Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

Arindrajit Dube writes an obituary for Alan Krueger, in Slate. Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, at INET, highlights Krishna Bharadwaj's contributions to economics. Longtime commentator Emil Bakkum's web page, collecting a variety of resources, is here. An advocate of Modern Monetary Theory, Brian Romanchuk is apparently writing a book about models supposedly of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium. Some recent posts include: Questions about time scales in DSGE models. Anticipations have a time...

1.0 Introduction By "libertarianism", I mean propertarianism, a right-wing doctrine. In this post, I want to outline some ways of arguing against this set of ideas. (On this topic, Mike Huben has much more extensive resources than I can allude to.) 2.0 On Individual Details I like to use certain policy ideas as a springboard for arguments that they have no coherent justification in economic theory. Unsurprisingly, the outdated nonsense market fundamentalists push does not have empirical...

This is current events, and but post is about current events in Britain in 1920. Lenin comments on reports of a dispute between Lloyd George and H. H. Asquith, both leaders of the Liberal party: [In] the speech delivered by Prime Minister Lloyd George on March 18, 1920... Lloyd George entered into a polemic with Asquith (who had been especially invited to this meeting but declined to attend) and with those Liberals who want, not a coalition with the Conservatives, but closer relations...

The literature on neoliberalism is large. Here are some scholarly books on this subject or on related matters: The power of market fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's critique, by Fred Block & Margaret R. Somers (2016). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism's stealth revolution, by Wendy Brown (2015). The great persuasion: Reinventing free markets since the Depression, by Angus Burgin (2015). The strange non-death of neoliberalism, by Colin Crouch (2013). The birth of biopolitics: lectures at...

Figure 1: A Production Network I here comment on Baqaee and Farhi (2018). I am still trying to absorb it. I suppose that it is nice that an economist at Harvard is revisiting the Cambridge Capital Controversy (CCC). (Where is Michael Mandler these days?) My major criticism is they do not do what their title claims. That is, their supposed microeconomic foundations are still up in the air. In many CCC examples, technology is specified in terms of fixed-coefficient production processes....

I tend to be doubtful, albeit sometimes amused, by comments drawing on Hegel. But I thought I would adopt some of that sort of language for a post. Capitalism constantly revolutionizes production, leading to a fantastic increase in productivity. An ever more diverse set of commodities is produced, including for consumption. Machines for making, controlling, and communicating with other machines, are constantly being introduced, reducing the labor time needed to produce any commodity....

This is merely a list and, as usual, off the top of my head. Paul A. Samuelson (1966). A summing up. Quarterly Journal of Economics 80: 568-583. Mark Blaug (1975). The Cambridge revolution: Success of failure? A critical analysis of Cambridge theories of value and distribution. Institute of Economic Affairs. Joseph E. Stiglitz (1974). The Cambridge-Cambridge controversy on the theory of capital: A view from New Haven. Christopher J. Bliss (1975). Capital Theory and the Distribution of...

Here is a list of female economists I have learned from or would like to know more about: Jane Marcet Harriet Martineau Charlotte Perkins Gilman Rosa Luxemburg Edith Penrose Joan Robinson Krishna Bharadwaj Anne Mayhew Phyliss Deane Victoria Chick Ingrid Rima Nancy Folbre Obviously, this list reflects my interests and biases. This list is off the top of my head.

Don Harris is a Stanford economist. Apparently, this post is on current events. His daughter, Kamala Harris is the junior senator from California and has announced that she is running for President of the United States. I gather Don and his wife divorced when Kamala was quite young, and that his ex-wife raised her. I do not know much about Harris' personal history. I did not even know that he was Jamaican. Did he give Michael Manley any advice? (This is a great movie.) It is his more...

Some articles: Josh Barro, in New York Magazine. Noah Smith, in Bloomberg. Linette Lopez, in Business Insider. Michael Strain, also in Bloomberg. I do not assert that all points in these articles are well-taken. I think of MMT as descriptive. It combines endogenous money, functional finance, and chartalism. Much of its empirical evidence consists of qualitative descriptions of how financial institutions and central banks operate. One can imagine a policy regime where unemployment and...