even if they have taken care not to refer directly to their employers and have blogged under pseudonyms. While in academia there is some conjecture that researchers in the United States have been refused tenure as a consequence of their blogging activity. You should bear in mind that your current or any prospective future employer may find your blog online and take it into account when assessing your employability.

Relationship with your institution

If your blog is set up within a Virtual Learning Environment or an institutional blog hosting service, it will be clear that you will be writing as a member of your university or college. This means that you will be subject to the relevant code of conduct or appropriate use of computing resources policy for your institution. While few institutions have a policy specifically to cover blogging, should you feel restricted by any limits these policies place upon your writing, you may wish to blog outside the confines of the IT systems provided for you by your institution.

Intellectual property

A blog may be a useful forum for floating new ideas, theories or areas of research. However, you will not have the same degree of control you have with a peer reviewed journal and will not be entitled to the same degree of credit a formal publication bestows upon you. Similarly, it is not clear whether ideas expressed or published on a blog, are covered by the same rules and regulations as a book, article or other output produced while you are an employee of an institution or being funded by a research council grant.

Blog ethics

Blogs come with their own set of social rules or blog etiquette. For example, Internet sources cited or quoted in your posts should be acknowledged with a reciprocal link to the websites in question. Retrospectively editing a blog entry is a tricky area, as this may make some of the comments users have posted to your initial article look out of place. Consider using strikeout formatting (like this) to show edits or make additions to the bottom of a post to show how your views may have evolved.

Comments

The default setting for most blogs is to allow comments from readers. While this can lead to fruitful interactions, debate and links to useful further resources, like any open form of conversation, it can lead to inappropriate or offensive comments and it can be exploited by Internet marketers as a way of spamming your blog. You may wish to investigate the security options in your blogging software to make readers register before posting a comment to your blog, or hold comments in a queue for your approval before they are published.

Other legal issues

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has produced a Legal Guide For Bloggers, which looks at some of the key legal issues that affect blogs. However, it should be remembered that this has been written from an American perspective and therefore some of the advice would not necessarily apply elsewhere. Also, this is an area of law that is developing all the time, so what may be true today could be changed by a new piece of legislation in the near future.

References

• Bloggers need not apply / Ivan Tribble - Chronicle of Higher Education 8 July 2005
• Blogging: academia's digital divide / Fred Stutzman
• Blogging theory / Jodi Dean
• Blogging while untenured and other extreme sports / Christine Hurt, Tung Yin
• Confessions of a scholar blogger / Daniel Drezner - University of Chicago Magazine, v. 97, issue 3
• Legal Guide for Bloggers / Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Serious bloggers / Jeff Rice - Inside Higher Education 20 February 2006
• The relationship of blogging to academic work / N Pepperell
• By the blog: academics tread carefully / Zoe Corbyn - Times Higher Education, 9 October 2008

5. Uses for Economics

Henry Farrell is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and the Elliott School of International Affairs of George Washington University, and he is also one a group of scholars who contribute to the Crooked Timber blog. He has identified five uses of blogs within the classroom:

• replacing standard class web pages
• professor-written blogs which cover interesting developments that relate to the theme of the course
• organization of in-class discussion
• organization of intensive seminars where students have to provide weekly summaries of the readings
• requiring students to write their own blogs as part of their grade

Stephen Downes, the Canadian learning technologist has expanded on these uses in an article for the EDUCAUSE Review.
But what is the potential for blogging in Economics teaching? Steve Greenlaw of the University of Mary Washington explores the broader role of technology in teaching via his blog Pedablogy: musings on art and craft of teaching.
A series of specific examples are presented below:

Replacing standard class web pages

Have you ever struggled to learn HTML and craft your own course website? It can be a valuable aid, enabling you to post suggested readings, set tasks / exercises / assignments or just remind students when they are expected to turn up for lectures. Using a blog can let you concentrate on adding the information, rather than having to learn additional IT skills.
This is something that Tim Kochanski at the University of Alaska Southeast successfully trialled. He created a blog as part of a four-week class on introductory economics. He was keen to investigate a low cost alternative to using his institutional course management system (Blackboard). He found that the journal format of a blog, as well as other features provided a valuable resource to help guide his students through a semester of economics. A detailed case study is available in the Reflections on Teaching section of the Economics Network website.

Professor-written blogs which cover interesting developments that relate to the theme of the course

You may already be familiar with the Internet and often come across websites that may be relevant to your teaching. Using a blog can enable you to bring these resources together, comment on them and organise them in a manner which may be helpful to your students. You may want to try and make the theoretical aspects of what you are teaching meaningful in a broader context, by relating them to items that are in the news or of topical interest.
The Tutor2u website is a good example of this. It offers a range of subject specific blogs. Geoff Riley (Head of Economics at Eton College) maintains the 'Economics in the News' Blog and provides a regular commentary on economics issues and trends. Although the primary target audience is secondary school students some of the resources could be useful in first year undergraduate courses on introductory economics.

