Category: Economics

To End Inflation, Fed Should Commit “To Good Policy Rules,” and Not Stray to Increase Jobs

(p. A9) Growing up in Glens Falls, N.Y., Edward C. Prescott got an insider’s view of business from chats with his father, an engineer and later comptroller for a global supplier of pigments. Those insights made the economics courses he took in college seem less theoretical and more relevant than they might have seemed to other students.

. . .

With Dr. Kydland, he published an influential 1977 paper called “Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans,” concluding that policy makers could err by straying from long-term goals to address short-run problems. For instance, central bankers might be tempted to ease up on their commitments to contain inflation in the short run as a way to boost employment. If so, the professors argued, people might start assuming that prices were out of control, creating a psychology that led to faster inflation for long periods.

Sticking to a sound policy was far more effective than jolting the economy with frequent adjustments, they argued. “You should not think in terms of controlling the economy,” Dr. Prescott said. “That leads to bad outcomes. You should think in terms of committing to good policy rules.”

. . .

Though revered by many of his students and colleagues, Dr. Prescott sometimes baffled them. The problem, he once explained, was that he thought much faster than he could talk. He sometimes jumped from one topic to another with no transition.

“His brain did not work like other people’s,” said Timothy Kehoe, an economics professor at the University of Minnesota who worked with Dr. Prescott for four decades, “and in some ways that was a tremendous advantage.”

For the full obituary, see:

James R. Hagerty. “Economist’s Policy Advice: Stick to Long-Term Plan.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, November 12, 2022): A9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Nov. 8, 2022, and has the title “Nobel-Winning Economist Edward C. Prescott Dies at 81.”)

Future Disney Fashion Designer Was “Fascinated” by “Snow White” Movie as a Child

(p. A20) Alice Davis, a Disney Company costume designer who created the outfits worn by the animatronic figures in two of the company’s most enduring and popular rides, It’s a Small World and Pirates of the Caribbean, died on Nov. 3 [2022] at her home in Los Angeles.

. . .

Ms. Davis had been designing lingerie and other garments for several years when Walt Disney himself asked her in 1963 if she wanted to work on the costumes for It’s a Small World.

. . .

She had been fascinated with animation since seeing “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” when she was 8 (“I just about vibrated out of my seat,” she said), and she hoped to pursue the form as a career.

. . .

She was steered to costume design, although Ms. Chouinard suggested that she also take an animation drawing class with a new instructor at the school: Marc Davis, who was by then one of a core group of animators Mr. Disney referred to as his “nine old men.”

She graduated in 1950 and married Mr. Davis in 1956; he died in 2000. She leaves no immediate survivors.

Ms. Davis’s other Disney work included establishing costuming and quality-control procedures for the company and creating standards for three-dimensional characters in other rides and shows.

In 2012, Disney recognized Ms. Davis as its most famous costume designer with a tribute that is among the company’s highest honors: a commemorative window installed on a storefront on Disneyland’s Main Street. It sits next to a similar pane honoring her husband.

For the full obituary, see:

Ed Shanahan. “Alice Davis, 93, Who Designed Outfits For Two of Disney’s Most Popular Rides.” The New York Times (Saturday, November 19, 2022): A20.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date Nov. 18, 2022, and has the title “Alice Davis, Costume Designer for Disney Rides, Dies at 93.”)

Cutting Out Time to Do Key Tasks on Vacation, Can Allow More Vacation Time and Choice

(p. A18) Loosening up the vacation vs. work binary opens up possibilities for living in new ways. Karen Raraigh, a Baltimore-based genetic counselor with a focus on research, gets a generous quantity of vacation days each year. But as with many professionals, her specialized projects won’t move forward in the same way if she’s not tending them — and she finds these projects quite meaningful.

“I like the work I do,” she told me. “The fact that I do a little work on vacation makes me feel a little better about taking more of it.” Her family spends multiple weeks visiting extended family in Maine, but she sometimes holes up for an afternoon to manage work matters while relatives play with her kids.

. . .

. . . if doing some work at the beach means you can be at the beach for two weeks instead of one, and moving work time around means you can play with your kids in the afternoons and still keep your clients happy, then those blurred boundaries might be working to your advantage.

