Offentliga institutioner reglerar redan i dag bankernas penningskapande i allmänhetens intresse, om än på ett mycket fragmentariskt sätt. Det tydligaste exemplet är kanske de strikta skyldigheter som bankerna har för att säkerställa att de pengar de skapar inte används för finansiering av terrorism och penningtvätt.Tidigare, efter andra världskriget, styrdes många banker att låna ut till […]
economics
Many American undergraduates in Economics interested in doing a Ph.D. are surprised to learn that the first year of an Econ Ph.D. feels much more like entering a Ph.D. in solving mathematical models by hand than it does with learning economics. Typically, there is very little reading or writing involved, but loads and loads of […]
Enligt Elinor Odeberg borde Sverige, precis som en del andra länder, ha agerat mer direkt. Hon tar upp Spanien som ett exempel. – Trots att Spanien hade ett väldigt starkt beroende av rysk energi, till skillnad från Sverige som inte hade någon import av rysk energi att tala om, så har Sverige betydligt högre inflation […]
Every dollar of increased government spending must correspond to one less dollar of private spending. Jobs created by stimulus spending are offset by jobs lost from the decline in private spending. We can build roads instead of factories, but fiscal stimulus can’t help us to build more of both. This form of “crowding out” is […]
Modularity is the mark of a type of independence from context. The same functional relationship between variables will hold in a given component of the contributing mechanisms whether or not there is a change in a different component. The total effect may change when different components contribute, but the operation of the modular mechanism will […]
If scientific progress in economics — as Robert Lucas and other latter-day followers of Milton Friedman seem to think — lies in our ability to tell ‘better and better stories’ one would of course expect economics journals to be filled with articles supporting the stories with empirical evidence. However, the journals still show a striking […]
The euro has taken away the possibility for national governments to manage their economies in a meaningful way — and in Italy and Greece a couple of years ago, the people had to pay the true costs of its concomitant misguided austerity policies. The unfolding of the repeated economic crises in Euroland during the last […]
In mainstream economic theory, institutions were long taken for granted. As the far-reaching consequences of institutional assumptions have become increasingly difficult to ignore, economists have, in recent times, made greater efforts to incorporate institutions into their models. This renewed interest in broadening economic theory to encompass economic and political institutions has centred on the analysis […]
One of the most widespread myths in economics, but also in sociology and political science, is that game theory provides “tools” that can help solve concrete problems in these branches – especially in economics. Introductory and advanced textbooks thus often speak of the “applications” of game theory that are being made, giving the impression that […]
Nowadays there is almost no place whatsoever in economics education for courses in the history of economic thought and economic methodology. The standard view among mainstream economists is that students shouldn’t think about what they are doing, but just do it. This is deeply worrying. A science that doesn’t self-reflect and asks important methodological and […]