Real-World Economics Review

from David Ruccio Where did all the capitalist surplus in the United States go last year? Well, as in recent years, a large portion was paid to the Chief Executive Officers of the nation’s largest corporations, the ones that make up the S&P 500. According to the Wall Street Journal, median pay of the CEOs of those corporations reached an astronomical $13.1 million, setting a new record for the fifth year in a row. Most S&P 500 CEOs got raises of 8 percent or better during the...

from Peter Radford I was having a conversation this morning in which I argued the word “capitalism” has no meaning.  Or, perhaps, it has too many meanings.  It is a fraught one as well.  People get vexed in its presence.  I ought also have said the same thing about the word “labor”. Both words are relics of the early years of industrialization when they meant more to those throwing them around back then.  In our contemporary economy they mean rather less.  To me they reference things...

from Lars Syll [embedded content] A great video, but — there’s always a but — unfortunately also not without some analytical shortcomings. The point of making a randomized experiment is often said to be that it ‘ensures’ that any correlation between a supposed cause and effect indicates a causal relation. This is believed to hold since randomization (allegedly) ensures that a supposed causal variable does not correlate with other variables that may influence the effect. The problem with...

from David Ruccio [embedded content] More than 50 years ago (on 14 April 1967), Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of his famous speeches, on “The Other America,” at Stanford University.* King patiently explained to the audience of students and faculty members that, while in his view “riots are socially destructive and self-defeating,” they are “in the final analysis. . .the language of the unheard.” Today, as protestors take to the streets across America, in response to the recent...

Follow on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/actdottv Julianna welcomes back recurring guest Dean Baker, macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, to discuss a few main issues we are all experiencing today... including his thoughts on the George Floyd Protests, inequality, the Economy, the Trade War in China, and More. The interview was originally supposed to focus on how the U.S. made major changes to the way it trades with China this month, with both Trump...

Follow on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/actdottv Julianna welcomes back recurring guest Dean Baker, macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, to discuss a few main issues we are all experiencing today... including his thoughts on the George Floyd Protests, inequality, the Economy, the Trade War in China, and More. The interview was originally supposed to focus on how the U.S. made major changes to the way it trades with China this month, with both Trump...

from Peter Radford It is always interesting to read what people say in response to what you write.  It is also always educational.  I enjoy the learning. I recently wrote a short piece meant to be a little on the light side pondering the odd comparison of the use of the word essential in our vernacular understanding of it, and the way in which standard economic theory suggests we compute our various levels of worth.  I quoted J.B. Clark with respect to this latter point.  I made the...

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...