The financial crisis of 2007-2008 took both laypeople and economists by surprise. What went wrong with our macroeconomic models, since they clearly did not foresee the collapse, or even make it conceivable? Many have attempted to answer that question, offering a range of explanations, from the excessive mathematization of economics to irrational and corrupt politicians. […]
economics
What I’d like to capture is the effect of those choices economists make “for convenience,” to be able to reach solutions, to simplify, to ease their work, in short, to make a model tractable. While those assumptions are conventional and meant to be lifted as mathematical, theoretical and empirical skills and technology (hardware and software) […]
När jag växte upp på 1960-talet var bilden av vår dåvarande statsminister — Tage Erlander — bilden av en hygglig och snäll farbror som berättade roliga historier i Hylands hörna. När man läser hans dagböcker från 40- och 50-talen — vilket jag roat mig med på sistone när jag befunnit mig på min skärgårdsö utanför […]
. A government issuing debt in its own currency can always technically meet its obligations — by creating money to pay off that debt. The real constraint on government spending isn’t the debt level, but inflation. Central to the Keynesian-influenced view on debt is the fundamental difference between private and public debt. Conflating the one […]
Balliol Croft, Cambridge27. ii. 06My dear Bowley, I have not been able to lay my hands on any notes as to Mathematico-economics that would be of any use to you: and I have very indistinct memories of what I used to think on the subject. I never read mathematics now: in fact I have forgotten […]
The so-called Nobel Prize in Economics (technically, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel). This year’s award went to Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt, and Joel Mokyr for their contributions to what’s broadly called “Schumpeterian growth theory” — work that connects innovation and technological change to economic growth … Aghion and […]
Der real existierende Neoliberalismus ist aller dings auch ein wenig selektiv mit seinem eigenen Erbe umgegangen. Walter Eucken hätte die fort schreitende Monopolisierung der amerikanischen Wirtschaft sehr wahrscheinlich als problematisch angesehen und das Imperium von Elon Musk zur Zerschlagung freigegeben. Solche Forderungen sind heute von den Neoliberalen in den Parteien und den Unternehmerverbänden eher selten […]
Beneath the civic ideal of taxation as a collective, equitable endeavour lies an entrenched hypocrisy: the architecture of modern tax codes serves not the public good but the consolidation of private wealth. The progressivity of income tax is hollowed out at the uppermost tiers, where income is largely derived from capital — taxed at preferential […]
Under 1980- och början av 1990-talet stödde nästan 70 procent av arbetarklassen Socialdemokraterna. Sedan valet 1994 — ungefär då de stora nedskärningarna började genomföras av Socialdemokraterna och deras nya ekonomiska linje tog form — har partiets stöd stadigt minskat, och 2022 hade de enbart stöd av 35 procent av arbetarklassen. Arbetarklassen har i stället börjat […]
Ben Bernanke got the job as Federal Reserve Chairman because he marketed himself as the expert on The Great Depression. But he wasn’t the expert on The Great Depression itself: instead, he was an expert on explanations of The Great Depression that were consistent with mainstream economic theory. The only explanation that was consistent with […]