I wrote some 4 days ago about the Thoma/Williamson debate. I thought Stephen Williamson w0n the debate with his views on the Fisher effect, which basically state that keeping the Fed rate low into the long run will create low inflation. The basic principle underlying this view is that the real rate of interest is […]

If you were a passenger in a car speeding toward a cliff, you would scream at the lunatic driver to steer away or slow down. The car is our economy. The cliff is inequality. Inequality is a disaster for society. Who is driving the car? A combination of government policies and business institutions are steering […]

by J Tzimeskes   Are Markets Better Described as Robust than Efficient? Something that I think all of us with private sector jobs experience in our day to day lives is just how incompetent a large number of private businesses are. These may be our customers, suppliers, or another division. Yet, somehow, these businesses thrive despite […]

Low inflation continues to be a concern in Europe and the US, especially in Europe. Central bankers project that inflation will rise as the economy gets closer and closer to full employment. Yet, what is behind low inflation? I refer to the work of Michael Pettis who is a professor of finance at Guanghua School […]

I posted a question to our readers… How should monetary policy change if reducing inequality was seen as the most important priority? An assessment of the comments… The real issue of monetary policy’s effect on inequality its purpose to generate a “wealth effect” which will increase spending. A few things were said about the wealth […]

by Joseph Joyce (is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College and the Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs and maintains his blog at Capital Ebbs and Flows) China’s Place in the Global Economy Last week’s announcement that China’s GDP grew at an annualized rate of 7.4% in the first […]

I have been playing with the Livingston survey economic forecasts and, in particular, with the median forecast of CPI inflation over the following 6 and 12 months. The survey was conducted each June and December since June 1946. For some reason, the data are available in two files one with forecasts made December 2003 and […]

Hostages to fortune Recently, I wrote a note on expected inflation in the USA. One of the two sources of data I used was the Livingston survey of expert forecasters. I used the median forecasts of the CPI 6 and 12 months ahead from the start of the survey in 1946 through 2003, when the […]

I am watchng the video of Paul Krugman on Bill Moyers. Mr. Krugman is seeing things about inequality that he hadn’t seen before Piketty’s book. So he is now seeing that inequality is a huge problem now and into the future. Inequality is the one major problem in the economy. Question… How should monetary policy […]

I haven’t beaten the drum lately for Lane Kenworthy — perhaps the best researcher out there on the economic effects of income and wealth distribution. His years of careful, diligent (and voluminous) statistical and analytic work, tapping the best data sets available, and his cogent, coherent explanations of his findings, should get a lot more attention […]