This post was written because of a tweet by David Andalfatto, who wondered why medieval and early modern Europe, a society that built cathedrals, did not show any per capita growth. Per capita growth is an average, and when the rich get richer, it can increase even when the number of poor and destitute increases. The question is: was something like this the case in the time of the cathedrals? I won’t give a definite answer. But I will go beyond ´real´ GDP per capita (ultimately a monetary average) and delve into physical-technological, personalized development. And it´s all about glass (picture: ´Het straatje´ by Vermeer (1658?); at the end for comparison a picture of an 1820 street in Amsterdam).

Glass windows were a great invention, enhancing the quality of houses and the

The population of Argentina is suffering. The purchasing power of people who still have a job is down (a lot), and unemployment must have doubled (it was 5,7% in the last quarter of 2023) if it has not tripled. Less government spending, less consumer spending, and, no doubt, less private investment means that Argentina is experiencing an economic disaster which will scar the country for decades. Retail sales (volume): down around 20% while, at this moment, people will still be able to use their savings to maintain their standard of living!

About half a year ago, the unreformed libertarian Melei became president of Argentina. His economic recipe: shock therapy (including a HUGE devaluation). The first results are in. Retail sales: down around 20% (volume, year on year). Meaning

To the death toll of the violence in Gaza, around 15.000 additional deaths of infants and children between 1 and 5 have to be added. This is a rough and, in my opinion, a lower-bound estimate. However, the calculations are based on robust information, and sizeable additional mortality in infants and young children in Gaza is real.

Next to the direct victims of war, there are indirect victims who die because of lack of proper medical care or because of harsh circumstances. Here, I´ll present an estimate of additional deaths of infants and children between 1 and 5 in Gaza. The estimate is based on the demographics of Gaza and on the article ´Implications of armed conflict for maternal and child health: A regression analysis of data from 181 countries for 2000–2019´ by  Mohammed Jawad

Some time ago, I delved into the unique advantages of the Theil index of inequality over the Gini index, when data is available. The Theil index offers a distinct advantage in its ability to provide a consistent quantitative deconstruction of inequality. It does so by utilizing various concepts such as class, region, gender, or any other relevant factor. This feature allows for a comprehensive explanation of (changes in) inequality using the same set of concepts.

The Theil index enables us to quantify:

Within-group inequality

Between-group inequality
Michiel de Haas provides a teachable example of how to do this and how to analyse such information in his article ´Reconstructing income inequality in a colonial cash crop economy: five social tables for Uganda, 1925–1965´in the

Graph 1. The increasingly inefficient use of carsSummary: parking places are a woefully inefficient use of space. And ugly. Cars are a woefully inefficient use of machinery. Using them, in combination with bi-directional charging of cars, to produce solar can amend this. Doing this the right way, parking places can be beautified, costs will go down and life will be more pleasant.

A typical car is, like a washing machine, a household appliance. As such, they are woefully inefficient. The average car serves fewer and fewer people (graph 1). Around 95% of the time, they are not used. Aside: when preparing this article I discovered that we know a lot about km. traveled per person and time spent in cars. But it’s not easy to obtain dependable information about the amount of time

There is no ‘tragedy of the Commons.’ But a tragedy of the absence of Commons-as organizations, let’s call it ‘the tragedy of uncommons’, does exist. Below, I will provide the example of the island of Ameland in the Northern Netherlands, in line with the historical examples of successful Commons mentioned by Elinor Ostrom (especially those for Switzerland). 

Ownership is a multi-dimensional concept. Up to the 1795 revolution, the island of Ameland, north of Friesland, was not a part of the Dutch Republic, and ownership relations were somewhat archaic. The best way to understand this is to consider ownership a bundle of rights. In old Dutch deeds, some of these rights were described as “eer en feer, macht en gewalt,” loosely meaning: “political and juridical rights, the rights to

Right-wing ranters in my Twitter timeline are pooh-poohing the whole climate discussion without doing their homework. So, here’s a little reader to aid and abet (sorry, early retired teacher and that all).Let’s start at the beginning:1. CO2 is measured at the Manua Loa station. Results are clear, robust, and stark: CO2 is increasing.

