John Quiggin

Both my grandfathers fought in the Great War, one in the Middle East and one in France. They survived (or I wouldn’t be here), but one was badly wounded in a gas attack. I’ve thought about this on Anzac Day for most of my 60+ years, but last year I learned something I hadn’t thought about and, as far as I can tell, hardly anyone else in Australia knows. We were only fighting Turkey because the British government refused their request for an alliance. I wrote about this last year, and...

It’s now April 23 in the US, the official release day for Economics in Two Lessons. That’s nearly eight years after I started work on the book. I think it’s been worth the wait. The painful process has produced something better than I originally planned, with plenty of help from commenters here and elsewhere. According to Amazon, the book is often bought along with Crashed, by Adam Tooze, which is great company to be in. [Begin plug] If you’ve read and liked the book as it...

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page Like this:Like Loading...

After eight years, Economics in Two Lessons will be officially published in a few days. According to Amazon, it’s now #1 in Hot New Sellers in microeconomics.https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/new-releases/digital-text/2523939051/ref=zg_bsnr_nav_kinc_4_2523923051I don’t know exactly what that means, but it sounds good.I’ll try to follow up with more general news soon, but for now, I’d appreciate anything you could do to spread the word about my book. I Like this:Like Loading......

There have been quite a few recent cases raising questions around free speech and freedom of the press. Here are some thoughts, not all final. First up, the question, raised by the cases of Peter Ridd and Israel Folau of whether employers can discipline or sack workers for their views on a range of issues. Ridd is an academic at JCU who has expressed (often in intemperate terms) the (wrong and harmful) view that the damage to the Great Barrier Reef from climate change has...

The US college admissions scandal is rolling on, seemingly endlessly. There’s been a lot of discussion of moral decay, hypocrisy and more. But no one seems to have mentioned the central point. The number of places in the Ivy League and similar schools has remained almost unchanged for decades, even as the demand for those places has been swelled by a wide range of factors, most notably by the growth in all forms of inequality, which is mediated in part by unequal access to education....

A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on. Like this:Like Loading...

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page Like this:Like Loading...

Economics in Two Lessons is coming out in the US next week. That gives me an excuse to share some of the nice things people have said about it. I’m particularly pleased with this one from Jacob Hacker, whose own work I admire very much. With apologies to Isaiah Berlin, Quiggin is a foxy hedgehog: He knows two big things, and these twin lessons—about the virtues and limits of markets—sustain a pioneering, persuasive, and even passionate case for democracy and the mixed economy....

Two big pieces of news for me today. This morning I got the first physical copy of my book Economics in Two Lessons. Then, I got the news that, for the first time in my career, I’ve had an article accepted in Econometrica, the top theoretical journal in economics. It’s full of arcane maths, drawing heavily on the expertise of my co-author Ani Guerdjikova, but the key implication is simple. If people aren’t equally good at predicting movements in asset prices, restrictions on...