For the full commentary, see:

Laura Vanderkam. “Go Ahead, Work While on Vacation and Vacation While at Work.” The New York Times (Tuesday, August 16, 2022): A18.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Aug. 13, 2022, and has the title “Don’t Feel Guilty About Working on Vacation — or About Vacationing at Work.”)

California Law Mandating $22 Wage for Restaurant Workers Is “Discouraging” Entrepreneurs

(p. A3) A government-appointed council could increase wages for California’s estimated half-million fast food workers to as much as $22 an hour starting next year, under a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday [September 5, 2022].

. . .

“You can’t charge enough for food to offset what will happen from a labor perspective,” said Greg Flynn, president of Flynn Restaurant Group, which operates franchise brands in 44 states and owns 105 restaurants in California. “California is already the most difficult state in the nation to operate as a restaurateur. This just makes it more difficult and less attractive.”

. . .

Michaela Mendelsohn, an El Pollo Loco franchisee in Southern California, said she recently put on hold plans to add to her group of six stores because of the measure.

If wages shoot up, she added, she will consider eliminating cashier positions or installing kiosks in her California locations that allow customers to input orders.

“We’ve gone too far here,” Ms. Mendelsohn said. “It’s just really discouraging.”

For the full story, see:

Christine Mai-Duc and Heather Haddon. “California Fast-Food Bill Signed, Opening Path to Higher Pay.” The New York Times (Tuesday, September 6, 2022): A3.

[Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.]

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Sept. 5, 2022, and has the title “California Governor Signs Fast Food Bill, Opening Way to Higher Wages.” The last two sentences quoted above appeared in the online, but not the print, version.)

Entrepreneurs Harvest Useful Protein Collagens From “Precision Fermentation” Rather Than From Slaughter of Animals

(p. B4) The multibillion-dollar push to make animals obsolete in the food industry has already produced pea-protein “bratwurst,” fungus molded into “ham” and “leather,” and “meat” cultured from chicken cells. Geltor, a seven-year-old company based in the Bay Area, is taking a different tack: bioengineering bacteria cells to produce animal proteins you’ll likely never taste.

Geltor is producing forms of collagen they say are identical to the proteins extracted from skin and bones. For now, those vegan collagens can be found in high-end skin care creams. But as the company grows, it’s eyeing other ingredients few Americans associate with animal farming, such as the elastin in your shampoo, the collagen peptides in your smoothie, and even the gelatin (which is hydrolyzed, or slightly broken-down, collagen) in your marshmallows. Alex Lorestani, co-founder and chief executive of Geltor, likes to talk about how the company’s proteins impose a lighter burden on the environment than the meat industry. The challenge, however, is how the company gets to the scale necessary to exert that kind of impact.

In 2012, Dr. Lorestani and co-founder Nick Ouzounov, both 35, were both pursuing doctorates in molecular biology at Princeton University when the invention of Crispr turbocharged the field of bio-design. “We can bio-design medicine,” Dr. Lorestani recalled discussing with his labmates that summer. “Why can’t we bio-design everything?”

Dr. Ouzounov eventually came up with a method — which he and Dr. Lorestani, in typical Bay Area techspeak, call “a platform” — for genetically modifying bacteria cells to reproduce a wide variety of animal proteins, a process that biotech firms are calling “precision fermentation.” In 2015, the two scientists formed Geltor.

For the full story, see:

Jonathan Kauffman. “Going Beyond Vegan ‘Meat’ to Bio-Designed Collagen.” The New York Times (Wednesday, August 3, 2022): B4.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date August 2, 2022, and has the title “Is Bio-Designed Collagen the Next Step in Animal Protein Replacement?”)

Venezuelan Is Grateful Texas Governor Bussed Him to Opportunities in Washington, D.C.

(p. A1) When Lever Alejos of Venezuela arrived at the southern border penniless in July [2022], he gladly accepted a free bus ride to Washington, D.C., courtesy of the state of Texas. He had no family or friends to receive him, and spent one night in the plaza across from Union Station. He soon settled into a homeless shelter.

“I have nothing,” Mr. Alejos, 29, said on his third day in the city, “but I have the will to work and succeed.”

Two months later, Mr. Alejos is making between $600 to $700 a week, saving up to buy a used car and planning to move out of the shelter.

