Real-World Economics Review

According to the accepted narrative after about 1950 female participation rates started to rise thanks to inventions like the washing machine and kept rising forever after. Reality is more confusing. According to a recent book by Julia Sophie Wörsdorfer, washing machines were, contrary to the ideas of Ha-Joon Chang, not that important. Neither cross sectional data nor time series analysis yields a strong correlation between ownership of a washing machine and high female labour force...

from Lars Syll We are not going to get out of the economic doldrums as long as we continue to be obsessed with the unreasoned ideological goal of reducing the so-called deficit. The “deficit” is not an economic sin but an economic necessity … idle all around us. Alexan The administration is trying to bring the Titanic into harbor with a canoe paddle, while Congress is arguing over whether to use an oar or a paddle, and the Perot’s and budget balancers seem eager to lash the helm...

from David Ruccio Chris Rock may be right. Still, Americans are well aware that economic inequality in their country is obscene, even though they often underestimate the growing gap between the poor and the rich.  But it’s Frank Rich, who conducted the interview with the American comedian, who made the more perceptive observation: For all the current conversation about income inequality, class is still sort of the elephant in the room. All the experts agree—from Thomas Piketty and the...

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

from  Lars Syll Professor Simon Wren-Lewis recently wrote: “The dangers of pluralism in economics: the case of MMT” … Wren-Lewis argues that MMT concepts can be explained using mainstream terminology. Since I tend to use fairly standard terminology, I cannot disagree with that argument. However, I would phrase it differently. Mainstream discussion of fiscal policy is almost invariably clouded with theoretical junk (“fiscal sustainability”, “budget constraints”, “intergenerational...

from Julie Nelson  Since the 1990s, I and some other feminist economists have been pointing out that the mainstream discipline of economics has a profoundly masculinist bias. That is, aspects of human nature, experience, and behavior that fit a culturally “macho” mold have been emphasized and elevated, while those that are culturally associated with a lesser-valued femininity have been ignored. The neoclassical orthodoxy focuses on markets and perhaps the public sphere, but categorizes...

Source: Economic Policy Institute

from Peter Radford This has been a long and miserable time. Deluged daily by strange and almost surrealistic gyrations in Washington I decided to sit to one side and simply watch. The spectacle of America rapidly decaying and apparently unable to prevent itself from gnawing away at its institutions is compelling. The regular attempts to undermine the credibility of everything meant to act as a bastion against tyranny is riveting. The subsequent indulgence in endless introspection about...

from Lars Syll The incorporation of new information makes sense only if the future is to be similar to the past. Any kind of empirical test, whatever form it adopts, will not make sense, however, if the world is uncertain because in such a world induction does not work. Past experience is not a useful guide to guess the future in these conditions (it only serves when the future, somehow, is already implicit in the present) … I believe the only way to use past experience is to assume that...