Organization of in-class discussion or seminars

You may have experimented in the past with discussion boards and found that they can produce useful dialogues. Opening up this process with a group blog can enable students to post items, comment on them, get to know each other and even answer their own questions. You may get contributions from students who find face-to-face discussion difficult, but who find online communication more suited to their learning style.
Professor David Tufte manages an 'Economics Classes Blog' at Southern Utah University:
His students regularly post items of interest and ask thought provoking questions. Professor Tufte then invites his students to offer their feedback/analysis on that particular economics issue, by placing comments on the blog, where he occasionally offers comments of his own to relate the items to ideas he has mentioned in class.

6. Future of blogging

The rise of blogs has been meteoric over the past few years, but blogging is continuing to develop as a technology, as a way of communicating and as a way of interacting with others online. So what does the future hold for the world of blogs?

Different ways of blogging

Bloggers are finding different ways of passing on their thoughts to the rest of the world, other than just using text. Keen writers can send entries using their mobile phones, produce blogs that are made up solely of photographs or use a blog as a distribution method for audio (podcasts) or video (vlogging).
In economics, innovative sites such as VoxEU and Economics in Action, are already using the web to distribute audio interviews with researchers and to promote the study of economics to new audiences.
Research institutes, like the Library of Economics and Liberty are taking advantage of this opportunity to promote their work via a different medium, at their EconTalk website.

Keeping track of the blogosphere

The blogosphere is still growing, which makes it more and more difficult to keep track of good writing, new authors and interesting papers. Fortunately specialist search tools have emerged which allow you to focus just on blogs, so you can see what is being talked about as it happens.
Technorati is a search engine that has tracked over 130 million blogs worldwide and allows you to set up watchlists that search for new items on specified topics.
The main Internet search engines, also have services that monitor blogs such as Google Blog Search. Perhaps the easiest way of seeing what blogging economists are saying is to visit the Economics Roundtable, a site which aggregates over 120 of the leading economics commentators into one site. Palgrave EconBlog also collates posts from a range of Economics blogs.
These searching and alerting services rely on a technology called RSS or Really Simple Syndication, enabling users to subscribe for free to a blog or other information service, so that they are automatically updated when new material is published. Try a web based service like Bloglines or Google Reader, so that you can subscribe to your favourite blogs, get tables of contents from newly published journals and news stories from The Economist all in one place. It is spam and advert free, and it saves you time by delivering the information directly to you.

Here to stay

While some may be critical of blogging as a passing fad, it is here to stay, even if in the future blogs will be referred to in the same way as any other type of online source. Innovators such as Stephen Kinsella are already using blogs to support their courses with a full range of Web 2.0 add-ons such as videos, embeddable slideshows of lecture presentations and the latest links from social bookmarking websites. The fact that blogs offer quick and easy web publishing, with little or no need for technical skills, means that many people will continue to choose blogging as a key way of expressing themselves online.

References

• State of the Blogosphere 2008 / Technorati
• News feeds from the BBC

7. Conclusion

"I'll publish, right or wrong" (Byron)

This article has outlined the possibilities that blogs offer in terms of teaching, personal and professional development and engaging with a global audience. The chance to take advantage of an "invisible college" of fellow scholars, informed readers and actively engaged students, means that blogs can provide a whole new dimension of interaction in helping people make sense of economic issues. Using blogs as part of the classroom experience can take the technical strain out of producing a website and allow you to concentrate on writing, discussing and teaching online.
We hope that this short guide has made you aware of the mechanics of blogging and some of the potential pitfalls, given you some ideas as to how you could use them for economics teaching and opened your eyes to some of the future possibilities that blogging as a technology can offer. If you successfully build blogging into your normal work routine, you may soon find that blogging starts to take over your life and that it is increasingly difficult to live without your virtual notebook.
The freedom that blogs bring to the voiceless in politically repressive regimes is a good example of how blogs enable anyone to publish anything online. The chance to hear from alternative viewpoints, to publish ideas that may not get an airing elsewhere, to sidestep the mainstream media and to experience quality writing freely and openly, means blogs can help produce a genuine free market in ideas.

La política monetaria de Larry Summers

We Don't Know Where Larry Summers Stands On The Most Important Issue Facing The Fed

JOE WEISENTHAL

Monetary policy.

That's the massive issue on which we don't really know the views of Larry Summers, who is one of the leading candidates to replace Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. And since monetary policy is pretty much the Fed's whole thing, his lack of clear views are a pretty big deal.

