Real-World Economics Review

from Lars Syll Simon Wren-Lewis is one of many mainstream economists that staunchly defends the idea that having microfoundations for macroeconomics moves macroeconomics forward. A couple of years ago he wrote this: I think the two most important microfoundation led innovations in macro have been intertemporal consumption and rational expectations …  [T]he adoption of rational expectations was not the result of some previous empirical failure. Instead it represented, as Lucas said, a...

from Asad Zaman The Reagan-Thatcher revolution in the late 1970’s consisted of a move towards free markets, and away from government regulation and control. Of central importance in this move was the deregulation of financial institutions. We would like to understand WHY this change took place, and WHAT were the effects of this change on the working of the USA/UK economies. Summary of Basic Facts: Financial de-regulation, guided by an ideological belief that free financial markets would...

Explain : Dean Baker 's Wisdom Quotes [Dean Baker is an American macroeconomist and co-founder, with Mark Weisbrot, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C. He is credited as being one of the first economists to have identified the 2007–2008 United States housing bubble.]

Explain : Dean Baker 's Wisdom Quotes [Dean Baker is an American macroeconomist and co-founder, with Mark Weisbrot, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C. He is credited as being one of the first economists to have identified the 2007–2008 United States housing bubble.]

from Peter Radford Are economists so befuddled by the elegance of their machinery that words have lost all meaning? Two definitions, one for ‘essential’ and the other for the way in which, according to economics, people are rewarded for their work. In recent weeks we have become accustomed to calling someone an ‘essential worker’.  These are our most important people.  They are, if the dictionary doesn’t lie, indispensable.  They are extremely important.  They are key, crucial, vital, and...

from Norbert Häring Ten years ago, the rich and powerful Rockefeller Foundation played through and favorably described a scenario in which a pandemic would lead to autocratic forms of government with total surveillance and control of citizens. Now it has published a pandemic plan to make this scenario a reality. According to the preamble by the President of the Foundation, it took two weeks to set up and edit this plan, implicating a large number of “experts and decision-makers from...

from Jamie Morgan Part 5 of Pandemic aware economies, public health business models and (im)possible futures An economy that grows through increasing final consumption is one that evolves with final consumption and so its reproduction, stability and growth are specially dependent on it and on the associated characteristics of work and financing. It matters how people are paid, how they are contracted, what levels of debt they take on in order to work  – for example reliance on a...

from Norbert Häring Distributing additional money to stimulate demand is seen by economists as a recipe for boosting demand in a crisis. But you have to do it right, not like Donald Trump did it. In response to the corona crisis, US President Donald Trump had consumption cheques with his signature worth 1200 dollars sent to all citizens. This bears a strong resemblance to an anti-crisis recipe of economists, which has been known as helicopter money since Milton Friedman coined this term....