The German parliament today, after heated debate, approved the much discussed debt package worth hundreds of billions of euros for defence and infrastructure. With the necessary two-thirds majority, the parliament in Berlin passed a constitutional amendment allowing defence and security expenditures to be exempt from the Schuldenbremse (debt brake). The previously strict debt rules for […]
economics
This is the second part of the discussion on Tariffs that I started in – Tariffs and more – Part 1 (March 13, 2025). In the first part I considered some of the historical motivations including the infant industry argument. Today, I plan to expand on that discussion and add further considerations that might help…
. When applying principal component analysis in econometrics courses we often want to reduce data dimensionality. Eigenvalues and eigenvectors help us do that. In macroeconomics — especially when we use dynamic programming and Bellman equations to solve optimization problems — eigenvalues and eigenvectors help us determine convergence and stability properties. So — good to have […]
I Sveriges vassaste ekonomipod — Starta pressarna — diskuterades igår socialdemokraternas utspel om att inrätta en ny ‘Totalförsvarsfond’ om minst 250 miljarder kronor som ska göra det möjligt att tidigarelägga investeringar och påskynda utbyggnaden av Sveriges försvar. På många sätt är detta så klart ett bra förslag — men också lite sorgligt att det skulle […]
This week, Australia learned that old geopolitical relationships and so-called ‘free trade’ treaties mean little when it comes to US policy. The obsequious way our political class fawns after the US has been a constant sickening element of our national identity for as long as I can recall. When I was a child, we were…
Den tillträdande tyska förbundskanslern, kristdemokraten Friedrich Merz, har tillsammans med sin tilltänkta koalitionspartner annonserat en uppgörelse om att utnyttja parlamentets två tredjedels majoritet – förutsatt att de får med sig de Gröna – för att släppa på skuldbromsen. Syftet är att finansiera försvarssatsningar över 1 procent av BNP samt att skapa en infrastrukturfond på svindlande 5000 […]
What does concern me about my discipline, however, is that its current core — by which I mainly mean the so-called dynamic stochastic general equilibrium approach — has become so mesmerized with its own internal logic that it has begun to confuse the precision it has achieved about its own world with the precision that […]
The book’s argument is that in straining to peer through the chaos and confusion of the world to the underlying mechanisms, too much economic thinking, both in Ricardo’s day and ours, mistook a small, unrepresentative sample as the whole picture. This has distorted the vision of generations. If your scientific ideal is a simple, logical […]
. I Tyskland har den så kallade Schuldenbremse (skuldbromsen) varit en central del av den ekonomiska politiken sedan år 2009. Regeln begränsar hur mycket staten får låna, med syftet att hålla den offentliga skulden låg. Kruxet med regeln har dock varit uppenbar — den hindrar nödvändiga investeringar i infrastruktur, grön omställning och välfärd. Sverige har […]