And no, CO2 is not ‘following temperature’ as the latest lazymeme from the lazyright wants to have it. It’s following us. We’re causing it. A ‘mass balance’ approach yields that {human production of CO2} = {Δ CO2 in the atmosphere + Δ CO2 in the oceans}. Human production is, by the way, increasing. To dispel one myth about the interpretation of these results: sometimes it’s stated that gross flows are thus large that small net additions do not

No Christmas celebration on this blog this year. But a story about communities: the Commons of Buren and Hollum on the Waddensea island of Ameland. Commons have been studied by Elenor Ostrom. Studying Commons is of prime importance: we only have one earth. Reading Ostrom makes one optimistic. One of the things she mentions is the age of commons. Often, they survived centuries. Commons, which invariably voluntarily set limits on the use of resources, are sustainable. The Ameland Commons are no exception. They were also democratic and based on at least some measure of equality. Just like in other commons, on Ameland there were systems to appoint the managers. In Ballum, these were elected in a yearly election in a local pub, every head of a household had one vote. In Hollum there was a

Not all prices are market exchange prices. I’ve been writing about administered prices (here and here) and ‘commons’ prices (here). In January, I hope to make a first small step towards a badly needed periodic table of prices. Today a new element, Gift Exchange Prices. Gifts are like the Greeks. They come in many varieties. But always, something is transferred from somebody to somebody, even when there often is no market price or even transfer of ownership. There might be a transfer of honor, prestige, and risk. Or goods like a diamond ring or services like helping somebody to move. The difference between Gift Exchange and Market Exchange is spelled out in the table below. It’s important to realize that it’s not always the giving but accepting that counts. Accepting a gift often leads

According to the Monetary Statistics of the European Central Bank, the credit impulse to the Euro Area economy is getting even weaker (graph 1, the yellow part of the bars). Which not only forbodes a recession but already is a recession.

Graph 1. Monetary developments in the Euro Area. Source.

This interpretation (the EA is in a recession) gains credibility when we realize that most of the remaining net credit is used to finance the purchase of existing houses and not to finance new investment or consumption.

The blue part of the bars shows that households and companies are moving deposit money to savings accounts (with a higher interest rate), which are not included in M3 money. Net external assets are, at the moment, however increasing. What does this mean? First, we

Will lower central bank interest rates at this moment lead to lower consumer rates? No, they won’t. The, at this moment, low rates on existing debt will continue to increase for years on end, cutting in household spending and hampering the possibility of households to pay down their debt.

Figure 1. Interest rates for new mortgage contracts, the Netherlands.

At this moment, Central Banks seem to take a break when it comes to increasing their interest rates. Maybe they will even lower rates. This, however, won’t stop consumer debt interest rates from increasing. Graph 1 shows interest rates for new mortgage contracts in the Netherlands. These are, thanks to the recent and feverish increase in central bank rates, up. However… looking at households and legacy debt, rates on

Claudia Goldin won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. I can write about her work. But here, I will be inspired by her work. One of the events she emphasizes is that women’s participation in the ‘GDP’ labor market became less after say 1860, as shown in the figure. Below I will investigate if this model (this is a model) can be used for the interpretation and analysis of my data on long-term agricultural development (yes, it can).

The decline of women’s work in agriculture is well-known for farm production of butter and cheese. In many areas, women (the farmers’ wife [no, Grammarly, not ‘wifes’], servants, sometimes daughters) produced butter and, in areas specialized in dairy production on larger farms, butter and low-fat cheese or

Eurostat recently published new data on EU unemployment. The question: how is Southern Europe doing, after the Great Financial Crisis of 2009 when unemployment rates in Spain and Greece were above 20 and even 25%? Compared with the years directly after 2009 Spanish and Greek rates are down a lot, even when levels are still above 10%. But this is not all there is. Next to ‘normal’ unemployment, which is still at a crisis level, economic statisticians also define broad unemployment as ‘people working part-time who want more hours’, ‘people seeking a job but not directly available’, and ‘people available but not seeking’. The reason to define these categories is that people are classified as ’employed’ even when they work 1 hour per week and want to work much more hours. Normal

At this moment, there’s quite some ‘graphology’ when it comes to inflation. Here, an example by Paul Krugman. Here, Larry Summers. And an example by a younger chap, Joey Politano. (Caveat: ‘X’ kicked out some links when I was writing this blog (or at least they disappeared), it might happen again)). All of these economists are really ahead of the pack when it comes to knowledge of economic statistics (methodology as well as results). They also know a thing or two about economic theory. Look here for a paper by Bolhuis, Cramer, and Summers (the same!) in which they argue that inflation around 1980 inflationary spell was not as bad as indicated by their measure of consumer price inflation and (as they admit) about as high as indicated by the data in the graph below (meaning, in their

Producer prices in the UK are declining. Does this mean inflation is over? Hmmm… Many economists have difficulties understanding the present aftermath of an inflationary episode (which might be followed by new episodes…). Which is, considering their theoretical framework, understandable. They look at only one set of prices: consumer prices (or, in the case of derivatives ‘core prices’ and many others‘, even only at a subset of this set). Instead, they should expand their frame of reference and look at more sets of prices and, consistent with economic theory, at the relations between these sets.