This is a point that Matthew Yglesias got at yesterday, in arguing that it would probably be helpful for Summers to establish a position on some of the big monetary policy questions of the day to further his chances of being nominated by Obama.

Right now there's this idea that Yellen is "dovish" and that Summers is "hawkish" but this is really a gross oversimplification.

Pretty much the only thing we have to go on, with Summers, are comments about how he hasn't regarded QE to be particularly effective. But that doesn't necessarily imply dovishness. Even the Fed seems to be losing faith in the power of QE, as it shifts its stimulative efforts more towards guidance about keeping future rates low. If Summers is skeptical about QE, but, say, a fan of Evan's Rule (which promises to keep rates low until a certain unemployment threshold is hit) then perhaps Summers could be considered more dovish. We just don't really know.

As an aside, calling Janet Yellen "dovish" is also an oversimplification. For one thing, she's been correct in her assessment of the economy (predicting subdued inflation and weak growth), so the dovish stance hasn't necessarily been philosophical--just correct. It's also true that in the 90s she was battling with Alan Greenspan, warning about inflation risks, so she hasn't spent her whole career just obsessing about one side of the Fed's dual mandate.

The important thing about Janet Yellen isn't just that she believes in more Fed action, but that she's at the forefront of discussions about monetary policy technology — the new tools that monetary policy observers have been talking about and honing since the crisis. Back in January, Goldman Sachs argued that Yellen was basically a supporter of Nominal GDP targeting, which is one of the hottest ideas in monetary policy. Yellen hasn't addressed the idea in name, but she's a serious, leading edge monetary policy theorist.

A lot of the discussion about who will lead the Fed has either been about non-monetary policy questions (who's close with Obama, who's got the temerity for the job, etc.) and the part about monetary policy itself has been superficial.

But it seems clear that with Larry Summers, we really don't know that much about where he stands on the single most important aspect of the Fed's role.

Business Insider 

¿Cuanto paga ser abogado en USA?

Is Law School a Good Deal After All?

A fascinating new paper argues that a J.D. is worth $1 million over the course of a career, and that the recession hasn't dampened its value. But don't go racing for your LSAT prep book just yet.

JORDAN WEISSMANN

The Atlantic

Wikimedia Commons/Jordan Weissmann

Ever since the Great Recession sucked the air out of the legal industry, an extremely vocal group of writers -- myself included -- has been trying to warn pretty much any 20-something with an Internet connection to think twice about going to law school. The job market for recent grads has been murder. And there's an abiding sense that the business model which sustained many big corporate firms, the ones that offer those plum $160,000-a-year jobs of lore, isin danger of becoming obsolete, if it hasn't already. 

So it was with both great skepticism and a bit of personal trepidation that I cracked open "The Economic Value of a Law Degree," a new draft paper by Seton Hall Law Professor Michael Simkovic and Rutgers economist Frank McIntyre. The two researchers argue that over the course of a career, your average J.D.-holder will make almost $1 million more than a similar worker with just a bachelor's degree (or about $700,000 after taxes). Even law grads on the low end of the salary scale seem to fare better than their merely college-educated peers. Crucially, the paper finds no evidence that the earnings premium has declined since the economy crashed. 

"[O]ur results suggest that attending law school is generally a better financial decision than terminating one's education with a bachelor's degree," they write. Or to put it more bluntly, the law school haters are wrong.

So, are we? Is paying $60,000 a year to learn torts, tax, and civil procedure really a great deal after all? I don't think there's neat yes or no answer to that question. But I do think law school critics need to take Simkovic and McIntyre's conclusions seriously.

But before we get into precisely why, let's talk a bit about what went into this study. Using Census data dating back to 1996, the paper compares the earnings of law school graduates -- mind you, not just practicing lawyers, but anyone with a J.D. -- at all stages of their careers to the earnings of bachelor's degree holders, while accounting for factors like academic performance, race, socio-economic background, the chance of unemployment, and gender. The comparison comes out looking like this. 

So on average, J.D.'s have traditionally earned about $53,000 more per year than similar college-educated workers. This should shock nobody. Using some standard accounting techniques, Simkovic and McIntyre estimate that pay bump is worth about $990,000 over a lifetime, far more than the cost of tuition at any law school. 

But the post-recession critique against law schools has never been about the fate of the average J.D. Rather, the concern is about the least successful grads, the ones who find themselves jobless after commencement, or toiling at legal temp work. But Simkovic and McIntyre don't just find that law grads fare better on average. Rather, they fare better all over the salary spectrum. The paper calculates that a law grad at the 25th percentile of earners with a J.D. makes about $17,000 more per year than a college graduate at the 25th percentile of earners with just a bachelor's. The median law grad earns $32,000-a-year more than the median B.A. 