“There is so much opportunity here,” he said on Thursday [Sept. 15, 2022], at the end of a day’s work. “You just have to take advantage of it.”

Since April [2022], thousands of migrants, most of them Venezuelans, have been coaxed onto buses and planes heading to Washington, New York, Chicago and, last week, Martha’s Vineyard after enduring a perilous journey over land from their broken country to make a fresh start in the United States.

. . .

(p. A16) Democrats have called the stunts cruel, and many migrants have been left at least temporarily homeless as their new host cities scramble to help them.

But others, like Mr. Alejos, have called the free transportation a blessing. They are already employed and achieving some measure of stability. They have found jobs in construction, hospitality, retail, trucking and other sectors facing worker shortages in an economy still recovering from the impact of the pandemic.

“In most big cities, including the ones where governors are shipping migrants, employers are scrambling to find workers,” said Chris Tilly, a labor economist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “They are meeting a need.”

. . .

For himself, Mr. Alejos has acquired a new cellphone and ear buds, shirts and trousers, and shoes. “I try to keep my priorities straight,” he said. “I’m not splurging. I am trying to build an emergency fund.”

In three weeks, he hopes to buy a 2012 Honda Civic.

His only regret is that his schedule does not allow him to attend in-person English classes. But he has found a way to teach himself, the Duolingo language-learning app — and then he tries to practice with customers.

. . .

In his free time, Mr. Alejos explores his adopted city with fellow Venezuelans, visiting the Natural History Museum, the Zoo, Chinatown and the Capitol.

“I always try to see something new on my days off,’’ he said, and often during the outings he posts selfies on Facebook.

He misses his family, he said. But he is philosophical about his circumstances.

“Often you have to suffer to be compensated down the road,” he said.

. . .

“I feel fortunate the governor put me on a bus to Washington,” Mr. Alejos said. “It opened up doors for me.”

For the full story, see:

Miriam Jordan. “Bus Ticket Out of Texas Was a Ticket to Stability.” The New York Times (Monday, September 19, 2022): A1 & A16.

[Note: ellipses, bracketed years, and bracketed date, added.]

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 18, 2022, and has the title “After Texas Sent Him to Washington, One Migrant Launches a New Life.”)

Chargers for Electric Vehicles “Are Often Broken”

(p. B1) The electric vehicle revolution is nearly here, but its arrival is being slowed by a fundamental problem: The chargers where people refuel these cars are often broken. One recent study found that about a quarter of the public charging outlets in the San Francisco Bay Area, where electric cars are commonplace, were not working.

. . .

Many sit in parking lots or in (p. B3) front of retail stores where there is often no one to turn to for help when something goes wrong. Problems include broken screens and buggy software. Some stop working midcharge, while others never start in the first place.

Some frustrated drivers say the problems have them second-guessing whether they can fully abandon gas vehicles, especially for longer trips.

“Often, those fast chargers have real maintenance issues,” said Ethan Zuckerman, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has owned a Chevrolet Bolt for several years. “When they do, you very quickly find yourself in pretty dire straits.”

In the winter of 2020, Mr. Zuckerman was commuting about 150 miles each way to a job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The cold winter weather can reduce the driving range of electric cars, and Mr. Zuckerman found himself needing a charge on the way home.

He checked online and found a station, but when he pulled up to it, the machine was broken. Another across the street was out, too, he said. In desperation, Mr. Zuckerman went to a nearby gas station and persuaded a worker there to run an extension cord to his car.

“I sat there for two and a half hours in the freezing cold, getting enough charge so that I could limp to the town of Lee, Mass., and then use another charger,” he said. “It was not a great night.”

The availability and reliability of public chargers remains a problem even now, he said.

. . .

There are few rigorous studies of charging stations, but one conducted this year by Cool the Earth, an environmental nonprofit in California, and David Rempel, a retired professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, found that 23 percent of 657 public charging stations in the Bay Area were broken. The most common problems were that testers could not get chargers to accept payment or initiate a charge. In other cases, screens went blank, were not responsive or displayed error messages.

“Here we have actual field data, and the results, frankly, were very concerning,” said Carleen Cullen, executive director of Cool the Earth.

. . .

