Real-World Economics Review

from Lars Syll Nordhaus’s transgressions are immense. His ‘damage function’ which he uses to estimate global warming damage is incorrect and uses data that has nothing to do with climate change. Despite this, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses his model to advise governments about the economic impact of global warming. Nordhaus and other mainstream climate economists certainly have a lot to answer for. Their thinking has seriously delayed action to avert damage done...

from David Ruccio The American Dream is dead. Long live the American Dream! Let me explain. The official American Dream, the one that has been produced and disseminated at least as far back as the transition from the farm to the factory (in other words, since the late-nineteenth century), lies in tatters. Americans have long been encouraged to believe that everyone gets what they deserve—and, with equal opportunity, those who start at the bottom have a real chance of working their way to...

--Dean Baker, Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and a visiting professor at the University of Utah, joins David to discuss progressive economic theory including as it relates to recessions, automation, debt, deficit, and more -Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership -Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -Join on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvixJtaXuNdMPUGdOPcY8Ag/join -Follow David on Twitter:...

--Dean Baker, Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and a visiting professor at the University of Utah, joins David to discuss progressive economic theory including as it relates to recessions, automation, debt, deficit, and more -Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership -Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -Join on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvixJtaXuNdMPUGdOPcY8Ag/join -Follow David on Twitter:...

from Lars Syll For the sake of balancing the overly rosy picture of econometric achievements given in the usual econometrics textbooks today, it may be interesting to see how Trygve Haavelmo — with the completion (in 1958) of the twenty-fifth volume of Econometrica — assessed the role of econometrics in the advancement of economics. We have found certain general principles which would seem to make good sense. Essentially, these principles are based on the reasonable idea that, if an...

“The social extension of atomistic methods . . . is not, of course, really a scientific project at all, though it uses scientific language.  It is a distortion that tends to discredit the whole idea of science by exploiting it to draw dubious political and moral conclusions.  This distortion itself has become obvious over the very notion of an atom – the idea of an impenetrable, essentially separate unit as the ultimate form of matter.  We know that today’s physicists no longer use this...

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Baker

from Lars Syll Imposing a hard target can bind the central bank, but the government must then act on failures to hit the target. Why would it if it is self-interested? If it does, that amounts to saying it is not selfish, which undermines the argument that independence is needed. The same argument can be used to deconstruct independence itself. Suppose independence is a solution to time inconsistency. Why would a selfish politician ever agree to independence in the first place? If they...

from David Ruccio