That, in turn, would make a law degree a very good investment. Assuming tuition costs $60,000 a year (the average is closer to $30,000), you can think of a J.D. as a bond that pays off about 8 percent to 10 percent for the median earner. Stocks, by comparison, pay off about 6.8 percent a year, traditionally. (Important note: If a male lawyer at the 25th percentile of earnings pays average tuition, the paper says they're still beating stocks). 

Of course, everyone knows lawyers had a great run until the financial crash. What about today's young esquires? While legal salaries have tumbled and unemployment has risen, the paper argues, based on data from the class of 2008, that lawyers seem to have essentially maintained their advantage over their less educated peers. In fact, as the economy soured, their earnings premium seemed to rise. 

The economy has been terrible for everyone. But it may have been better if you had a law degree to keep you afloat. 

As we all learned thanks to a certain Excel error, it's a bit foolish to put too much stock in a single academic paper, especially one that hasn't yet been subjected to a thorough vetting. That said, having scoured through it -- and having asked the Hamilton Project's Adam Looney, who has done similar work on college graduates, for a second opinion -- Simkovic and McIntyre's paper seems to be both based on a reasonable set of economic assumptions and a very by-the-book interpretation of their numbers.* 

That said, I'm not sure young political-science majors should take this study as a green light to go rushing back to their LSAT prep books. For ease of digestion, here are my reasons in bullet-point form: 

Reason 1: The Legal Job Market Continued Deteriorating Well Past 2008So far as law-school grads go, the class of 2008 did not get the worst of the recession. There's a reason lawyers sometimes refer to graduates from 2010 and 2011 as "the lost generation." Meanwhile, the job market only showed the barest signs of a rebound for the class of 2012. So the experience of lawyers who finished their degrees before Lehman collapsed may not fully reflect the challenges faced by recent J.D.'s. And while many of those young attorneys will have years to make up some of that lost salary, economists will tell you that early unemployment or low pay can have a lasting echo throughout a worker's career. 

The question is whether the problems law graduates have faced a temporary jobs drought thanks to the recession, or if something has fundamentally changed in the industry. 

Reason 2: The Boom Times Might Be Over for GoodAs Simkovic and McIntyre note, the predictions about the imminent ruin of the legal profession "date back at least to the invention of the typewriter." But at the risk of saying this time might be different, well, this time might be different. Even as corporate profits have come roaring back, particularly at banks, demand for high-end legal services has remained soft, and firms are facing unprecedented pressure to keep costs down. Many believe corporate law is entering a lean new world, which will only get leaner as software continues to automate and slim the margins on once-profitable activities. 

The legal academy tends to dismiss the troubles facing Big Law because the vast majority of attorneys don't actually spend their lives making millions representing banks and oil companies. But according to the Census, from 2002 through 2007, the 50 largest firms were responsible for about one-third of employment growth at all law offices (in the industry the top 200 firms by revenue are generally considered large). That jobs engine, for the time being, is dead. The entire U.S. economy has recovered almost three-quarters of the jobs lost thanks to the recession, but legal services has recovered just 16 percent of its losses. Many of those missing positions may have belonged to legal secretaries and paralegals. But the slow rebound nonetheless suggests something's amiss in law-firm land. Unless government hiring rebounds with a vengeance, or jobs open up en masse thanks to retiring boomers, it's hard to see the hiring picture dramatically improving for young J.D.'s. 

Reason 3: Students From Bottom of the Bottom Schools Are Still Suffering
Even if law-school graduates on the whole do reasonably well, the law-school boom of the last decade helped spur the growth of bottom-tier institutions that now post 20 percent or higher unemployment rates among their graduating classes. Those students may not be defaulting on their hefty debts en masse -- unlike the dropouts who are most likely to default on undergraduate debt, law grads are probably better at using programs like income-based repayment to protect themselves -- they're still suffering. I don't think there's anything about Simkovic and McIntyre's study that means something shouldn't be done to fix or restrain those schools.

Of course, the market is already doing that in its own way. Thanks to anenormous drop in law-school applicants, the class of 2016 may not have to face the nightmarish hiring environment that greeted grads from the last few years. Simkovic and McIntyre's paper is compelling. But I'm not yet comfortable saying that many young Americans are missing out by saying no to law school. 

___________________________

*If there's anything that makes me uneasy about the paper's mechanics, it's that it compares the bottom quarter of law-degree holders to the bottom quarter of bachelor's-degree holders. Their analysis suggests that had they not gone to law school, most J.D.'s would make only a small premium over the average B.A. (somewhere in the range of 0-5 percent). Intuitively, that strikes me as off. But I honestly don't have a good data based reason to reject their approach at the moment. (This footnote has been clarified from an earlier version that used some imprecise language).