Lars P. Syll

A Happy New Year to all my blog readers Tired of the idea of an infallible mainstream neoclassical economics and its perpetuation of spoon-fed orthodoxy, yours truly launched this blog six years ago. The number of visitors has increased steadily, and with now having had my posts viewed more than 3 million times, I have to admit of still being — given the rather wonkish character of the blog, with posts mostly on economic theory, statistics, econometrics,...

KR: The death of the centre-left has also led to the rise of the Right. You note … that working class white women overwhelmingly voted for Trump, while Clinton lost votes among African Americans and Latinos compared to Obama’s election in 2008. How have so many social groups associated with the Left – the working class, minorities, women – turned away? Wolfgang Streeck: That’s a difficult question as the “racial” complexities of American politics in particular are endless....

ZEIT: Die Monopolstellung ist also mehr als ein marktwirtschaftliches Problem? Ferguson: Sie ist ein riesiges Problem. In der gesamten Menschheitsgeschichte galt der öffentliche Raum als nicht kommerziell. Heute haben wir daraus einen gigantischen Anzeigenmarkt gemacht. Die Suche nach Informationen ist wie der Gang in eine Bibliothek.Durch Google ist das jetzt ein weltweiter Verkaufsraum. Dasselbe sehen Sie in der Veränderung unserer sozialen Netzwerke. Früher hatten wir...

Is it time to ditch the natural rate hypothesis? Fifty years ago Milton Friedman wrote an (in)famous article arguing that (1) the natural rate of unemployment was independent of monetary policy, and (2) trying to keep the unemployment rate below the natural rate would only give rise to higher and higher inflation. The hypothesis has always been controversial, and much theoretical and empirical work has questioned the real-world relevance of the ideas that...

  Trump and the GOP delivering a huge gift to US corporations and shareholders. The only trickle down to workers going on is probably best described in analogy to the above picture … Advertisements

[embedded content] Absolutely outstanding. Divine. Advertisements

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A girl like you  [embedded content] Advertisements

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If only Trump had read Abba Lerner! The first financial responsibility of the government (since nobody else can undertake that responsibility) is to keep the total rate of spending in the country on goods and services neither greater nor less than that rate which at the current prices would buy all the goods that it is possible to produce. If total spending is allowed to go above this there will be inflation, and if it is allowed to go below this there will...