Defenders of microfoundations and their rational expectations-equipped representative agent’s intertemporal optimisation often argue as if sticking with simple representative agent macroeconomic models does not impart a bias to the analysis. Yours truly unequivocally rejects that unsubstantiated view. These defenders often also maintain that there are no methodologically coherent alternatives to microfoundations modelling. That allegation is, […]
economics
Hans-Georg Backhaus è morto ieri, 8 marzo, all’età di 96 anni. Era mentalmente in forma e continuava a leggere e lavorare, ma qualche giorno fa è caduto ed è stato portato in ospedale, dove è morto serenamente tre giorni dopo. Backhaus era nato a Remda, in Germania (poi Repubblica Democratica Tedesca), nel 1929. Negli anni […]
När Finanspolitiska rådet för några veckor sedan kritiserade regeringen för att inte ha följt sina egna (rampolitiska) ekonomiska regler, kunde den socialdemokratiske skuggfinansministern Mikael Damberg uppenbarligen inte låta bli att ta tillfället i akt och i populistisk anda ondgöra sig över att “våra barn och barnbarn kommer behöva betala för att svenska politiker i dag […]
No, there is nothing wrong with mathematics itself. No, there is nothing wrong with applying mathematics to economics. Mathematics is a valuable tool — one among several — for understanding and explaining economic phenomena. What is wrong, however, is the naïve belief that: maths is the only valid tool maths is universally and self-evidently applicable […]
~by Sean Paul Kelley I’ll begin, as usual, with the economy. JP Morgan lays odds for a global recession at 60% now. Causes? According to JPMorgan it’s threefold: the conflict in Iran, the tariffs and AI. But JP Morgan is forgetting another huge variable, the private credit/shadow credit unwind happening in real time. Blackrock halted […]
~by Sean Paul Kelley Every credit cycle is different: they don’t repeat, but they do rhyme at the end. Phase One: the Expansion The credit cycle begins when intense speculation drives asset prices into bubble territory. This time around AI is the prime mover. AI stocks have clearly inflated, irrationally, and dangerously market averages. Nvidia’s […]
Jan 23, 2026 I The economics of John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) was built on his philosophy. Economics was the means to the good life, not the good life itself. Keynes’s own genius was practical, and so both his temperament and the events of his time conspired to keep him anchored in the realm of means. … Continue reading Keynes and Money, or Where Has All the Money Gone?
I first heard Peter Singer speak at the University of Western Australia (UWA) in the summer of 2009. The subject was the ethics of what we eat, and the tone of the talk was open and generous. Some in the audience were hardcore animal-rights people, as one would expect at a Singer gig. But the philosopher’s message was that ethical eating is, in fact, a pretty complex matter, bearing not only on animal welfare but also on economic justice and the environmental impact of agriculture, and that what counted as ethical behaviour in one sphere was often difficult to reconcile with ethical behaviour in others. His advice was therefore to do what we could, advice I for one resolved to follow before hogging into the free wine and nibbles around the Beaux-Arts-style reflecting pool.
Unassuming as he is, in person and in prose, Carl Benedikt Frey will forever be associated with the great efflorescence of ‘crisis writing’ that emerged in the mid-2010s, in the long wake of the GFC. Though no proselytiser for radical change in the mould of Wolfgang Streeck or David Harvey, his 2013 paper ‘The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerization?’, authored with his Oxford colleague Michael Osborne, became part of the mood music of ‘the long interregnum’ – the sense that capitalism was either breaking down completely or approaching an inflection point whose navigation would mean untold disruption.