Tag Archives: Economics

Knut Wicksell’s principle of just taxation My claim is that the very concept of taxation presupposes that all incomes are equally justified. This applies no matter which principle of taxation one wishes to put into practice. A tax that only reduces by a certain amount what a person unjustly possesses cannot be regarded as an appropriate compensation on his part for the efforts the state has made on his behalf, nor can it be seen as a sacrifice comparable...

La baisse des taux d’intérêt La politique monétaire des pays de l’OCDE est devenue très expansionniste depuis la crise de 2008-2009. Les taux d’intérêt des banques centrales ont beaucoup baissé (2,25 % aux Etats-Unis aujourd’hui, 0 % dans la zone euro et au Japon) … Pourtant, on ne voit pas d’effets très positifs de cette politique monétaire extraordinairement expansionniste. La croissance est en train de ralentir ; le taux d’investissement des entreprises...

One of the original Kodak “Shirley” cardsGuest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Have fun to everybody at the NEUDC conference this weekend! Fun fact: the Northeast Universities Development Consortium conference is being held at Northwestern, which is neither in the Northeast, nor the Northwest. The conference has never been held at Northeastern University. So for everybody complaining about confusing econ speak, this is what they do to themselves.An interesting idea...

The primary problem with mainstream economics Jamie Morgan: To a member of the public it must seem weird that it is possible to state, as you do, such fundamental criticism of an entire field of study. The perplexing issue from a third party point of view is how do we reconcile good intention (or at least legitimate sense of self as a scholar), and power and influence in the world with error, failure and falsity in some primary sense; given that the primary...

Die schwarze Null ist völliger ökonomischer Unsinn Jürgen Zurheide: Da kommt natürlich sofort die Frage, wie wollen Sie das dann finanzieren? Wir tragen die schwarze Null wie eine Monstranz vor uns her, wollen Sie die opfern? Sebastian Dullien: Die schwarze Null ist völliger ökonomischer Unsinn. Das hat überhaupt keinen Sinn und keinen Zweck. Zurzeit zahlt Deutschland für seine Staats-schulden keine Zinsen, wenn es neue Schulden aufnimmt. Gestern waren zum...

Unser Umgang mit Fremden ist heute durch die Institutionen des Marktes und des Geldes geprägt – und die abstrakte “Sprache des Preises”. Diese Institutionen lassen sich jedoch nur begrenzt in die Menschheitsgeschichte zurückspiegeln. Unsere Wirtschaftsform ist das Ergebnis massiver gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen innerhalb weniger Jahrhunderte. Kapitalismus entsteht im Kopf: nicht als Instinkt, sondern als Idee. Unter anderem durch Gelehrte, die auch die moderne...

What’s wrong with Krugman’s economics? Krugman writes: “So how do you do useful economics? In general, what we really do is combine maximization-and-equilibrium as a first cut with a variety of ad hoc modifications reflecting what seem to be empirical regularities about how both individual behavior and markets depart from this idealized case.” But if you ask the New Classical economists, they’ll say, this is exactly what we do—combine...

Why we need pluralist economics  [embedded content] The only economic analysis that mainstream economists accept is the one that takes place within the analytic-formalistic modeling strategy that makes up the core of mainstream economics. All models and theories that do not live up to the precepts of the mainstream methodological canon are pruned. You’re free to take your models — not using (mathematical) models at all is considered totally unthinkable —...

How to do — and not to do — economics [embedded content][embedded content] Great lectures on how to do — and not to do — economics, delivered by a great historian and economist, Robert Skidelsky. Here you can follow them all.

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action First, a word from Chris (click the linked screenshot below for the whole interesting story): Here’s that link to his CV (including a graduate degree from Columbia). But you can hear him and Chris on Freakonomics talk about the program he developed in Liberia. The American Economic Association released its full report on the professional climate survey it ran and it’s not good. Ben Casselman from The New York Times, who has done a...