Robert Waldmann responds to Arnold Kling’s response Arnold Kling was generous enough with his time to respond here to a post of mine Sorry I was AWOL. Thank you Arnold Kling for responding to me. I’m flattered. “Not quite. The more heterogeneous labor force does not necessarily raise the natural rate of unemployment. However, it […]
Robert Waldmann People are talking about regulating credit default swaps (CDS) . They include Collin Petersen D-Minn who proposes making it illegal to own a CDS without owning the underlying instrument (this is absolutely standard for other kinds of insurance). and George Soros who supports the proposal.(via Felix Salmon) A problem, I think, is that […]
Robert Waldmann has been rather harsh on efforts to base macroeconomics on models of rational forward looking utility maximisers in Nash or Walrasian equilibrium recently. One might almost think that I agree with my PhD supervisor Larry Summers who once said and I quote from memory (but believe me the words had enough of an […]
Robert Waldmann I argued that the conventional view that welfare reform was a success is based on the coincidence that the economy boomed right after welfare war reformed, the journalists stopped paying attention, not noticing the following increase in severe poverty during the Bush non boom. Now we are in a severe recession. How is […]
Robert Waldmann Wow an argument in favor of protection from Paul Krugman. I never expected to read that. Now he’s against protection all the same, but he does admit that there is a good argument that right now a bit of protection would be good for the world. The argument, basically, is that governments aren’t […]
Paul Krugman writes about “Vanishing Dark Matter.” Robert Waldmann waxes nostalgic. Ah memories. Brad DeLong and I recall an impromptu debate on dark matter at 1050 Mass ave (NBER) featuring Paul Krugman and Larry Summers (apparently just back from advising Dukakis — some memories aren’t as pleasant as others). googling (krugman, summers, nber, … “anything […]
Robert Waldmann Following a link e-mailed by Ken Houghton I read this at “the Ambrosini critique” (thanks Ken) I read The need for more math is also related to the increase in the empirical relevance of theory. I’m convinced the only standing legacy of the Real Business Cycle literature, besides method, is its insistence on […]
Robert Waldmann Mark Thoma has a long post on the end of the Fresh Water Salt Water truce. He quotes at length from Olivier Blanchard’s declaration of peace in our time. In particular from Blanchard the old fresh water/salt water distinction has become largely irrelevant: While research on the topic started with new-Keynesians, recent research […]
Arnold Kling doesn’t support the stimulus, but he doesn’t agree with fresh water critics either. He refers to Mankiw’s classification of macroeconomists as “scientists” and “engineers” then writes Because the data are not powerful enough to reject any hypothesis against an interesting alternative, the macroeconomic “scientists” divorced themselves from the “engineers,” who continued to use […]
by Robert Menzie Chinn provides an excellent summary of arguments that a fiscal stimulus will have no effect on GNP. He charitably doesn’t mention the deduction from an accounting identity. I can’t resist arguing against the arguments which he lists.Click the link to find the arguments. Excellent summary. I think that there is one important […]