America Will Keep Losing Its Middle Class as Long as “The Free Market” Dominates the Economic Debate
How free market fundamentalism has undermined industrial policy and other pro-worker measures.
Read more...Category Archives: The dismal science
Why Did Isaac Newton Lose His Shirt in Financial Speculation? Author Alex Pollock Explains.
Trying to predict the financial future is a fool’s errand, even for a genius.
Read more...What Randomised Control Trials Can and Cannot Do: The 2019 Nobel Prize
A long-form discussion of the randomised approach celebrated in this year’s “Nobel” for economics.
Read more...The Famous Baseball-Watching Equality-Equity Graphic, Scrutinized
Turning to a classic policy debate: equality versus equity.
Read more...Why Have Facebook and Other Tech Giants Gotten Away With Gobbling Up Competitors?
Why have regulators sat pat as Big Tech companies like Facebook and Google have done deals that look like violations of antitrust law?
Read more...Impoverished Economics? Unpacking the Economics Nobel Prize
Yves here. Even thought the mainstream media, as usual, duly applauded the winners of this year’s “Nobel” prize in economics, there’s been less attention paid to the recipients than usual and far more criticism, some very measured, others more critical. The winners helped develop and promote an approach to development economics they called “randomized control […]
Read more...Herd Behaviour in Asset Markets: The Role of Monetary Policy
Data supports the idea that lax monetary policy contributes to bubbles. Yes, Virginia, some regard that claim as controversial.
Read more...How Performance Evaluation Metrics Corrupt Researchers
New research shows how citation metrics create perverse incentives for corruption in economics.
Read more...Secular Stagnation: The Limits of Conventional Wisdom
The debate over secular stagnation continues, yet orthodox economists are loath to admit that the needed fix is more demand, which means more government spending.
Read more...The Knock-On Consequences of the US-China Trade Tariffs on Global Value Chains
Looking at the math of the impact of tariffs on global value chains.
Read more...Keynes Was Really a Conservative
“The class war,” said Keynes, “will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie.”
Read more...Kalecki, Minsky, and “Old Keynesianism” Vs. “New Keynesianism” on the Effect of Monetary Policy
Larry Summers, a barometer of leading edge conventional wisdom, questions Keynesianism as a distortion of Keynes and for its overconfidence in monetary policy.
Read more...Is it Really “Full Employment”? Margins for Expansion in the US Economy in the Middle of 2019
Many indicators say the US is close to full employment. Hours of work tell a different story.
Read more...The Sacrificial Rites of Capitalism We Don’t Talk About
How capitalism’s dominant narrative, that of self-interested competition, is at odds with other themes, like deferred gratification and sacrifice.
Read more...Ideology is Dead! Long Live Ideology!
Economists like to say they’re immune to ideology. Research shows the opposite.
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