Naked Keynesianism

Wall Street Journal's logic. They say: "In the Americas 'thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities,' the pope said. 'Is this not what we want for our own children? We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation. To respond in a way which is always humane,...

Nope not about index numbers. About Rankings. Below a list of several heterodox and mainstream journals as ranked by the Thomson-Reuters citation index (the Web of Science-Social Science Citation Index, SSCI) in the last citation report. As it can be seen heterodox journals have a considerably lower impact factor than mainstream journals. The leading heterodox journal in my list* (the Cambridge Journal of Economics) is comparable to a lower ranked mainstream journal (certainly not the bottom...

So and old post was getting lots of hits. Turns out some guy linked to it a while ago. Not sure why this happened only now, after 2 years. If Google Translate is accurate (my experience is that it's not always the case) this is what he says: "Social geographer Ewald Engelen is a Keynesian. Throw money at the economy and everything will be fine, is his theory. He fulminates and tweets all day that the government must spend. This morning Ewald put a link to the Naked Keynesianism, a site that...

Yesterday I listened to this interview on the radio (Bloomberg's Surveillance) with Robert Shiller (you can jump to the last 9 minutes, that's when Shiller starts talking). He is for fiscal stimulus to get us out of the funk, but for higher rates to deal with outline asset prices. No discussion of using regulation to preclude speculation and bubbles in asset markets.PS: The piece cited at the beginning of the interview is this one.

NYTimes September 21, 1931 84 years ago Britain left the Gold Standard. Some thought it was the end of Western civilization. Keynes thought it was the beginning of the end of the Depression, at least in Great Britain. He was certainly happy. He said: "There are few Englishmen who do not rejoice at the breaking of our gold fetters. We feel that we have at last a free hand to do what is sensible. The romantic phase is over, and we can begin to discuss realistically what policy is for the...

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The Fed has left the interest rate unchanged... for now. One dissident vote for raising the rate now. The main reason according to the press release is that: "Recent global economic and financial developments may restrain economic activity somewhat and are likely to put further downward pressure on inflation in the near term." Pressures for a hike in October or December will increase significantly, even if the official position is vague enough. They say: "The Committee anticipates that it...

In the last issue, The Economist suggests that the Fed should not be concerned too much with inflation, and that they should not raise the interest rate for now. They say: "Weak wage growth suggests that there is still lots of slack in the labour market. Underemployment, which includes workers who are part-time but want a full-time job, and discouraged workers who might be tempted back into the labour force, stands at just over 10%, higher than before the crisis. This measure probably has...

Tomorrow, for those around Lewisburg, I'll present my paper on “Interest rates, terms of trade and currency crises” at the economics department's brown bag seminar series in ACWS room 116 from 11:45 to 12:50.