Real-World Economics Review

from Lars Syll Once we see how weak the foundations for the natural rate of unemployment are, other arguments for pursuing rates of unemployment economists once thought impossible become more clear. Wages can increase at the expense of corporate profits without causing inflation … The harder we push on improving output and employment, the more we learn how much we can achieve on those two fronts. That hopeful idea is the polar opposite of a natural, unalterable rate of unemployment. And...

from Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan Corporate power in the United States has risen to unprecedented levels, but the rate at which this power has grown is decelerating. Both facts have important implications for the future of U.S. capitalism. According to the theory of capital as power (or CasP for short), the quest for capitalized power – and for more and more of it – is the key driving force of modern capitalism. Capitalists, CasP argues, particularly dominant ones, judge their...

from Lars Syll Wooh! So this is reality!

from Blair Fix We’ve finally reached the end of 2020, a year that many people are happy to forget. In the history books, 2020 will be known for little besides the Covid pandemic. Fortunately, the end of this disaster is in sight. With multiple vaccines starting to roll out, it looks like 2021 will be a better year. Speaking of vaccines, I’ve been racking my brain to find things to be thankful for this holiday season. It’s not easy. My wife, daughter and I are in lockdown in Toronto. The...

from Dean Baker The approach of the end of the year seems a good time to sum up thoughts. My comments here will not be news to regular readers, but may be to others. Also, this exercise is helpful for me to keep my thoughts clear. (I also expect to take next week off, so you won’t be hearing from me for a while.) Most of my work for the last several years has been focused on ways to reduce before tax inequality by reducing the amount of before-tax income that goes to those at the top of...

from Lars Syll Suppose you conducted an observational study to identify the effect of heart transplant A on death Y and that you assumed no unmeasured confounding given disease severity L. A critic of your study says “the inferences from this observational study may be incorrect because of potential confounding.” The critic is not making a scientific statement, but a logical one. Since the findings from any observational study may be confounded, it is obviously true that those of your...

Marcellus Andrews I am sorry to say that I am about to confirm my marginal status in the economics profession by digging into a most unpleasant aspect of the already far too scary matter of climate change. I am going to consider why climate change will inevitably shred the contemporary American social contract – that evolving mix of markets and violence that creates knowledge and wealth, billionaires and prisoners, opportunity and social death in ways that fascinate and horrify the rest...

from Asad Zaman A previous post on “Causes of the Global Financial Crisis” provided a detailed summary of the first three chapters of “House of Debt” by Mian and Sufi. This post provides a brief summary of Chapters 4 and 5, in which they present a theoretical framework which explains why leveraged debt leads to high unemployment following a shock to asset prices. The main insight is that the problem is caused by interest-based debt contracts which put most of the risks of default on the...

from C. P. Chandrasekhar On December 12, in an outburst of suppressed anger, workers employed at a factory assembling iPhones in Narasapura near Bengaluru ransacked its premises and damaged parked vehicles. The facility is a unit of Wistron, a Taiwanese vendor engaged in assembly of Apple iPhones, that had begun commercial operations only recently. This made the worker action surprising to say the least. Workers recently employed in a known foreign-invested firm are not likely to turn...

from Dean Baker It is more than a bit annoying to hear reporters endlessly refer to China as the world’s second largest economy. It isn’t. It’s the world’s largest economy and has been since 2017. Here are the data from the International Monetary Fund. Source: International Monetary Fund. As the chart shows, China’s economy first passed the U.S. in 2017. It is projected to be more than 16 percent larger this year, and by 2025 is projected to be almost 40 percent larger by 2025....