Real-World Economics Review

from Emil Urhammer Drinking the strength of life from men doomed to die, spitting the crimson blood on all the lands of gods; black becomes the sun in summers to follow, weather spells disaster – Need you know more? With this stanza, I begin my story of the divine belief in Economics at the beginning of the 21st century, when this faith was practised and reached the height of its glory. . . . The disastrous climate changes that truly came into effect in the second half of the 21st...

from Dean Baker At the NATO summit earlier this month, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, was forced to publicly praise Donald Trump’s leadership. Mr. Stoltenberg is almost certainly a very intelligent hardworking man. That is virtually a prerequisite for a person in his position. By contrast, Donald Trump is the most ignorant ill-prepared person ever to sit in the White House. Nonetheless, when Stoltenberg noted the increases in military spending by NATO members, Trump...

from Lars Syll In issue 1-2 (2018) of Oxford Review of Economic Policy, the editors have invited some well-known contemporary mainstream macroeconomists (including e.g. Simon Wren-Lewis, Randall Wright, Olivier Blanchard, Ricardo Reis, Joseph Stiglitz) to give their views on how to rebuild macroeconomic theory for the future. Some of the contributions are interesting to read. Others — like Wren-Lewis and Blanchard — seem to think that we can basically just go on with our microfounded DSGE...

from David Ruccio In international human rights law, a “forced disappearance” occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization (or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization), followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person’s fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law. The most infamous forced disappearances have occurred in Spain...

from Maria Alejandra Madi In the new millennium, the proliferation of financial assets, with  unstable economic growth, has given way to widespread precarious jobs, income gaps and weaker welfare programs. The same policies that have obliterated social services and kept labour cheap have supported the expansion of short-termism and new global business models in the context of deregulated capitalism. Besides, the onset of the 21st century represents a new political age  overwhelmed by the...

from Lars Syll Oxford professor Simon Wren-Lewis had a post up some time ago commenting on traction gaining ‘attacks on mainstream economics’: One frequent accusation … often repeated by heterodox economists, is that mainstream economics and neoliberal ideas are inextricably linked. Of course economics is used to support neoliberalism. Yet I find mainstream economics full of ideas and analysis that permits a wide ranging and deep critique of these same positions. The idea that the two...

from Asad Zaman This post is a continuation of ET1%: Blindfolds Created by Economic Theory, We show how the Invisible Hand theory appears to be neutral but actually favors the top 1%. As quoted and refuted in my earlier post on “Failures of the Invisible Hand“, Mankiw writes that: “The reason for excellent functioning of decentralized market economies is that all participants are motivated by self-interest. This self-interest works better than love and kindness in terms of promoting...

A well-known criticism of national income is thre ‘Ïf you marry your maid you will diminish national income‘ mrmr. Sigh. We should forget about this silly male fantasy and give women their due by replacing it by what really happened. Domestic workers did not marry their single masters. They left them, as they had better paying things to do. Or the income of their family rose, which enabled them to get an education or to care for their own kids. Unprotected labor by Vanessa May is a good...

from Lars Syll The simple question that was raised during a recent conference … was to what extent has – or should – the teaching of economics be modified in the light of the current economic crisis? The simple answer is that the economics profession is unlikely to change. Why would economists be willing to give up much of their human capital, painstakingly nurtured for over two centuries? For macroeconomists in particular, the reaction has been to suggest that modifications of existing...

from Lars Syll The impossibility of proper specification is true generally in regression analyses across the social sciences, whether we are looking at the factors affecting occupational status, voting behavior, etc. The problem is that as implied by the conditions for regression analyses to yield accurate, unbiased estimates, you need to investigate a phenomenon that has underlying mathematical regularities – and, moreover, you need to know what they are. Neither seems true. I have no...