At most gas stations, a clerk is usually on duty and can see when some problems arise. With chargers, vandalism or other damage can be more difficult to track.

“Where there’s a screen, there’s a baseball bat,” said Jonathan Levy, EVgo’s chief commercial officer.

For the full story, see:

Niraj Chokshi. “E.V. Hassle: Locating A Charger That Works.” The New York Times (Tuesday, August 16, 2022): B1 & B3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “A Frustrating Hassle Holding Electric Cars Back: Broken Chargers.”)

Growing Number of Free-Agent Entrepreneurs in Technology Sector

(p. B5) Facing economic headwinds, companies are filling gaps in information-technology teams with freelance software developers, coders and other high-skilled tech workers, while pulling back on efforts to recruit full-time staff, recruiters and industry analysts say.

The number of job postings for software developers on Freelancer.com, an online freelance marketplace, rose 54.7% in the third quarter on a year-over-year basis, the sharpest gain among more than 2,000 job-related skills tracked on the platform, Freelancer.com reported this week.

. . .

On top of being drawn to unique tech challenges, a growing number of IT freelancers prefer the more flexible hours and remote-work opportunities they became accustomed to during pandemic lockdowns, said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA.

“The pandemic and, more recently, the turbulence in the economy, spurred demand for greater labor flexibility both among employers and workers,” Mr. Herbert said. More IT workers are now choosing freelance jobs “as a preferred working model, rather than as a last resort,” he said.

For the full story, see:

Angus Loten. “Souring Economy Gives a Boost to Tech Freelancers.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, October 14, 2022): B5.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 12, 2022, and has the title “Souring Economy Gives Tech Freelancers a Lift.”)

Steve Jobs “Was Not Driven by the Financial Results”

(p. B2) Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook on Wednesday [Sept. 7, 2022] shot down any hope of ending the great blue-bubble, green-bubble divide between users of his iPhones and Google’s Android devices.

. . .

Mr. Cook shared the stage Wednesday with Jony Ive, the tech company’s former chief design officer, and Laurene Powell Jobs, Mr. Jobs’s widow, as they reminisced 15 years after the introduction of the iPhone.

. . .

“He was not driven by the financial results,” Mr. Cook said. Instead, he said, Mr. Jobs was focused on making products. “He was never confused about focusing on the indirect consequence—on the market and the financial results,” Mr. Cook said. “He focused on the inputs: getting the products right, making sure they were the best; making sure they were making a difference in people’s lives.”

. . .

“There was something beautiful about the way Steve thought,” Mr. Ive said.

For the full story, see:

Tim Higgins. “Apple CEO Reflects on Jobs Legacy.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, September 9, 2022): B2.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date September 8, 2022, and has the title “Tim Cook Advises Man Concerned About Green Text Bubbles: ‘Buy Your Mom an iPhone’.”)

“Self-Taught Rocket Engineer” and Entrepreneur Nimbly Launches “Light Rockets”

(p. B12) On Thursday [August 4, 2022] a spy satellite run by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office shot into space from New Zealand. The rocket carrying it, the Electron, was built by Rocket Lab increase; green up pointing triangle, a U.S.-Kiwi startup founded in 2006 by self-taught rocket engineer Peter Beck.

Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, satellite-intelligence firm BlackSky asked Rocket Lab for an orbit change just days before it was due to launch, in order to place its satellites more directly over the conflict zone. While changing such missions has traditionally taken months, Rocket Lab pulled it off in 45 days.

These are examples of the new opportunities opened up by governments’ desire for “responsive launch.” While Elon Musk’s SpaceX has spent years revolutionizing the space economy with its large reusable Falcon rockets, a raft of startups have recently stepped in to provide light rockets that are more expensive in terms of price per kilogram, but can send small satellites to specific orbits with extremely fast turnaround times.

. . .

After a year of unrestrained euphoria, when all sorts of “pre-revenue” startups merged with special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, rising interest rates have prompted traders to shun speculative ventures, including fintech innovations, air taxis and, yes, small-satellite launchers.

This has shrouded Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit and Astra Space, which all went public through SPACs last year, in a cloud of negative sentiment.

. . .

