Give the Republicans enough rope and they’ll hang themselves? It seems to be working. Yeah, it looks like Dems have taken a hit from this whole business, as Republicans hoped they would. But like the debate in general, it’s very much not symmetrical. Combine this with the Pubs’ internal discord: are they reaching the point that […]
Tim Kane was nice enough to include my question in this year’s Hudson Survey of Leading Economics Bloggers (PDF). Here’s the question and the results: Judging based on post-war economic data, how do prosperous, high-GDP/capita countries compare with one another? Countries with larger government sectors have _____ growth rates compared to countries with smaller government sectors. As a group, […]
There’s great discussion out there on this topic, see Steve Randy Waldman’s links list here. Karl Smith gives us this graph and asks: I mean, honestly, would you look at the graph above and conclude that during the 1970s the economy dangerously overheated. I’d like to offer a perhaps more useful (though more complicated) look. […]
Steve Randy Waldman delivers another Aha! post (and a followup reply to Scott Sumner) pointing out a huge driver of the 1970s Great Inflation — the rise in the labor force: Between the mid 60s and the mid 70s, the labor force grew by 30%.*
Scott Sumner makes a very good point (though my interest here is somewhat peripheral to the main thrust of his post): Government price indices don’t measure the prices that are of macroeconomic interest. For instance in the 6 years after the housing bubble peaked the US, BLS data shows housing prices rising by about 10%, while Case-Shiller […]
You might well ask: “Whaddaya mean by ‘his,’ buster?” Nick does a full-faith effort here (including the comments) to characterize Steve Keen’s position (aggregate demand = GDP + change in debt), using Nick’s preferred language and mental modeling. It’s a darned good effort, but I think it’s crippled (as is Steve’s construct) by a conceptual failing […]
Scott Sumner nods with approbation toward this Ychuan Wang post at Noahpinion. For which hat tip I must thank him because Wang so clearly explicates what he calls the “canonical” understanding, and illustrates so perfectly the wackiness and incoherence of of the Walrasian view: Prices don’t always adjust instantly, so we can have excess supplies […]
Unlearning Econ: The story goes like this: an Israeli day care centre found that parents were picking up their children too late, so they introduced a small charge of $3 to try and disincentivise lateness. However, instead of discouraging this behaviour, the payment served to legitimise it and buy the parents piece of mind. The […]
DIN. We should print up lapel buttons. I suggested this campaign some time ago: This would: • Transfer relative purchasing power (hence power) from holders of financial assets to holders of real assets — from Wall Street to Main Street — and from (relatively few) creditors to (many more) debtors. • Spur both consumption spending […]
No, not that kind of “special.” Though it sure is tempting… Paul Krugman, Scott Sumner (seemingly unlikely bedfellows, but…), and most other mainstream economists want to argue that banks are not special — that there’s no reason for economists to understand and analyze their operations in detail, or incorporate those understandings in their (mental and formal) economic […]