EconNews Roundup

The smoking ban is supposed to actually attract more customers. Having lived in the US more than a decade, I can confirm that is true for that country. It may have been true for France as well. It actually had a perverse affect in the Boston area about a decade ago, when only the city of Boston put the ban. As a result, restaurants just outside the city limits, which did not have the ban, flourished... Anyway, I don't think it will hold for Turkey, as I don't know a single person who shuns restaurants because of smoking. At the end of the day, it all comes to the number of active smokers, which definitely works against the restaurants in Turkey. But the ban does definitely present an excellent opportunity for a before-after study. Empirical economists take note; if noone takes interest, I'll just email Stephen Levitt:)...

Just to fill up space, more of the IMF mambo jumbo...

Also, an advance notice: I am off to the Global Development Finance meeting in Taksim, from where I will try to blog live, summarizing the highlights of the conference. It will be in "notes" format and full of typos and the like, but it could definitely be useful. At least, I will be able to use it for my own archiving purposes.