In a previous post, I wrote about a natural rate of inflation. Does it really exist? What would it look like? We could understand a natural rate of inflation as the inflation rate at which the economy can most efficiently progress in terms of social benefits and costs. Some benefits are more employment, greater growth […]
Does targeting low inflation lead to higher unemployment? In other words, is it possible that a higher natural rate of unemployment is necessary to maintain a lower rate of inflation? Output and prices move together to maintain economic momentum. Normally output increases in response to demands in the market, which keeps prices stable. Yet, at […]
Whereas David Romer will say that the low inflation rate is a result of the zero lower bound. I would say that BOTH the low inflation rate and the zero lower bound result from the weak consumer liqudity due to very low labor share. In the previous post, I wrote about how inflation is a […]
Simply a great song to relax to… Link to music video…
If capital can always flee from one bubble to another bubble in another country, there will always be bubbles. Is it sustainable to always have bubbles somewhere that can give refuge to fleeing capital? …….. Probably yes, in spite of the problems left behind. Many years ago, I was in the Zocalo, central park of […]
I have been reading David Romer’s class notes called Short-run fluctuations. Part of his paper deals with a model to explain inflation in a liquidity trap. The model is based on real interest rates, output, expected inflation, Keynesian cross and IS-MP model stuff. He writes… “An economy where the nominal interest rate is zero poses […]
An issue arose in the comments at a previous post, Labor share is chopped liver to Mr. Krugman. The issue is whether increasing employment in order to increase wages and labor share is a good strategy for fiscal and monetary policy. Dean Baker, Paul Krugman and others put forth this strategy. It seems common understanding […]
Greg Mankiw reviews a paper written trying to support minimum wages. Mr. Mankiw is not in favor of minimum wages and was not sold by the paper. The best paper that I know of on minimum wages was written by Bruce Kaufman. His paper was titled, Institutional Economics and the Minimum Wage: Broadening the Theoretical […]
When someone is not being noticed, there’s the saying, “What am I? Chopped liver?” There is something that Paul Krugman is simply not noticing. First, let me quote Mr. Krugman from his recent post, The Depressed Economy is all about Austerity. “I don’t want to pretend to spurious precision here. Instead, I just want to […]
William Dudley is the President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He gave a speech about the economic outlook. The speech is standard talk about economic improvement that is not good enough yet. He states that demand is a constraint on the economy. “Turning first to consumer spending, such spending has […]