Real-World Economics Review

Graph 1. Printing Francs to satisfy external demand for Francs led to a fast increase of the amount of money in Switzerland. Did this lead to inflation? After 2008 rich people from all over the globe started to  buy Swiss Francs. This, of course led to appreciation of the Swiss Franc. The Swiss national bank didn’t like this: bad for exports. And, related to this but much worse, structural lower demand for export products of a small country like Switzerland will erode the manufacturing...

from Asad Zaman Linked below is a 95m Video Lecture on the previous post on “Simple Model Explains Complex Keynesian Concepts“. In Chapter 2 of General Theory, Keynes has two points against the classical theory of the labor market. He points out that laborers react strongly (with strikes) against wage cuts, but show no similar reaction to inflation. This means that the decision to supply labor does not depend on the real wage — instead it must depend only on the nominal wage. The SECOND...

from Lars Syll Economics may be an informative tool for research. But if its practitioners do not investigate and make an effort of providing a justification for the credibility of the assumptions on which they erect their building, it will not fulfil its task. There is a gap between its aspirations and its accomplishments, and without more supportive evidence to substantiate its claims, critics — like yours truly — will continue to consider its ultimate arguments as a mixture of rather...

from David Ruccio Last month, Alexander Beunder, the editor of Socialist Economist, asked a handful of “expert economists from around the world”—including Johanna Bockman, Prabhat Patnaik, Andrew Kliman, and myself—two key questions concerning the problems and prospects for socialism, economics, and the Left in the world today. Beunder requested that we keep our answers to two hundred words. Our answers are now posted on-line, which can be read by clicking on the links below. Here are...

from Dean Baker Debt and Deficits, Again With the possibility that the Democrats will retake Congress and press demands for increased spending in areas like health care, education, and child care, the deficit hawks (DH) are getting prepared to awaken from their dormant state. We can expect major news outlets to be filled with stories on how the United States is on its way to becoming the next Greece or Zimbabwe. For this reason, it is worth taking a few moments to reorient ourselves on...

from Asad Zaman As I read more and more about effective demand, I got more and more confused — how can I explain this concept to my poor students, if I don’t understand it myself? There are a huge number of articles with different and conflicting views and interpretations of this concept, which Keynes describes as being central to his theory. Let me proceed to clarify the insights that have resulted from struggling with this material, and going through many iterations of revisions in...

from Lars Syll In mainstream economics, there is a lot of talk about ‘economic laws.’ The crux of these laws that allegedly do exist in economics, is that they only hold ceteris paribus. That fundamentally means that these laws only hold when the right conditions are at hand for giving rise to them. Unfortunately, from an empirical point of view, those conditions are only at hand in artificially closed nomological models purposely designed to give rise to the kind of regular associations...

from Jayati Ghosh Even if free trade is ultimately broadly beneficial, the fact remains that as trade has become freer, inequality has worsened. One major reason for this is that current global trade rules have enabled a few large firms to capture an ever-larger share of value-added, at a massive cost to economies, workers, and the environment. For most critics of globalization, trade is the villain, responsible for deepening inequality and rising economic insecurity among workers. This...

IG: DEANRAVENBAKER Song: Love You, Yes He Would Band name: Alter Ego Music Australia. Band Members: Dean Baker (vocals), Dan Bacon (guitar), Matty Ray (keys), Mike Walker Coulter (drums). The band was highly inspired by the likes of The Doors, Tea Party, Rolling Stones and INXS. "Alter Ego Music Australia eternalized its illusionary psychedelic rock blues sound through the evocation of the true self". - Dean Baker. This original song was first recorded around the year 1999-2000 and...

from Dean Baker We all know Donald Trump’s tendency to make up numbers to tell everyone what a great job he is doing as president. People are rightly appalled, both that Trump is not doing a great job, but also that he is lying to imply otherwise. While Trump is clearly over the top in just inventing data to back his argument, Democrats are also often not very straightforward in assessing the data. We got a dose of that last week when there were complaints that the rate of income...