So, Trump has decided to raise tariffs on India to 50% (who knows if he actually will), over their imports of Russian oil. Meanwhile: Senators Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal are the lead sponsors of a bipartisan bill which would impose primary and secondary sanctions against Russia and entities […]
economics
Few thinkers have had as profound an impact on the world as Karl Marx. Despite the century and a half since his death, his ideas remain highly relevant. A topic that often surfaces when discussing Marx’s seminal economic work — Capital — is the so-called ‘transformation problem.’ An online debate has recently emerged regarding how […]
An economic theory that does not go beyond proving theorems and conditional ‘if-then’ statements — and does not make assertions and put forward hypotheses about real-world individuals and institutions — is of little consequence for anyone wanting to use theories to better understand, explain or predict real-world phenomena. Building theories and models on patently ridiculous […]
Alex Rosenberg, professor of philosophy at Duke University and a leading figure in economic methodology, offers a thought-provoking critique of Paul Krugman’s economic philosophy in an article published in 3:AM Magazine. Rosenberg writes: Krugman writes: “So how do you do useful economics? In general, what we really do is combine maximization-and-equilibrium as a first cut […]
Socialismens ABC är en fördjupningspodd från Katalys. Den inledande serien fokuserar på Karl Marx’ liv och idéarv. Få tänkare har haft ett så genomgripande inflytande på världen som Karl Marx. Trots att det har gått ett och ett halvt sekel sedan hans död, är hans idéer fortfarande högaktuella. I avsnitt fem av serien diskuteras Marx’ […]
Time is what prevents everything from happening at once. To simply assume that economic processes are ergodic and concentrate on ensemble averages — and hence in any relevant sense timeless — is not a sensible way for dealing with the kind of genuine uncertainty that permeates real-world economies. Ergodicity and the crucial distinction between time averages […]
. Hyperinflation — a rapid and uncontrolled surge in prices that destroys the value of money — is often wielded as a warning against excessive government spending or monetary expansion. Cases like Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela loom large in policy discussions. Yet for nations that issue their own sovereign fiat currency, hyperinflation is far […]
Twenty-two years ago, Swedish citizens were asked whether they wanted to join the eurozone. Of the 83% of registered voters who participated in the referendum, nearly 57% voted ‘no.’ The result came as a complete shock to the Swedish establishment. All major political parties and business organisations had backed the euro. Despite the ‘yes’ side […]
To understand real-world ‘non-routine’ decisions and unforeseeable changes in behaviour, ergodic probability distributions are of no avail. In a world full of genuine uncertainty — where real historical time rules the roost — the probabilities that ruled the past are not necessarily those that will rule the future. When we cannot accept that the observations, […]
The Consumer Price Index is taken as a proxy for how much consumers pay for goods and services. It isn’t, for a wide variety of reasons. Here’s another: This is a component of overall CPI, but what it tracks is actually retained earnings. The justification is that if retained earnings are down, more of […]