Real-World Economics Review

from Peter Radford As I awake from my self-imposed slumber and re-survey the state of economics: Nothing has changed. This is predictable, and, I submit, is the most predictable phenomenon within the ambit of the discipline. Economics is in disrepute, and its current elite are determined to keep it there. The latest ersatz Nobel prize went to a couple of guys who theorize a lot about contracts. This is the kind of work that now dominates much of economics. Tinkering with mathematics,...

You have until 30 October to submit to [email protected] a paper for the WEA online conference Food and Justice. from Asad Zaman If any group of concerned citizens would gather to discuss economic problems, it would seem natural to begin with the problem of feeding the hungry. Strangely enough, one would not encounter this problem within a standard course of study of economic theory at any of the leading universities throughout the world. This is due to two major mistakes made...

Dean Baker Crab Feed

From today’s Guardian The Nobel prize in economics takes too little account of social democracyAvner Offer The Nobel prize in economics will be announced today. For economists, it is the pinnacle of reputation. When the word Nobel becomes attached to a winner’s name, his word acquires newsworthy authority (only one woman, Elinor Ostrom, has won the prize so far). The prize matters to everyone else too, because of market liberalism, which advocates marketisation, deregulation,...

from David Ruccio In a recently leaked audio file (from a private fundraiser in February), Hillary Clinton referred to them as “children of the Great Recession. . .living in their parents’ basement,” who “feel they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they don’t see much of a future.”* Well, as it turns out, the children of the Great Recession, especially those who completed college in recent years, were right:...

New paperback from WEA BooksA Philosophical Framework for Rethinking Theoretical Economics and Philosophy of Economics by Gustavo Marquesis now available from the Amazon pages listed below Here are links to the book’s pages on the various AmazonsUnited States $18.50,  Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom £14.25 This book argues that mainstream theoretical economics has been a basically misdirected effort at creating and exploring imaginary...

from David Ruccio The case for changing the way we teach economics is—or should be—obvious. It certainly is apparent to the students of Manchester University’s  Post-Crash Economics Society and to the other 44 student groups, members of Rethinking Economics, pressing for pedagogical changes on campuses from Canada to Italy and from Brazil to Uganda. But as anyone who teaches or studies economics these days knows full well, the mainstream that has long dominated economics (especially at...

from Mark Weisbrot Republican nominee Donald Trump’s embarrassments and scandals keep piling up, from his Twitter meltdown last Friday night to The New York Times revelations that he could have gotten away without paying income taxes for the past 18 years. These may have some impact on the race, although it’s tough to guess how much. But a recent piece in the Times about Trump’s potential influence on the stock market could really take some votes away from him, if it happens to go...

The potential future costs of financial fragility and asset price bubbles raise the prospect of policy whiplash effects due to contradictions between current and future policy actions. The economy currently suffers from shortage of AD owing to systemic failings related to income inequality and trade deficit leakages. That demand shortage was papered over by a thirty-year credit bubble plus successive asset price bubbles, which eventually burst with the financial crisis of 2008. Now,...

Negative interest rates or 100% reserves: alchemy vs chemistry Herman Daly   [University of Maryland, USA] The close connection of fractional reserve banking with alchemy was recently emphasized by Mervyn King, former head of the Bank of England, in the very title of his recent book, The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Failure of the Global Economy. He refers to the more thorough development of this connection by Swiss ecological economist H. C. Binswanger in his brilliant study,...