Mike Norman Economics

A view of the development of market socialism with Chinese characteristics. Julian Gewirtrz’s “Unlikely Partners” charts, with an extraordinary attention to detail, these world-historic decisions and focuses on the role that foreign economists played in these early stages of China’s transformation. But while the declared focus of the book is on the foreign-to-Chinese interaction and cooperation, with the high point (extremely well described) being a week-long cruise-seminar in August 1985...

A new major combining computer science and economics will prepare students for designing the virtual marketplaces of the future.… Starting in the fall of 2017, the two academic departments will offer a joint major — Course 6-14: Computer Science, Economics, and Data Science — because elements of the two fields have become, well, inseparable. The new major aims to prepare students to think at the nexus of economics and computer science, so they can understand and design the kinds of systems...

Short review of Stephen Smith's Russia in Revolution, An Empire in Crisis, 1890-1928. Conclusion. Since the new war against Russia began in 2014, it has been the foreign plan that if enough pain is inflicted on the Russian people economically, especially their businessmen, they will rebel against their leaders in the Kremlin. Combined with economic warfare and fighting on the Syrian and Ukrainian fronts, the plan also calls for a home-front campaign against the corruption of Russian...

Summary of the annual BRICS summit in Xiamen. Asia Times The real BRICS bombshell Pepe Escobaralso by Pepe Escobar Pepe Escobar explores how David Lynch's dystopian wonderland – the original and latest incarnation – informs current geopolitical and metaphysical forces. Potential spoiler alert How Twin Peaks unveils our world

Since Donald Trump became US president, his core economic agenda has been sidetracked repeatedly by so-called cultural issues. However, now the administration is stepping up its tax reform effort. Even so, other issues threaten to derail this agenda item too (like nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula!). Of course, it’s not even clear we’re talking about tax reform here. Much more likely, Trump has sold out and is now merely pushing for tax cuts for the wealthy. Nevertheless, the risk to the...

As if someone had quietly turned on a light bulb last month illuminating the corporate takeover of America, a series of articles from multiple outlets chronicled the demise of American democracy under the jackboot of the corporate state. David Dayen at the New Republic wrote: “Far from selfless arbiters of right and wrong, CEOs are as responsible as anyone in America for skyrocketing inequality, climate crisis, waves of consumer fraud, and the biggest financial meltdown since the...

On reductionism.This is also the case in philosophy where different methods attempt to exclude other methods by reducing the debate to a lower level of data, e.g, sense data only, or lower order of abstraction, e.g., all abstraction must be reducible to first order. These methodological assumptions reduce justification to observations of objects. For example, David Hume used philosophical reduction to sense data to exclude causality, arguing that causality is nothin more than observation of...

New research has found that humans have an excellent ability to ignore facts that don't fit with our own biases, not just on Facebook where the stakes are pretty low, but even when it can cost us money. Stefano Palminteri of École Normale Supérieure led a team of researchers from ENS and University College London, which previously reported that humans are biased towards the path of least resistance, even though that can make us depressed later on. In those situations, people don't seem to...

Here’s what the media isn’t telling you about North Korea’s recent missile tests.Last Monday, the DPRK fired a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan’s Hokkaido Island. The missile landed in the waters beyond the island harming neither people nor property. The media immediately condemned the test as a “bold and provocative act” that showed the North’s defiance of UN resolutions and “contempt for its neighbors.” President Trump sharply criticized the missile test...

It is easy to represent the ‘income-expenditure model’ in a graph. Some people find this helpful as a visual aid to understanding; others, not so much. For those who find graphs confusing, this post can safely be ignored. In terms of economic meaning, it does not add much to what has already been explained. But for those who are comfortable with graphs, they can be a handy tool for illustrating or thinking through the logic of a model.... heteconomistShort & Simple 20 – Graphing the...