I was on travel, including my health care debate in Vermont (Robert Kuttner was sick, and David Corn filled in). Now, I have galleys of two books to go over. One is something I wrote quite a while ago with Nick Schulz on the intangible factors that make for prosperity. The other is something on competitive government.

Meanwhile, here are some things that look interesting:

Razib finds a study of cognitive skills and economic decision-making.

Kotlikoff and Leamer on the ideal financial system. I’ve read it several times, and I’m still not sure I get at what they are saying. It’s almost like they want to outlaw debt instruments. Maybe I should come back to this at some point and write a longer post about it.

The top five downloads from SSRN in the latest week. Of course, the pointer comes from Mark Thoma.