by Linda Beale Public Transit Benefit was down, is now up again (in Senate) One of the tax provisions that lapsed last year was a very popular tax expenditure supporting public transportation–a tax credit for commuters using mass transit was allowed to lapse back to a $125 monthly benefit from the stimulus level of $230 […]
Paul Krugman notes Angry Bear Robert Waldmann in the micro/macro conversation in the New York Times: There has been an ongoing discussion in the econoblogosphere about the usefulness or lack thereof of “microfoundations” in macroeconomics, which in practice means trying to write down models in which aggregate behavior is justified in terms of the actions of […]
Mark Thoma and Simon Wren-Lewis both responded to a complaint about the rational expectations assumption by noting that they had colleagues who study boundedly rational learning. I see a third alternative — giving up. That is, we might conclude that we don’t understand expectations formation and that we won’t for a long while, so we […]
by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health Care Thoughts: Major Event The Department of Health and Human Services has issued the final regulations for the operation of state health insurance exchanges. Summary at: http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/2011/07/exchanges07112011a.html Lots of reading ahead.
Simon Wren-Lewis gets me going again He wrote Rational expectations do not prevent us understanding sustained periods of deficient demand when an inflation targeting central bank hits a lower bound. Indeed they help, because with rational expectations inflation targeting prevents inflation expectations delivering the real interest rate we need, as I have argued here. and […]
by Linda Beale Illinois’s Tim Johnson (Rep.) Squirms under Norquist No-Tax-Increase Pledge Back in 2002, Tim Johnson represented a safely red district in Illinois and the radical right was pressing on his back with its reaganomics-inspired program to cut-taxes-to-shrink-(nonmilitary)-government-and-eliminate-public-infrastructure-and-social-justice-programs; de-regulate-to-free-up-big-business; privatize-wherever-you-can-especially-schools-bridges-and-other-essential-services. Not to be outdone, Tim Johnson signed the no-tax-increase pledge on the dotted line, […]
No it is not a guide to proper grammar, and I know perfectly well that a preposition isn’t the sort of thing I’m supposed to end a sentence with. The case for assuming rational expectations rests on two valid arguments. 1) Expectations matter a lot.*2) If you allow people to assume whatever they want about […]
by Linda Beale Hey, didn’t the GOP say it cared about deficits? Just when you think those on the radical right had gone about as far as they could go without recognizing their own zaniness, those in Congress have revived their version of a tax “reform” for businesses. It was first proposed in 2009–as an […]
I had problems with the blogger account and was not able to sign on until 2:30 this afternoon.. It is a little late for analysis of the employment report, so I’ll just post a couple of charts I had prepared to add this morning. If you go back to old days before the great moderation, […]