Mike Norman Economics

Marx on capitalism and the profit rate. Michael Roberts BlogCapital.150 part one: measuring the past to gauge the futureMichael Roberts

Important.  Is global society and the global economy at a turning point and if so, what happens next? It's chiefly about the developing world, but similar challenges face the developed world.  Technological innovation results in emergence and emergence present fresh challenges along with new opportunities. How those involved in rapid change will react is uncertain. Will they be able to adapt, and, if so, how? While coordination increase the return from coordination, or will competition...

‘America needs its unions more than ever.’ And ‘Labour reform could help restore the bargaining power of US workers.’ Can you believe that these are titles from articles in the Financial Times?  Mario Draghi, the president of the ECB, recently boasted that since 2015 the euro-zone gained more than 5 million jobs. New cheap jobs yes, and productivity remains historically low. Today’s lacking investment means that technology does not substitute for labour – the normal trajectory in...

Short and not wonkish. Worth a read. Information Transfer Economics My introductory chapter on economics Jason Smith

This will be the Sanders crew going full Robin Hood vs. the Graham crew going full libertarian... will be very frustrating to watch.JUST IN: Sens. Graham & Cassidy will debate Sens. Sanders & Klobuchar on health care in live CNN event, Monday 9p ET https://t.co/eLye3JeX4n pic.twitter.com/DiXyrimEfm— CNN (@CNN) September 21, 2017

How learning machines generalize by filtering the specific.Quanta Magazine New Theory Cracks Open the Black Box of Deep LearningNatalie Wolchover

Where did all the concern over deficits go? After two years of the media lamenting, worrying and feigning outrage over the cost of Bernie Sanders’ two big-budget items—free college and single-payer healthcare—the same outlets are uniformly silent, days after the largest military budget increase in history....  No write-ups worrying about the cost increase in the Washington Post or Vox or NPR. No op-eds expressing concern for “deficits” in the New York Times, Boston Globe or US News. No...

There's a lot to unpack about the newly formed Committee to Investigate Russia, which aims to "help Americans recognize and understand the gravity of Russia’s continuing attacks on our democracy." Perhaps its most striking feature is that no Russia experts are involved; that's a sign of the times... No experts needed other than in propaganda. … as another eminent Russia expert -- Mark Galeotti, who used teach at New York University and now works at the Institute of International...

I have a new article forthcoming in Development and Change, on the political economy of financialization, coauthored with Arjun Jayadev and Enno Schroeder. A chief role of finance in a capitalist system is to allocate financial capital efficiently and effectively. Finance is supposed to impose discipline on economics. Joseph Schumpter called bankers "the ephors of capitalism." The five ephor of ancient Sparta were magistrates that held power over the monarchical aspect Spartan...

This March, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won regional elections in four out of five states, including Uttar Pradesh (UP). This huge prize represents a qualitative advance for the party and the Hindu nationalist Sangh Parivar it represents, giving greater legitimacy to their long-term goal of establishing a Hindu state in all but name. Is India ceasing to be an outpost of liberal democracy and moving in the direction of theocratic nationalism? Something to keep an eye on.But economics is...