Beyond launching 149 satellites into space so far, Rocket Lab also sent NASA’s CAPSTONE spacecraft on its way to the moon’s orbit in June. A month earlier, it caught an Electron booster in midair with a helicopter—a key step toward making the rocket reusable.

For the full commentary, see:

Jon Sindreu. “Rocket Lab Is Science, Not Fiction.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022): B12.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date August 9, 2022, and has the title “Rocket Lab Is Already Science, Not Fiction.”)

M.R.I. Inventor and Entrepreneur Earned Patent, But Was Denied Nobel Prize

(p. B10) Dr. Raymond Damadian, who built the first magnetic resonance imaging scanner, which revolutionized doctors’ ability to diagnose cancer and other illnesses — but who, to his dismay, saw the Nobel Prize for the science behind it go to two others — died on Aug. 3 [2022] at his home in Woodbury, N.Y.

. . .

The vision of scanning the human body without radiation came to Dr. Damadian in the late 1960s, he said, when he was working on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy — which, until then, had been used to identify the chemical makeup of the contents of a test tube — at Downstate Medical Center (now SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University) in Brooklyn.

Working with rats, he discovered that when tissues were placed in a magnetic field and hit with a pulse of radio waves, cancerous ones emitted distinctly different radio signals than healthy ones.

He published his findings in 1971 in the journal Science and was granted a patent three years later for an “apparatus and method for detecting cancer in tissue.” It took 18 months to build the first M.R.I., originally known as a nuclear magnetic resonance scanner, or N.M.R. Its first scan, on July 3, 1977, was of Lawrence Minkoff, one of Dr. Damadian’s assistants — a vivid and colorful image of his heart, lungs, aorta, cardiac chamber and chest wall.

“Having birthed the original idea of the N.M.R. body scanner, we were intent on being the first to accomplish it,” Dr. Damadian said in the book “Gifted Mind: The Dr. Raymond Damadian Story, Inventor of the M.R.I.,” published in 2015, which he wrote with Jeff Kinley. “Failing to do so meant we might be denied the recognition for the original idea.”

But the technology behind the M.R.I. had several fathers.

Acknowledging that he was inspired by Dr. Damadian’s work, Paul C. Lauterbur of the State University of New York at Stony Brook had figured out how to translate the radio signals bounced off tissue into images. And Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham in England had developed mathematical techniques for analyzing the data, making the process more practical.

Employing the techniques he pioneered, Dr. Damadian’s company, Fonar, based in Melville, N.Y., produced the first commercial scanner in 1980.

. . .

While working at Downstate and later at Fonar, Dr. Damadian was aware of Dr. Lauterbur, a chemist who was also working on M.R.I. imaging and with whom he shared the National Medal of Technology.

In “Gifted Mind,” Dr. Damadian acknowledged that Dr. Lauterbur “realized that the N.M.R. signal differences in diseased and normal tissues I discovered could be used to construct a picture (image).”

But in 2003, when Dr. Lauterbur and Dr. Mansfield won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their contributions to the science of magnetic resonance imaging, Dr. Damadian was enraged.

. . .

A year later, Dr. Damadian received one of the two annual Bower Awards given by the Franklin Institute, a science museum in Philadelphia. He was cited for his business leadership.

“There is no controversy in this,” said Dr. Bradford A. Jameson, a professor of biochemistry at Drexel University who was the chairman of the committee that chose the winners. “If you look at the patents in this field, they’re his.”

. . .

Dr. Damadian continued to innovate. He created open M.R.I. machines, which alleviate the claustrophobia patients can experience during scans when they are moved slowly through a tight tunnel, as well as mobile and stand-up scanners.

In recent years, he was focused on research that included imaging cerebral spinal fluid as it flowed to the brain.

For the full obituary, see:

Richard Sandomir. “Raymond Damadian, 86, Is Dead; Creator of the First M.R.I. Scanner.” The New York Times (Thursday, August 18, 2022): B10.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Aug. 19, 2022, and has the title “Raymond Damadian, Creator of the First M.R.I. Scanner, Dies at 86.” Where there is a minor difference between the online and print versions, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

Damadian’s biography mentioned above is:

Kinley, Jeff, and Raymond Damadian. Gifted Mind: The Dr. Raymond Damadian Story, Inventor of the MRI. Green Forest, AZ: Master Books, 2015.