Real-World Economics Review

In April the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded an average of 410 parts per million (ppm). Before the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels did not exceed 300ppm in the last 800,000 years.  (Scripps Institution of Oceanography)

from Dean Baker Earlier this month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to Congress for allowing improper access to the data of tens of millions of Facebook users. This was just one of a long sequence of apologies that Zuckerberg has made for this and other failures of the social media giant. Given this track record, it’s probably will not the last apology that Zuckerberg has to make for his company. It is long past time for Congress to take action so that Zuckerberg does not have to...

from Lars Syll Many mainstream economists have the idea that because heterodox people — like yours truly — often criticize the application of mathematics in economics, we are critical of math per se. This is totally unfounded and ridiculous. I do not know how many times I have been asked to answer this straw-man objection to heterodox economics. No, there is nothing wrong with mathematics per se. No, there is nothing wrong with applying mathematics to economics. Mathematics is one...

from Edward Fullbrook  “Plutonomy” is the word that Wall Street and City bankers use in private to designate the political economy in which they operate and in which today we all live.  They go to great trouble to keep us 99% ignorant of their perceptions of today’s economic and political realities, and which their “plutonomy” concept reveals. In November 2010, I put up the post Citigroup attempts to disappear its Plutonomy Report #2 which was viewed over 40,000 times. It included links...

Tomorrow will be the 200th anniversary of Marx. A lot of people write about this. The most interesting pieces I read were by Veblen (1906 part 1 and part 2). Some excerpts (the beginning of part 1 and the end of part 2, as always with Veblen one has to read the whole thing). One of the main points of Veblen is that Marx takes the ideas of ‘bourgeois’ economists more serious than these economists themselves, culminating among other things in the idea that, in an economics sense, ‘capital’...

from Asad Zaman This continues a sequence of posts explaining how conventional economics is actually the economic theory of the top 1%: ET1%: Blindfolds created by Economic Theories. Eight central concepts of economic theory are shown to be deceptive – they have an appearance of objectivity, fairness, and equity, but actually conceal a strong bias in the favor of the wealthy. The previous post was the “Illusion of Scarcity.” We call the concept of “Pareto Efficiency” a swindle because it...

from Maria Alejandra Madi Malgorzata Dereniowska: Welcome to “Dialogos: Economics Education and Pedagogy,” Peter! In this interview we will focus on the questions of institutional change in economics education system, economic pedagogy and social responsibility of universities. Could you tell me something about your background and your professional experience as a teacher of economics? Peter Söderbaum: As a student at Uppsala University I became interested in political science, economics...

from Lars Syll A couple of years ago, former chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, wrote in an article in the Financial Times, re the increased demands for stronger regulation of banks and finance: Since the devastating Japanese earthquake and, earlier, the global financial tsunami, governments have been pressed to guarantee their populations against virtually all the risks exposed by those extremely low probability events. But should they? Guarantees require the building up of a buffer...

from C. P. Chandrasekhar After a year of huffing and puffing, President Donald Trump has launched, since January this year, what some are terming a trade war—fought in scattered industrial and selected locations. It started with quotas and tariffs on solar panel and washing machine imports, but then moved menacingly to steel and aluminium. Tariffs on these two products have been imposed under a WTO clause relating to imports that threaten national security, even while Trump’s rhetoric...

from Lars Syll Most mainstream economists seem to think the idea behind Modern Monetary Theory is something new that some wild heterodox economic cranks have come up with. New? Cranks? How about reading one of the great founders of neoclassical economics — Knut Wicksell. This is what Wicksell wrote in 1898 on ‘pure credit systems’ in Interest and Prices (Geldzins und Güterpreise): It is possible to go even further. There is no real need for any money at all if a payment between two...