The one thing I love about Frances Coppola, who is an economist from the United Kingdom, is that she is a perfect blend of someone inside the box and yet outside the box. I truly appreciate how she balances the two with an open and creative, yet grounded mind. She wrote a terrific article, The […]
The latest thing is discussing the possibility that the economy might be in a liquidity trap for a long long time or might repeatedly fall into one. So I ask what about some permanent fiscal stimulus to deal with secular stagnation. Now this question is an offence against Keynes and, much more, against new Keynesian […]
I am nearing the end of my 16 day jaunt starting in China and ending in Thailand. It has been 7 years since I have been in Thailand and the same for China other than an overnighter plus a day in Shanghai, China. Both places are surging in infrastructure and in business. Let me explain […]
Just a quick update to the productivity chart. (quarterly data, link to data) What does this graph show? When the economy is approaching the effective demand limit (red line), productivity stalls. Then a move toward an economic contraction will release a productivity increase. Note: The red line is the effective demand limit, where real GDP […]
Mr. Krugman wrote about a possible permanent slump and declining demand. He sort of offers two possible causes of it. Slowing population growth. Persistent trade deficits He does not even mention the big drop in labor share since the crisis. Yet, we see profound economists like Michael Pettis using labor share to describe the trade […]
Paul Krugman picks up on Angry Bear Robert Waldmann’s post “Why Does Fiscal Stimulus Work? ” discussing John Cochrane’s ideas on Keynesians. So some props to John Cochrane for at least trying to catch up. Unfortunately, he’s still working from the baseline assumption that people like me (and Mike Woodford, whom he really should be reading) must […]
by Dale Coberly PERNICIOUS IGNORANCE ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY A REPLY TO KRASTING Bruce Krasting in comments to Bruce’s post on Social Security made a number of claims that deserve a fuller answer than I was able to give in comments. Below in quotes are Krasting’s claims followed by my replies. I hope I am reasonably […]
Gentle Readers: Sorry to be incommunicado for so long. I’ve been working hard on a couple of projects. I built a spreadsheet for myself a few years ago to compare health-insurance plans — cost versus financial exposure/protection. I just built it out into a web app that others can use, and I’ve posted it here. […]
I had a friend who worked as a teacher in China. She made about $600 per month there 10 years ago. She said there was one question that the Chinese would ask her, even Chinese that she met for the first time. People would ask her name, where she was from, what her job was… […]
Simple explanations are always suspect. So do with this what you will. It’s my basic framework for thinking about how economies work. It of course doesn’t explain everything; the headline here is tongue-in-cheek. But I find it very useful in thinking about everything else. This thinking clashes quite definitively with traditional economic teachings. But it […]