from Lars Syll In econometrics one often gets the feeling that many of its practitioners think of it as a kind of automatic inferential machine: input data and out comes causal knowledge. This is like pulling a rabbit from a hat. Great, but as renowned statistician David Freedman had it, first you must put the […]
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from Dean Baker The idea of industrial policy has taken on almost a mystical quality for many progressives. The idea is that it is somehow new and different from what we had been doing, and if we had been doing industrial policy for the last half-century, everything would be better. This has led to widespread applause on […]
from Lars Syll Economics students today are complaining more and more about the way economics is taught. The lack of fundamental diversity — not just path-dependent elaborations of the mainstream canon — and narrowing of the curriculum, dissatisfy econ students all over the world. The frustrating lack of real-world relevance has led many of them […]
from Asad Zaman and the WEA Pedagogy Blog Why does “Sovereign Default” become a hot topic with annoying regularity in Pakistan? The fundamental problem is the huge imbalance between our exports and imports. In 2021, our exports were USD 30 Billion, while our imports were around USD 62 Billion. In general, since 1960 onwards, our […]
from Peter Radford Is it just me? Or is the realm of punditry in a state of confusion? There seems to be an emerging consensus that something big is happening. It’s just that we don’t quite know what. The problem is that the template we are all applying is frayed if not shattered. Consequently we […]
The head of cybercrime prevention in France tweeted yesterday that any attempt by Elon Musk to prevent linking to sites or comments which do not break the law is in fact, the assertion of editorial control. Musk seems to be preventing links partly to anyone he personally has a problem with, but in particular to... Read more
In my first column in this series, I gave Hyman Minsky’s explanation of what caused the stagflation of the 1970s—a credit bubble bursting when the economy was absolutely at its peak caused the stagnation, while high wage and oil price rises caused the inflation. I finished with the essence of Milton Friedman’s very different explanation: … Continue reading "This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Inflation Part Two"
I’ve been focusing on the economics of climate change for over four years now, because it’s the most pressing problem facing humanity, and because economists have done such a god-awful job on it—fooling themselves into regarding an existential threat as a minor cost-benefit problem (Keen 2020; Keen et al. 2022). For circumstantial reasons, I can’t … Continue reading "Back to the history of economic thought: “Keynesian Economics” failed in 1935"
I owe enormous intellectual debts to Hyman Minsky and Augusto Graziani. But at one point, my “little knowledge” led me to believe, falsely, that they had both made a huge mistake in claiming that repaying debt destroyed money: Graziani: As soon as firms repay their debt to the banks, the money initially created is destroyed. … Continue reading "A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing"