A paper by Ray Fisman and Edward Miguel for the National Bureau for Economic Research postulates that the number of parking tickets that legally-immune foreign diplomats acummulate in NYC and refuse to pay is a great measure of how corrupt their home countries are.

The list of violations per diplomat was led by Kuwait, Egypt, Chad, Sudan, and Bulgaria.

CNN is reporting that July 1 was the effective date for a host of new state laws, with more laws about to become effective. Not to worry, this latest mix of statist controls will finally order society in the correct manner. You can disregard the prior failed interventions, the capital chefs have finally got the recipe just right. You can sleep easy my friends. Thank goodness, it’s about time ...

Read New laws target bird flu, bullies and taxes at CNN.com ...

A bird in Spain is sick. (This seems to hold true)

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Sometimes we’re lucky. Sometimes simple, everyday occurrences suggest solutions. I bet the first wise guy who saw a round rock rolling down a hill took out a patent on the wheel. And the tree that fell across the ravine? Aha, a bridge.

Daniel Gros, Director of of Centre for European Policy Studies, has two interesting papers on his site, both dealing with anomalies in the balance of payment statistics: