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 […]
Who wins, who loses? And which who are you? The complexities of the 1%, multinational companies and agendas, government goals and responses and treaties, the trade deficit (US) and surplus (China), and what is globalization mostly about? Looking for posts…write to my gmail account. source New York Times
Via Mark Thoma, Antonio Fatas has a really excellent post on what’s wrong with economics education. It is too good to excerpt (and besides Thoma does that better than I can). I was particularly interested in one of Fatas’s points #3 The need for a unified theory. The idea that economics is a rigorous science […]
by Joseph Joyce Can the U.S. Rebalance without Raising Inequality? Last week’s estimate of an anemic U.S. GDP first-quarter growth rate of 0.1% will be revised. Moreover, the good news regarding job growth in April suggests that the U.S. economy is expanding at a quicker pace in the second quarter. But a closer look at […]
This is another entry into the series Rip Van Keynesian wakes up after 40 years and tries to analyse data up through 2013 with Paleo Keynesian concepts and statistical techniques. I’m pretty sure the main reason these notes can’t be published in any academic journal is that I will use old fashioned statistical techniques. It […]
Quote from the most recent Federal Statement. “In determining how long to maintain the current 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will assess progress–both realized and expected–toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation. This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including […]
The Euro-zone inflation rate rose less then expected for April at a pace of 0.7%. It was expected, or hoped, to rise to 0.9%. Germany’s inflation rate stayed low at 1.1%, which makes cost adjustments more troubling for the periphery countries of Europe like Spain and Greece. Finding a cure for low inflation is imperative […]