Tag Archives: economic policy

That’s the headline for my latest piece in The Conversation. Probably a better choice than the one I supplied. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

I’ve been busy for the last week doing events for Economics in Two Lessons, so I didn’t have time to take part in the discussion arising from Harry’s post on alternatives to Sanders’ proposal to wipe out college debt. In one way, that’s a pity because the key point of the book is the idea of opportunity cost – the true cost of anything, for us as individuals, and for society as a whole, is what you must give up to get it. More precisely, it’s the best alternative available to us....

If there were two lessons that can be taken from the GFC among others then we should know, once and for all, that, first, monetary policy (in all its glorious forms these days) is not a very effective tool for influencing the level of economic activity nor the price level, and, second, that fiscal policy is very effective in manipulating total spending and activity. Of course, those lessons provided the evidence that turned macroeconomics on its head because for several decades, as the...

I’ve got quite a few events coming up in the next couple of weeks.* On 13 and 14 May, I’m running a workshop at the University of Queensland on Epistemic & Personal Transformation:Dealing with the Unknowable and Unimaginable. Details here.* On Thursday 16 May, I’ll be at ANU for the official Australian launch of Economics in Two Lessons.  Details are here. If campaigning permits, Andrew Leigh will say a few words about the book. There will be a launch at Avid Reader in Brisbane...

That’s the headline for my latest piece in Inside Story, along with the short version of my answer. The long answer is that, even with dubious modelling choices and extreme parameter assumptions, Brian Fisher of BAEcon* comes up with estimates of about 2 per cent of GDP, trivial compared to the potential cost. So, he uses the same presentational trick he’s been using since the first ABARE modelling exercise back in 1996, turning an annual flow into a present value over ten years to...

The concept of opportunity cost “The opportunity cost of anything of value is what you must give up so that you can have it.” is the central theme of my book Economics in Two Lessons, due out in the US on 19 April and hopefully in Australia soon after that. My central claim is that two lessons based on opportunity cost and their relationship to market prices provide a framework within which almost any problem in economic policy can usefully be considered. That’s not the way...

I’m a signatory of a public letter on the benefits of stronger wage growth this morning, organized by the Centre for Future Work. In support of the letter, I said For decades, government policy has been designed to weaken unions and push wages down. It’s time to put that process into reverse. A list of all the signers is at this web site: https://www.futurework.org.au/wages_open_letter. That site also contains a media release that was distributed to reporters this morning,...

The slides from my Keith Hancock lecture at ANU, which I gave last week, are here. More on this soon. Like this:Like Loading...

I’ll be giving a public lecture on The Future of Work at ANU on 6 March. It’s the Keith Hancock* lecture, sponsored by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, in honour of one our great labour economists. Details are here . An outline The outcomes of technological change are affected by the interaction of changes in the regulation of labour markets and the stance of public policy. For the last 40 years, changes in labour market regulation have been almost uniformly...

This is the second and final part of this cameo set, which aims to clear up a few major blind spots in peoples’ embrace with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). This is all repetition. I don’t apologise for that and it does not reflect a slack or bad editorial approach from yours truly as some critics have claimed. Repetition is how we learn. Reinforcing things in different ways (aka repetition) helps people come to terms with concepts and ideas that give them dissonance. MMT is certainly about...