Quite often, policy debates get mired in superficial, outdated, manipulated, or simply incomplete understandings of the facts. Getting relevant data is vital to coming up with intelligent approaches. Unfortunately, Paul Krugman, who has tried getting to the bottom of whether trade has increased income inequality in the US, concludes that we don’t have the right […]
Read more...Last week, we featured a post by Thomas Palley, “Breaking the Neoclassical Mold in Economics,” which provoked quite a lively discussion as to what mainstream economics was and wasn’t, and the uses and limitations of neoclassical economics. Thus, I thought readers might find further grist for thought in this post from Robert Vinneau, who takes […]
Read more...Dear reader, even if your taste runs to the practical rather than the theoretical, I strongly suggest you read this post from Thomas Palley. Like it or not, most news reporting and just about all policy discussions in the finance/economics realm are filtered through a particular frame of reference, namely, neoclassical economics. Palley points out […]
Read more...A very good Project Syndicate article by Thomas Palley highlights the way a shift in US policy priorities circa the early 1980s has lead to a lasting change in the foundation of economic growth in the US. Prior to that, the emphasis was on increasing incomes of workers and being wary of trade deficits. As […]
Read more...Once in a while, separate thinkers reach strikingly similar conclusion. It gets even more interesting when their observations come to light in a compressed timeframe. Yesterday, Willem Buiter pointed out a major difference in perspective between US and foreign economists. Americans are wedded to the idea of doing whatever it takes to forestall a recession, […]
Read more...Willem Buiter continues his quixotic campaign to extirpate lousy economic logic in the US. In a colorfully written post, he ridicules the refusal of any US economist (as far as he can tell) to consider that an American recession is necessary. He points to the obvious fact (commented on repeatedly in this blog) that the […]
Read more...This article from Project Syndicate (hat tip Mark Thoma) is a report from Davos by Nobel Prize winner Joesph Stiglitz on the considerable skepticism abroad toward US financial and business practice, particularly our faith in deregulation. It is a telling indicator of how rapidly the world is changing, yet many in the US are still […]
Read more...In a succinct and well argued Financial Times comment, Richard Duncan weighs in on the savings glut versus overspending (aka money glut) theories of global imbalances, and concludes it’s the spending, stupid. By way of background, let’s review the two competing notions of the causes of global imbalances, which is shorthand for “nice central banks […]
Read more...I am having a Dean Baker moment, although I suspect Baker will have even more fun with the front page New York Times article bearing the headline above. This is how the story starts: China’s latest export is inflation. After falling for years, prices of Chinese goods sold in the United States have risen for […]
Read more...I try to avoid being too dependent on a single news outlet on any particular day, but it is Sunday, and the New York Times happens to have a higher hit rate than usual on relevant pieces. Reader Independent Accountant chided me for not pointing to the artilce below by the reliable and thoughtful James […]
Read more...Although Robert Reich is a smart fellow (and I mean that sincerely), like a lot of Beltway types, he isn’t as well versed in the ways of the world of finance as he is in the workings of public policy and opinion. Thus I found his recent post, “The Politics of an Economic Nightmare,” intriguing […]
Read more...A very good article by David Leonhardt in today’s New York Times raises a question that would have been regarded with considerable skepticism as recently as, say, even August, when the perturbations in the debt markets seemed to be the largely the result of the subprime meltdown. That question is whether the Great Moderation, the […]
Read more...Peter Dorman at Econospeak provides an awesome little post, “Nonsense on Imported Stilts,” that eviscerates some conventional and widely used assumptions in trade economics: Econ bloggers have really missed the point about Landsburg’s free trade screed. The estimable Dani notwithstanding, the issue isn’t ultimately ethics or even procedural fairness. The problem is that doctrinaire economists […]
Read more...While there is some debate about whether and how much fiscal stimulus is warranted to combat a likely recession (yours truly thinks that we are in a no-win situation, with side effects likely to be as bad as the disease), some sort of program seems inevitable, particularly since this is an election year. So then […]
Read more...Today, Ben Stein, in his New York Times column, “Larry, Curly, Moe and the Economy,” uses the Three Stooges as metaphor for the Fed’s actions: the central bank, like the celluloid comics, keep hitting the wrong person on the head. According to Stein, the Fed is unduly preoccupied with inflation and it should instead engage […]
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