Real-World Economics Review

from Mark Weisbrot Donald Trump won the presidency–despite losing the popular vote by 2.8 million—with a campaign that careened wildly from one distraction to another. He has clung to this as a Twitter and governing strategy ever since. As there are 190 countries in the world, and the United States trades with most of them, trade wars so far have provided a shovel-ready supply of such diversions. So, here we are: Last Thursday, just in time to distract from the more potentially violent...

from Lars Syll Paul Krugman wonders why no one listens to academic economists … One answer is that economists don’t listen to themselves. More precisely, liberal economists like Krugman who want the state to take a more active role in managing the economy, continue to teach an economic theory that has no place for activist policy. Let me give a concrete example. One of Krugman’s bugaboos is the persistence of claims that expansionary monetary policy must lead to higher inflation … But...

from Dean Baker Workers in the United States now put in more time than workers in any other wealthy country, including Japan. This week New York’s city council will begin to consider a measure put forward by Mayor Bill de Blasio that would guarantee workers in the city at least 10 days of paid time off per year. This proposal is an important step toward bringing the United States inline with the other rich countries in guaranteeing its workers some amount of paid vacation. As a new report...

from Lars Syll [embedded content] If anything, Gelman’s talk underlines how important it is not to equate science with statistical calculation. All science entail human judgement, and using statistical models doesn’t relieve us of that necessity. Working with misspecified models, the scientific value of statistics is actually zero — even though you’re making valid statistical inferences! Statistical models are no substitutes for doing real science. Or as a famous German philosopher...

from Malgorzata Dereniowska Environmental ethics is a field of applied ethics concerned with the ethical dimension of human relationship towards nature. The term environmental ethics covers a variety of approaches that can be roughly divided into two camps: anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism refers to a human-centered approach to environmental problems that protects nature for humans. Radical anthropocentrism is often equated with the view that only human beings...

from Mark Weisbrot Donald Trump won the presidency–despite losing the popular vote by 2.8 million—with a campaign that careened wildly from one distraction to another. He has clung to this as a Twitter and governing strategy ever since. As there are 190 countries in the world, and the United States trades with most of them, trade wars so far have provided a shovel-ready supply of such diversions. So, here we are: Last Thursday, just in time to distract from the more potentially violent...

Join the Conversation with Dean Baker and MPH Assistant Professor Laura Chyu as a part of the International Day of Action for Women's Health celebrations.

Join the Conversation with Dean Baker and MPH Assistant Professor Laura Chyu as a part of the International Day of Action for Women's Health celebrations.

from Max Koch Herman Daly’s “steady-state economy” (Daly, 1974) is the most cited case of an economic system that functions within ecological boundaries. It is a model of an economy that does not grow in the sense that it keeps the level of throughput (extraction of raw materials from nature and their return to nature as waste) as low as possible and ideally within the regenerative and assimilative capacities of the ecosystem. However, the original concept of a steady-state economy was...

from Richard Smith We ecosocialists have a practical answer. We accept the science that to prevent runaway global warming “greenhouse emission must be reduced by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and by 100 percent by 2050.” We agree with the IPCC that this will require “deep emissions reductions in all sectors.” We agree that it will require “far-reaching transitions in energy, land, infrastructure, and manufacturing,” that it will require “systems transitions” (indeed, more than they...