Real-World Economics Review

“Household Income by Percentile, for the time period 2019 to 2020. The open circle represents an estimate of income in the top percentile, including income gains for billionaires reported in April 2020.”Source: Rhys McCarney – https://medium.com/@rhys.mccarney/wealth-inequality-the-gini-coefficient-and-the-pandemic-economy-fbc6a19bdd43    “Each point represents the wealth of one household in the approximate middle of the percentile.”Source: Rhys McCarney –...

Dean Baker joins Julianna for a discussion about the real story and impact of so called supply chain disruptions. Surprise! It's mostly fear-mongering. But then guess what... they talked about everything else: housing, student loans, free college, and Biden. Dean Baker co-founded The Center for Economic and Policy Research in 1999. His areas of research include housing and macroeconomics, intellectual property, Social Security, Medicare and European labor markets. He is the author of several...

from Lars Syll According to Abba Lerner, the purpose of public debt is “to achieve a rate of interest which results in the most desirable level of investment.” He also maintained that an application of Functional finance will have a tendency to balance the budget in the long run: Finally, there is no reason for assuming that, as a result of the continued application of Functional Finance to maintain full employment, the government must always be borrowing more money and increasing the...

from Dean Baker People in policy debates are not supposed to question the desirability of patent monopolies as a mechanism for financing the development of new drugs and vaccines. After all, why ask a question that could jeopardize the profits of some of the world’s largest corporations? But, since I live out in Southern Utah, far away from the great centers of policy debate, I thought I would ask the question in reference to vaccines against Covid. To be specific, suppose that...

United States

Axel Leijonhufvud – 1973 The Econ tribe occupies a vast territory in the far North. Their land appears bleak and dismal to the outsider, and travelling through it makes for rough sledding; but the Econ, through a long period of adaptation, have learned to wrest a living of sorts from it. They are not without some genuine and sometimes even fierce attachment to their ancestral grounds, and their young are brought up to feel contempt for the softer living in the warmer lands of their...

  The Rise and Fall of Debate in Economicsjoseph a. francis New data illustrate the extent to which economists have stopped discussing each other’s work. Once upon a time, economists regularly used to publicly criticise each other’s work in academic journals. But not any more. read more

from Lars Syll Economic growth has since long interested economists. Not least, the question of which factors are behind high growth rates has been in focus. The factors usually pointed at are mainly economic, social and political variables. In an interesting study from the University of  Helsinki, Tatu Westling has expanded the potential causal variables to also include biological and sexual variables. In  the report Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size Matter, he has — based on the...

TRADE WARS AFTER CORONAVIRUSEconomic, political and theoretical implications A webinar from the WEA Friday May 28, 2021.   5pm-7pm,  London Time.    LINK:  meet.google.com/nxr-ucuj-agf     1. WELCOME. Maria Alejandra Madi, Chair WEA Conference Programme 2. PRESENTATIONS America’s Trade Deficits: Blame U.S. Policies – Starting with Tax Laws Kenneth E. Austin University of Maryland The interplays of US, China and their intellectual monopolies Cecilia Rikap and Ariel Slipak Cecilia Rikap:...