Post-Keynesian

The Sveriges Riksbank prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel this year goes to David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens. I cannot say much about instrumental variables, Angrist, or Imbens. Since I have been pointing to Card's work with Alan Krueger on minimum wages for decades, I thought I might say somthing about his half of the prize. I do not have much new to say. I find both natural experiments and meta-analysis intriguing. Both Card and Krueger's natural...

Figure 1: Three Patterns Across The Wage Axis And One Three-Technique Pattern This post continues the approach in this post and in this post. As previously stated, I consider the same two examples. In both examples, three processes are known for producing the numeraire, called "corn". In the example for the left panel, corn is a non-basic commodity, and a different basic commodity is used in each of the three techniques. In the example for the right panel, all three corn-producing processes...

Figure 1: Three Patterns Across The r Axis And One Three-Technique Pattern This post continues the approach in this post. I consider the same two examples. In both examples, three processes are known for producing the numeraire, called "corn". In the example for the left panel, corn is a non-basic commodity, and a different basic commodity is used in all three techniques. In the example for the right panel, all three corn-producing processes require inputs of labor power, corn, and labor (in...

Alex Thomas on Krishna Bharadwaj as an ideal economist. Her daughter, Sudha Bharadwaj is a political prisoner. The first page of this Jeremy Rudd paper is getting noticed. A lot of mainstream economics is "arrant nonsense." National Public Radio has a rememberance of Charles Mills. Liam Bright has a tribute, too.

Table 1: A Common Structure Example1.0 Introduction This post presents partitions of (a part of) parameter space for two examples of models of prices of production with a choice of technique. The examples have a different structure and are parametrized differently. Yet, I want to argue, the partitions are the same, at some level of abstraction. 2.0 Thing 1 The first example is an instance of the Samuelson-Garegnani model. Table 1 presents the coefficients of production for this example....

In this post, I want to get a sense of foreign exchange crises since 2008. The data that I am using is taken from the World Bank. It is not perfect. It is a bit spotty and could be improved upon. It is also annual data, so it will not pick up intrayear crises. But it is solid enough that it should give us a good first cut on the dynamics of foreign exchange crises. The first question to ask is simple enough: how many foreign exchange crises were experienced in this time period? For...

As Evergrande looks about to default on its debt many are asking whether this might be a Lehman moment for China. That is, are we about to see a wave of defaults that bring down the Chinese financial system as we did in Western countries in 2008? Much of the discussion is based on a misunderstanding. The Western financial system as it stood in 2008 was a largely laissez-faire system. There were, of course, regulations in place and there were also protections – most notably, deposit...

Here is John Stuart Mill stating a principle that sounds noble, and then immediately making a strange caveat. "The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or...

In a previous post I undertook a very simple analysis to show that factor investing during inflation helps investors to stop from simply treading water – at least, if history is any guide. An interlocutor asked if I’d looked into quality factors and I said that I would get around to it. In fact, there is something very interesting in the quality factor analysis – something that highlights an aspect of inflation that is not properly appreciated by most economists and investors....

This blog, over years, presents a welter of fluke cases. I created many of the numerical examples to illustrate the reswitching of techniques, capital reversing, or some such so-called 'perversity'. Fluke cases can be combined. For example, a fluke switch point at a rate of profits of zero can also be a fluke switch point at which three wage curves intersect. Or two switch points on the wage frontier can both be fluke switch points at which four wage curves, not necessarily the same,...