We do have the data. Here, you will the ‘inflation dashboard’ of the Dutch CBS, which is not just based on consumer prices but also on wages, interest rates (‘translation not available’).

As nobody else bothers, I’m tinkering with designing a (badly needed) periodic table of prices. Look here and here. Economists are fond of ex post market prices – i.e. prices paid for actual transactions. But other kinds of prices abound. Administered prices, shadow prices, cost prices and more. Each of these prices are important and are used to influence the production and distribution of goods and services. Each of these are, separately, defined on all kind of webpages. but an intelligent overview and categorization is lacking. Hence this series. Today: insurance prices for hay and milk cows in Friesland, 19th century. What kind of prices were these? The answer: ‘commons-prices’, to introduce a neology.

After 1810, Frisian farmers established mutual fire insurance companies.

I’m tinkering with the idea of a kind of periodic table for prices. Below, a very rough sketch of what I have in mind relating to administered prices and market prices as well as the sectors of the national accounts (cost prices, shadow prices etcetera have to be added).

Gardiner Means defined the difference between market and administered prices (quoted in Gu (2012) on p. 13):

“In an engineering economy prices are fixed by administrative action for periods of time. Price is determined before a transaction occurs. In a trading economy prices are developed in the process of trading andprice is not determined until the transaction occurs. In an engineering economy supply and demand never equate except by coincidence“.

Earlier I discussed how the Dutch central bank

Recently, Robert Lucas, who was called an economist, died. This is not about him, but about his kind of economics as tweets and obituaries show that it is not yet generally understood what kind of science the neoclassical macro-economist like him produced. Their most egregious failure: after decades of work, they do not even have a shimmer of anything which could pass for a neoclassical way to estimate the macro economy, even when their ideas are squarely at odds with the macro economy as we measure it. Theory without measurement.

Lucas used – like many others – the concept of the representative consumer. A macro economic model which presupposes that the economy consists of 1 person, A Robinson Crusoe model – or fantasy? Which is faulty, as the essence of a macro economy – its

On this blog, I’ve stated that economics needs a ‘periodic table of prices’. There are many different prices beyond ‘market prices’: Cost prices, Administrated prices, Government prices, Factor prices and whatever. We need a grid which enables a classification. As I, clearly, do not seem to be your average inspiring charismatic direction setting economists, nobody followed up on my statements…. With this blog, I want to start my journey towards the framework, to boldly go from where people like Frederic Lee, Philip Pilkinton and Gyun Cheol Gu have brought us. More about them in later blogs. Today (and in two blogs to follow): the prices which I encounter in my own research.

I’ll focus on three topics: multi factor pricing of milk, risk free (not) interest rates and cost-, market,

This ECB graph below, showing the interrelation between credit and money in the Euro Area (source) is thoroughly (Post-)Keynesian in nature: Modern Monetary Statistics (MMS). I’ll return to that. First, what does it tell?

For some months, a gentle Euro Area ‘liquidity crunch’ has been going on. The yellow and the orange bars are getting smaller meaning that year on year growth rates of ‘M3’ money creating ‘credit’ are declining. Three month flow data are already negative. Loans are payed back, money is moved from checking accounts to savings accounts (which are not included in the M3 definition of money, the blue bar). Mind: ‘credit to general government’ does not mean: lending to governments. It means: purchasing government debt from anybody except system banks, pension funds

Old charters still shed light on recent monetary developments…
While in the Leeuwarden archive, investigating 19th century quantities and insurance prices of clay soil hay in central Friesland (a coastal part of the Netherlands) I got sub-focused and found myself thumbing through the Frisian ‘Charter books’ (internet version here). These books contain all Frisian government ‘oorkonden’ from the end of the fifteenth century onwards. ‘Oorkonden’ literally translates as ‘ear messages’. And they were: before Sunday mass or, later, sermon, they were read aloud in churches. These charters sometimes have a monetary nature. I happened to stumble upon some from 1579, the most revolutionary year in the entire history of Friesland (but see also this). Why and how did the new, revolutionary, and,

