In my last post, I discussed one of the most important sets of questions regarding any proposed economic development subsidy: How much does it cost? Is that too much? The answer, assuming that we are not going to overhaul our broken subsidy system overnight, was that we see if we’re paying too much by looking […]

BLS economist Shawn Sprague writes What Can Labor Productivity Tell Us About the U.S. Economy? Labor worked the exact same number of hours in 1998 as they did in 2013 or ~194 billion hours. While there was no growth in the number of hours worked, the Non-Institutional Civilian Population grew by 40 million people, and […]

subtitled: “A Nonhysterical Look at a System That’s Working” I don’t know who Doug Pibel is but IMHO he just nailed it in this piece. I hope this meets the Fair Use Doctrine. If not be sure to share the link before we are asked to take it down.

In a WSJ interview, John Taylor, who is a professor at Stanford University, sees that the nominal interest rate from the Federal Reserve should be 1.25% now, according to his own Taylor rule. He says the financial markets are working fine. “The financial crisis is ages ago now. The financial markets seem to be working […]

Okay fine, not the best. (Click bait!) But for me, the most important — the five books that, more than any others, taught me how to think about the world. A friend in my “classics” book group asked me for nonfiction book recommendations. Here’s what I wrote: The NF books that wow me, get me […]

There is a movement taking place to understand the Fisher Effect. What is the Fisher Effect? Basically the idea is that low and stable nominal interest rates from the central banks leads to low and stable inflation. I have been writing here on Angry Bear that the Fisher Effect is made stronger when the nominal […]

As the stock market moves sideways and house prices slow their march upward, 2014 is shaping up to be a less profitable year than 2013 for those with capital income. We saw consumption from capital income increase greatly over the last couple of years, but this year I expect it to stop rising and even […]

I’m stunned by how good the new Jacobin piece by Seth Ackerman is: “Piketty’s Fair-Weather Friends.” It gives what I find to be the best understanding so far of the whole Piketty “think space.” It’s so good that I can’t encapsulate it, so I’ll just share some of the passages I’m most taken with, with my […]

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published an article that low nominal interest rates lead to low inflation… In essence they describe the Fisher effect about which I have been writing here on Angry Bear. There are many economists who do not accept the Fisher effect that low nominal interests lead to stable low […]

Noah Smith has documented the “anti-Piketty crusade” by Tyler Cowen, Chairman and General Director of the Koch-brothers-funded Mercatus Center. (The post seems to have gone missing from Noah’s site [pourquoi?]; here’s Google’s cached version.) The latest from Cowen is here, joining in the right-wing chorus desperately trying to debunk the long and widely documented increase in wealth inequality (documented […]