Brad DeLong Friday morning: I cannot help but note strong divergence between the near-consensus views of Fed Chair Janet [Yellen]’s and Fed Vice-Chair Stan [Fischer]’s still-academic colleagues and students that tightening now is grossly premature, financial markets’ agreement with the hippies as evidenced by the ten-year breakeven, commercial-banker and wingnut demands for immediate tightening, the […]
Recently a very old debate among macroeconomists has been reopened (this happens from time to time). Paul Romer decided to discuss a key conference held in 1978 (yes really). Some (including me) think that’s about when the profession took a wrong turn largely following Robert Lucas. But in the discussion until about yesterday, it was […]
In my last post I pointed out that over the last half century, every time the year-over-year change in Real Household Net Worth went negative (real household wealth decreased), a recession had either started, or was about to. (One bare exception: a tiny decline in Q4 2011, which looks rather like turbulence following The Big Whatever.) […]
I have a new post up that has implications for stock-market investment, so I decided to try posting it over at Seeking Alpha, where they’re paying me a few tens of dollars for the post (plus more based on page views — not much luck so far). The post argues that year-over-year change in Real […]
Noah smith has a question which I paraphrase as : Interest rates on corporate bonds are very low. The return on capital for business as a whole is quite high. Why isn’t investment very high ? My thoughts This is related to average v marginal. I think it is important to distinguish fixed capital into […]
People who know more than I do are discussing the rational expectations revolution and the division of macroeconomics into hostile fresh-water and salt-water schools of thought. I am very favorably impressed by this post by Simon Wren-Lewis which you should probably just read. ).
by New Deal democrat The implications of the child care cost crush for median household income and “shadow unemployment” The other day I showed that there is compelling evidence that the primary reason for the long term decline in the Labor Force Participation Rate in the 25 – 54 age range is the increasing real […]