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Strategic default on mortgages will grow substantially over the next year, among prime borrowers, and become identified as a serious problem. The sense that ‘everyone is doing it’ is already growing, and will continue to grow, to the detriment of mortgage holders. It will grow because of a building backlash against the financial sector, growing populist rhetoric and a declining sense of community with the business world. Some people will take another look at their mortgage contract, and note that nowhere did they swear on the bible that they would repay.

From the WSJ's Real Time Economics.

At times I believe the following propositions, in appropriately qualified fashion:

1. You don't know what a person really thinks until you hear his or her advice.  Along these lines, if you really want to know what a person thinks, ask for advice and he or she will open up.

2. In philanthropy there is a saying: "Ask for money and you will get advice.  Ask for advice and you will get money."

3. There are many exacting scholars who should be locked in a room, asked for advice of various kinds, and forced to speak into a tape recorder with no edits allowed.  The advice-giving mode mobilizes insights which otherwise remain dormant, perhaps for fear of falsification or ridicule or of actually influencing people.  All of the transcripts should be put on The Advice Website, with an open comments section, to limit the actual influence of the advice.  Some famous people would be revealed as foolish in critical regards.  The contents would be most interesting as non-advice and the site would carry a government warning that the advice is not to be taken seriously.

4. Often we do not trust people until we hear their advice.  We suspect in any case that they wish to control us, and until we know what they have in mind, we remain wary.  Sometimes it is necessary to give advice -- even pointless advice -- to establish trust.

These remarks are not intended to apply to medical or clinical advice.

Here is Bryan Caplan, offering direct advice to his colleagues (an excellent post).  Brett Arends questions whether you should take advice from people who write for a living.

Via Arnold Kling, Acemoglu writes:

On one side of the border fence, in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, the median household income is $30,000. A few feet away, it's $10,000....The key difference is that those on the north side of the border enjoy law and order and dependable government services -- they can go about their daily activities and jobs without fear for their life or safety or property rights. On the other side, the inhabitants have institutions that perpetuate crime, graft, and insecurity.

With apologies to Douglass North, I am rarely happy with this kind of explanation.  First, are the bad institutions cause or effect?  Most likely we need a framework which allows them to be both.

Second, I want the theory to also explain the (quite large) difference between the truly poor Chiapas and the relatively wealthy northern Mexico.  By many metrics northern Mexico is more corrupt than Chiapas (there is more to be corrupt over, for one thing, plus drug routes play a role) and it very likely has higher rates of violent crime.  In general I prefer theories which explain three data points to theories which explain two.  Chiapas, of course, isn't some weird outlier which I pulled out of a hat; it's in the same country as northern Mexico and many people from that region have populated both northern Mexico and Arizona for that matter.  I could have picked many other parts of Mexico as well.

One factor is positive selection into northern Mexico, on grounds of ambition and desire for higher wages.  Another factor is that northern Mexican norms are (partially) geared to support American multinationals and these norms have spread more generally, including to Mexican enterprises in the region.

On another point, as I get older, I tend to view "family structure which encourages an obsession with education" as an increasingly important variable for explaining levels in per capita income, if not always growth rates in the immediate moment.  It's not a truly independent variable -- when it comes to growth what is? -- but it's one good place to start.  It helps explain why the Soviet Union, after decades of state fascism/communism, slid into a living standard higher than that of much of Latin America.  It explains quite a bit of Arizona vs. Mexico but less of northern Mexico vs. Chiapas.  Acemoglu mentions education in his article, but he seems to view it as resulting from instiutions rather than causing them.

I don't buy into the genetic explanations but still I view "family structure which encourages an obsession with education" as very hard to replicate through policy.  Emmanuel Todd's The Causes of Progress has many problems, but it is an under-mined book when it comes to the causes of both liberty and economic growth.