by Sandwichman Canny Ca’canny Under imperfect competition, according to a 1960s Samuelson textbook, “The canny seller contrives an artificial scarcity of his product so as not to spoil the price he can get on the earlier pre-marginal unit.” The obvious corollary to this rule is that the canny employer of labor who has some monopsony […]
Michael Hatcher and Patrick Minford have a post titled, Inflation targeting vs price-level targeting: A new survey of theory and empirics. They tell us that Price level targeting may be better than inflation targeting, because if inflation goes down, it would bounce back over the Fed inflation target. Inflation targeting just brings inflation back to […]
Sandwichman at Econospeak writes: Scoundrel Time Twenty years ago, the Journal of Economic Issues published a note by Warren Samuels on “‘Shirking’ and ‘Business Sabotage’.” Citing Thorstein Veblen’s analysis of business sabotage, Samuels was scathing in his criticism of the ideological double standard of the mainstream efficiency wage literature: Pejorative emphasis on shirking merely, but […]
It’s a familiar situation: business and government officials are promoting a new economic development deal which naturally includes subsidies for the investor. They may be touting a consultant’s study touting massive ripple effects and fantastic taxpayer return on investment. Should you believe them? Of course not. Consultants, whether they technically are working for the company […]
People are talking about low inflation and possible deflation. (Krugman today, and this article by St. Louis Fed, thanks Marko). Many think inflation will rise back up. Some think inflation can turn into deflation. The video above gives my view using a model of System Dynamics. (Link to first video describing model.) I show a […]
It is a familiar phrase on college campuses, often meant to serve as conversational kryptonite, the final word in an argument to which there is no response. “Check your privilege.” But Tal Fortgang, a Princeton freshman from Westchester County, had a response. – At Princeton, Privilege Is: (a) Commonplace, (b) Misunderstood or (c) Frowned Upon, […]
Dean Baker gives me the courage, in his recent post on Pikkety, to reiterate a statement I’ve made some few times in the past: Economists have no coherent or consistent idea of what they’re talking about when they use the word “capital.” They lump together real capital — fixed, human, organizational, whatever — with “financial capital,” […]
Been busy building a model to show the Fisher Effect. The model uses System Dynamics, which takes interrelated variables through a time simulation. The model is described in the video above. The main point is that the path of inflation described by the model matches the path of CPI (less food and energy) since […]
David Zetland at Aguanomics writes a note on California’s drought and policies on water use and distribution…price is key. Dealing with drought — three ways to fail BB sent this summary of UC Davis’s “Living with Drought” conference (I got my PhD there), and this bit got my attention: Everyone seemed to agree that solutions […]
I can not believe the nerve of Greg Mankiw posting a blog about the Veterans Administration having problems. He suggests giving Vets a voucher. I suggest that he should apologize to all the Vets for the War and Tax cuts policies that were implemented while he was at the White House that created the problem […]