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Real-World Economics Review

When it comes to prescription drugs, the Washington Post can’t even conceive of free trade

from Dean Baker Like many self-imagined “free-traders,” the Washington Post editorial board cannot even conceive of free trade when it comes to prescription drugs. They demonstrated this fact yet again in discussing ways to deal with the high price of effective weight-loss drugs like Wegovy. These drugs carry price tags of more than $1,000 a month, making them costly for insurers, governments, or individuals who have to pick up the tab themselves. The Post throws out a couple of ideas...

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Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy 80 years later: a WEA Conference

from Maria Alejandra Madi I am writing today about a new online conference of the World Economics Association ”Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy 80 years later: Looking at capitalism today in light of its past and possible future”.  It runs from 1st February to 28th February, 2024.  You can find more information about it here: https://capitalismanddemocracy2024.weaconferences.net/ Home Background Submissions Register Frequently Asked Questions Conference Leaders Arturo Hermann and...

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Scientific fraud

from Lars Syll In 2022, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) placed a large bet on an experimental drug developed to limit brain damage after strokes … The gamble seemed warranted. Lab studies, most by a longtime grantee, prominent University of Southern California (USC) neuroscientist Berislav Zlokovic, had generated promising data. A small safety study of the drug, sponsored by a company Zlokovic co-founded called ZZ Biotech, was also encouraging. Because of its potential to...

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The biometric-digital marking of all citizens of the world is becoming reality

from Norbert Häring Shortly after it has become known that hackers are offering the identity data of most Indians from the world’s largest digital identity database for sale, the European Parliament and Council have agreed to introduce something similar for Europeans, while Washington praises the Ukrainian version as an export model and Bill Gates wants to impose a biometric digital marker on every newborn child in Kenya for life. In early October, IT security...

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Milanovic gets feisty

from Peter Radford To ignore power is to ignore reality. How can you construct a theory of economic activity that excludes the power embedded in relationships between the various actors on the stage you are directing?  More to the point why would you?  To ignore power is to ignore reality. I think, perhaps we need to reverse those two questions.  You see, power matters even in the construction of economic theories. The reason you ignore power is because the powerful want you to. It’s that...

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Book reviews in the RWER Blog

Two days ago in a comment, Yoshinori Shiozawa offered the following suggestion. I have proposed to create a forum in which heterodox economists can inform each other and discuss the future directions of heterodox economics. The simplest and easiest [way] to start is to organize a series of book reviews (or paper reviews if necessary) in this RWER Blog. If the editors of this blog offer a space (a post for reviewing a book or a paper) once a month, or each two months, for example, it will...

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The purist streak in economics

from Lars Syll So in what sense is this “dynamic stochastic general equilibrium” model firmly grounded in the principles of economic theory? I do not want to be misunderstood. Friends have reminded me that much of the effort of “modern macro” goes into the incorporation of important deviations from the Panglossian assumptions that underlie the simplistic application of the Ramsey model to positive macroeconomics. Research focuses on the implications of wage and price stickiness, gaps and...

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The European Central Bank, “Fisher dynamics” and the dire plight of Euro Area households.

Will lower central bank interest rates at this moment lead to lower consumer rates? No, they won’t. The, at this moment, low rates on existing debt will continue to increase for years on end, cutting in household spending and hampering the possibility of households to pay down their debt. Figure 1. Interest rates for new mortgage contracts, the Netherlands. At this moment, Central Banks seem to take a break when it comes to increasing their interest rates. Maybe they will even...

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Threats to the US dollar’s role as global reserve currency

from Maria Alejandra Madi and RWEA pedagogy Blog 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of the “weekend that changed the world”, when US President Richard Nixon suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. From a monetary point of view, since then there has been continued dominance of the dollar as a vehicle for international transactions. However, Is the dollar as the world’s reserve currency under attack? The dollar’s dominance in global markets is still significant, with its role in...

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Weekend read – Blood and Oil in the Orient: A 2023 Update

from Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan [1] The Hamas-Israel War The 2023 war between Hamas and Israel elicits many different explanations. As with previous regional hostilities, here too, the pundits and commentators have numerous overlapping processes to draw on – from the struggle between the Zionist and Palestinian national movements, to the deep hostility between the Rabbinate and Islamic churches, to the many conflicts between Israel and Arab/Muslim states, the contentions between...

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