Tag Archives: Brad DeLong

In which I read Paul Krugman, & once again find myself arguing myself into believing that the Federal Reserve ought to have spent this spring cutting interest rates . . . by Brad Delong Grasping Reality Newsletter AB: I receive some of Brad DeLong’s commentaries in my inbox. I read them and have not posted them because I feel guilty for doing so. The commentary (which includes Paul Krugman) if read carefully agrees with what some of us...

If Cohen and De Long (2016) are to be believed, there is an American Political Economy tradition, that harks back to Alexander Hamilton, that goes against the free market canon of the profession. In their view, the American Political Economy tradition consist of an interventionist approach to economic policy, that arguably should be seen as neomercantilist [1]. Classical political economy, as represented by their main figures in the United Kingdom, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, upheld the...

Book Review: “Slouching Towards Utopia,” J. Bradford DeLong, (foreignaffairs.com), Liaquat Ahamed I am not going to put all of the review of Brad’s book Slouching Towards Utopia here. I thought I would alert AB readers to it and point to the freebie (for me at least and I believe you too) review at Foreign Affairs. Brad DeLong’s highly anticipated economic history of the twentieth century, Slouching Towards Utopia, begins with the reminder that...

Brad DeLong has written a primer on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), and just gave an important lesson about MMT: if you want to understand MMT, you need to read a primer written by a MMTer. I am not going to hold myself out as an expert on DeLong's thinking, but I would argue that a fear of bond market disruptions is a constant theme in his writings. Bond Economics If You Want To Understand MMT...Brian Romanchuk

So if you believe a simplified version of conservative views on the economy, Trumponomics is pretty contradictory (and yes they are contradictory, even if one may doubts about why). Tax cuts should lead to growth, via supply side economics, and the recently proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum do exactly the opposite. Protectionism (not a very good name, I prefer managed trade, as I discussed here before) has made a come back, but while many heterodox economists have suggested that 'free...

Hamilton's Reports, posthumous 1821 edition Stephen Cohen* and Brad DeLong, in their highly readable book Concrete Economics: The Hamilton Approach to Economic Growth and Policy (if you haven't, go buy a copy now), argue that “Alexander Hamilton [was a] major economic theorist. His theory of economic development, first set out in his famous Report on Manufactures (1791), not only reshaped America’s economy but was channeled by Frederich List half a century later to play a central role...

Last weekend, as a result of Brad DeLong's post on free trade, we had a brief Twitter exchange. He had suggested that the Heckscher-Ohlin (HO) model* implies gains from trade associated to comparative advantage. He went further and suggested, after I implied that the Methuen Treaty between England and Portugal had not been favorable to the latter, that Portugal had indeed benefited greatly from free trade.It is important to note, before we get to Portugal, that the HO model, which is a...