Paul Krugman writes that Keynesian thought has progressed. I disagree in comments with the usual I do not think that Keynesians accept that there is a natural rate of unemployment. The concept is inconsistent with hysteresis. OJ Blanchard and LH Summers are definitely Keynesians. They presented a model without a natural rate in 1986. I […]

Well, this is a politics and economics blog, so I need some rationalization for celebrating Sixteen years, sixteen banners united… (I sadly note for the record that, unlike Brad DeLong, I did not try to avoid finding a Dylan version of a Dylan song—there just wasn’t one on YouTube.)

A lot of people out there seem to have the notion that Greece’s troubles are the result of laziness. That really doesn’t seem to be true. OECD: Average annual hours actually worked per worker 2000-2010 Germany 1473 1458 1445 1439 1442 1434 1430 1430 1426 1390 1419 Greece 2121 2121 2109 2103 2082 2086 2148 […]

The second biggest surprise of the day, after the survival of the Affordable Care Act, is that we’ve never really gotten over our collective crush on John Roberts. How else to explain today’s outpouring of praise, not merely for the decision but for the man himself, for his statesmanship and judicial modesty? All these years, […]

It was only last week when liberal pundits were more alert.  Well, some of them weren’t—after all, we’re talking about people identified as “liberal” by those who consider Ross Douthat and David Brooks to be mainstream. What some of them knew about Arizona, all of them appear to have forgotten about PPACA. The Supreme Court […]

The chief justice, echoing Justice Scalia’s “broccoli” comment at the oral argument, rejected (as did the four dissenters, and so that is now the view of a majority of the justices) the Commerce Clause ground for the mandate, saying that to accept that ground would mean that “Congress could address the diet problem by ordering […]

Some people think Roberts cleverly used this case to severely limit Congress’s regulatory powers.  Others strongly disagree. I’m with the others. I think that as a practical matter, this will have almost no limiting effect at all on Congress’s regulatory powers.  I can’t think of any circumstance in which this limitation would apply and in […]

Yep, that’s right. (HT, Slate.) OK, guys, I COULDN’T RESIST. (After doing all this blogging on the case all day, I think I’m punch-drunk.) Hicccuppp.

I think there was a clue to Roberts’ thinking during the first day of argument—during the argument on the applicability of the Anti-Injunction Act, an obscure “jurisdictional” statute, which precludes courts from ruling on the constitutionality of a federal tax until after the statute becomes effective and the tax actually is due.  Roberts really indicated […]

While the Court’s upholding the mandate is deservedly taking front stage in the media coverage, the Court’s decision to strike down a part of the Medicaid expansion may ultimately have broader jurisdprudential consequence.  That, at least, will be a subject of debate among lawyers and academics in the days and weeks to come.  This is […]