Real-World Economics Review

--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

from Dean Baker The richest 1% have done extraordinarily well over the last four decades. But income has stagnated for the majority. This was not an accident. It was by design. My book, Rigged, highlights five areas where US policies were deliberately structured to redistribute income upwards. IP laws were strengthened, making patent & copyright monopolies longer and stronger This hugely increased the share of GDP that goes to sectors like pharmaceuticals, medical equipment,...

from Lars Syll When I present this argument … one or more scholars say, “But shouldn’t I control for everything I can in my regressions? If not, aren’t my coefficients biased due to excluded variables?” This argument is not as persuasive as it may seem initially. First of all, if what you are doing is misspecified already, then adding or excluding other variables has no tendency to make things consistently better or worse … The excluded variable argument only works if you are sure your...