Sverige står inför en stor underhålls- och investeringsskuld som inte går att möta med nuvarande budgetregler. Arena Idé har i två tidigare delrapporter redovisat de offentliga investeringsbehoven, samt utvärderat de samhällsekonomiska effekterna av dagens finanspolitiska ramverk, med anledning av den parlamentariska översyn som just nu pågår. Nu presenteras den tredje och sista delrapporten där ett […]
economics
I förra veckans avsnitt av Starta Pressarna fortsätter debatten om Riksbankens självständighet och hur vi hittar rätt balans mellan finans- och penningpolitik. Medverkande i det här avsnittet är — förutom Daniel Suhonen och Max Jerneck — Per Molander och Lars Calmfors. En intressant och initierad diskussion — men när det gäller frågan om Riksbankens självständighet […]
This Nobel Prize season spurs to once again air an observation that in the past economists were awarded the Nobel prize for explaining to the general public something that only economists understood, but in recent decades they win it for explaining to their fellow economists something that the public has always known 😉 – Politicians […]
We all heterodox economists who have chosen the road ‘less traveled by’ know that this choice comes at a price. Fewer opportunities to secure ample research funding or positions at prestigious institutes or universities. Nevertheless, yours truly believes that very few of us regret our choices. One doesn’t bargain with one’s conscience. No amount of […]
This is a bit like a physicist saying, “Throwing a cricket ball at a window doesn’t cause it to break. Rather, giving an object of approximately spherical shape with a given density a certain velocity in a fluid medium of a certain density and viscosity within a gravitational field of a certain magnitude causes a […]
Im Februar 2024 kündigte die französische Regierung ein Sparpaket von 10 Mrd. € an, um das fiskalische Defizit zu senken. Politico berichtete: “Wir verdienen weniger, wir geben weniger aus”, sagt Finanzminister Bruno Le Maire. Diese Logik gilt zwar für einen Haushalt, aber nicht für eine nationale Regierung wie die von Frankreich. Warum? … Wenn Frankreich […]
Project Syndicate 18th of September, 2024 “Shortly after taking office, the United Kingdom’s new Labour government announced the discovery of a massive shortfall in public finances. While much of the political debate has centered on the size of this fiscal hole, the real culprit is the set of arbitrary rules that British governments have imposed on themselves … Continue reading Britain’s Illusory Fiscal Black Hole
The Spectator, 13 January 2024 Monetarism, with which his name is associated, has long defined economic policy. But what would Friedman have made of the banking collapse, so soon after his death in 2006? The Keynesian economist Nicholas Kaldor called Milton Friedman one of the two most evil men of the 20th century. (Friedman was … Continue reading Milton Friedman – economic visionary or scourge of the world?
In mainstream economics nowadays there seems to be a broad consensus that one somehow can establish general truths about things by simply generalizing from lots of individual RCTs. But as is well-known among philosophers of science, this kind of inference, based on induction by simple enumeration, is highly flawed. And there are alternatives: The striking […]
While neoclassical economists cannot consistently incorporate behavioral factors into their models, there is nothing in behavioral economics that makes the use of neoclassical theory illegitimate. To the contrary … behavioral economists have consistently advocated using neoclassical theory for all sorts of purposes. By and large, they treat neoclassical models and theories as heuristic devices or […]