I’m off to Jamaica, where I’ll be giving two talks on the theory and practice of economics. Expect blog-silence for
the next few days at least.
Meanwhile: Given that I plan not to travel far from Kingston, what are the things that I must see and do?
Say hi to my future sister-in-law and her husband!
Steve,
You must get to Dunn’s Falls. Bring footwear that will support and grip while you climb the falls. Best activity for outdoors types. Brown bag it too.
Jerk Chicken from what ever street vendor has the largest crowd around her stall.
“I took my wife to the Caribbean for a vacation”
“Jamaica?”
“No, she wanted to come”
Watching sunset at the far west end of the island and beach at Negril.
Do not stray too far from the main well lit areas…
Happy to know you are heading to Jamrock. Where will you be giving your talk?
Places to check out;
1) Bob marley museum and Trench town if you are a fan
2) port royal if you are fan of sea food
3) morgan’s harbor if you are a 007 fan
4) cherry gardens for a view of kingston (especially at night)
5) red hills road for jerk chicken
6) market place for food/night club
7) ranchos for food
8) truck stop for food
9) new kingston for food/night club/bar
There are others but these should keep you busy for a while.
Btw, get a guide for trench town.
Have fun in my beautiful island.
Their Blue Mountain coffee is fantastic. Make sure you pick up lots.
There’s great beaches around Kingston, so you’re in a great area.
(Also, expect to be sold things when you’re at a stop light)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Coke
If you’re not already, you should probably be aware of our interventionist policy in Jamaica. It caused a lot of bloodshed last year, not long after I was there for my honeymoon (thankfully not near Kingston). Hopefully this isn’t too distant from the topic of your talk. Maybe you could also say something about how our sugar import quotas impoverish Jamaica.
Sorry to be a buzzkill, but I have no good vacation advice. I think enjoyment depends entirely on the company you keep. I do have this second-hand piece of advice about a common vacation activity: don’t ride the horses through water, unless you are sure you will be in the front of the line. Yours floats, and so does a horse’s.
Steve, when you come back from your trip, you might find this post from Krugman worth responding to:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/taxing-job-creators/
He is making the argument that in a competitive economy the wages that a worker gets exactly balances his contribution to social welfare. And thus if the worker chooses not to work, society won’t be any worse off, because they won’t have to pay him wages anymore.
This argument seems fallacious, but I’m not sure what the flaw is. Is it that there are market failures that make workers receive more or less than social contribution?
@Keshav: Yes I’d like to see Steve’s response too.
Kruggers writes
This in turn means that the effect on everyone else’s income if a worker chooses to work one hour less is precisely zero. If a hedge fund manager gets $60,000 an hour, and he works one hour less, he reduces GDP by $60,000 — but he also reduces his pay by $60,000, so the net effect on other peoples’ incomes is zip.
This seems pretty clearly wrong. First, consider what happens if everyone stops working. More to the point though this is not an equilibrium; an entrepreneur or inventor – Henry Ford or Steve Jobs – is in a part of the economy far from equilibirium.
Third for the request for Steven to blog about the Saez paper and Krugman’s post.
Re Krugman blog. This is an interesting take – sort of turning it on its head. The “marginal product” argument is usually used to justify paying the lowest paid workers as little as possible. In a “competitive market” it is impossible to pay them less than the value they add, or they will simply leave to work elsewhere. This always struck me as too simplistic – the market is not perfectly competitive, the workers are not fully informed or rational and there are costs to changing etc. However, it contains a lot of truth. Krugman has turned this on the high earners. The argument seems sound on first glance, it is interesting if it stands up to closer scrutiny. Of course, the same arguments as to why the low paid CAN be underpaid can be used to explain why the well paid CAN be overtaxed, but perhaps it is required that one accepts both.
When in Kingston, be sure you see K.C. Lee’s publication in the latest edition of Science, No. 334, 1253–1256 (2011). Lee has managed to entangle a pair of diamonds!
According to the review in Nature,
One more vote for the thesis that quantum cryptography involves the transmission of information!
(Ok, you could also wait until after you return from Kingston. Or you could do both: wait until you return and then travel back in time to review the article. I’m flexible.)