The EU-commission issued a tweet (below). Another step towards EU statehood. A large one. Since around 1500, access to credit was key for European (later: all) states waging war. The early development of central banks was intertwined with the history of national wars. Look here for the Wikipedia page on the history of the Bank of England -it literally starts with a ‘crushing defeat’ of England by France. Credit was needed to win. Government borrowing had to be enabled by central banks, the monetary system had to be able to function as a ‘weapon of war’. The ECB, however, is not allowed to provide credit to governments (even when it can keep interest rates low and make government debt ‘risk free’). And the EU is, or was, not allowed to issue its own bonds. A peaceful union. Which

Summary: to understand inflation we should not use the neoclassical ‘one good, one worker, one sector, one piece of physical capital’ or Y = f(K,L) concept of production. We should use a concept looking at nominal production (Y(n)) with multiple interrelated sectors (‘S’), multiple products and capital conceptualized not as a physical entity but as ownership rights of land (including natural resources), depreciable capital and ‘non produced’ capital like patents and marketing rights: K’. These ownership rights enable as well as restrict access to and use of land, natural resources, depreciable capital, patents, markets and financial capital while the relations between sector show how shocks are propagated: Y(n) = f(S K’, L). Estimated models using such a concept exist and lead to

What’s money? Wrong question. The right question: ‘which kinds of monies do we use for which purposes?’ as there are different kinds of money which are used for different purposes. Here, I want to stress that ‘receivables’ are: money. And are, at the moment, mainly used for inter-company purchases. The quarterly balance sheets (below) of Alphabet (formerly Google) show that, as of September 2020, Accounts Receivable had a value of almost 35 billion dollar. Accounts receivable are privately issued money. They are backed by the law but not created by banks or governments. They are created when a buyer promises to pay and a seller accepts this promise, a promise which can be legally enforced. But it’s not the payment by the debtor which defines the moment of the sale. The actual sale is

Unemployment in the EU is still going down a little. But youth unemployment, a slightly more sensitive cyclical indicator, is rising. The most distinct geographical pattern behind the average: the combination of high levels of youth unemployment (>20%) with clear increases in Greece, Italy and Spain, even when total unemployment in these countries is still going down or stable. France shows a remarkable decline in youth unemployment but is still in double digit territory. Average youth unemployment is lower than in 2008 but the >20% rates in several countries are unacceptable. The EU labour market is not tight, at this moment.

One of the successes of the right is their identification of the left with a sorry pastiche of ‘woke’. But the left is more than outspoken, individual awareness of the role of identities, however constructed and defined, whoever constructs and defines them and whatever role they plays in group dynamics of power and in- and exclusion. Which leads us to the question: What’s Left? I’ll state some points. Some points (many of which are related to social , economic and political in- and exclusion):

One person, one vote and universal unrestricted suffrage (incarcerated people should have the right to vote too, for instance). Voting rights should not be tied to income, wealth, property, race, gender or education (all of these variables have been used to restrict voting rights). Universal

Consumer price inflation in Greece is, at the moment, 12% (graph 1). This is high and surely bankrupting quite some families. The high level of inflation is surprising, as Greek inflation was quite low and often even negative in the 2012-2022 period. The questions are: (A) what caused this sudden increase? An overheated labour market and runaway wages increases? And: (B) how can we get inflation down again? Does the ECB have to tank the economy to crush wages? Below we will investigate these questions.

Graph 1. Consumer price inflation in Greece. Source: Elstat.

Question A. Is the labor market overheated? Looking at graph 2 the answer is clearly: no. Unemployment is falling but still high, the number of people inside the labour market increases and there is no sign at all that

Financial wizardry recently caused massive problems for UK pension funds and the Bank of England. The Bank of England forces pension funds to take part in ‘LDI’ contracts which aim to insure possible future liquidity problems. These contracts however lead to real liquidity problems, which forced the Bank of England to intervene to prevent a market melt down. The solution became the problem.

Deputy Governor John Cunliff of the Bank of England stated:

“The Bank was informed by a number of LDI fund managers that, at the prevailing yields, multiple LDI funds were likely to fall into negative net asset value. As a result, it was likely that these funds would have to begin the process of winding up the following morning… In that eventuality, a large quantity of gilts, held as

The Dutch September HICP inflation rate was 17,1%. One year ago it was 3,0%. Below, I will argue that this is a sign of kind of war economy, not of a cyclically overheated economy. Ways to mitigate inflation were pioneered by the English economist John Maynard Keynes in his ‘How to pay for the war‘. it’s useful to go back to his ideas.

The first version was published in three parts in The Times of november 1939. It was partly based on his experiences in World War I and partly on the new system of national accounting (extended and improved by Keynes). The ideas weere based upon the idea of a monetary economy where consumer spending and consumer prices, production and producer prices and the use of factors of production and factor prices (wages, profits, interests, rents) are