Tag Archives: Economics

To understand real world ‘non-routine’ decisions and unforeseeable changes in behaviour, ergodic probability distributions are of no avail. In a world full of genuine uncertainty — where real historical time rules the roost — the probabilities that ruled the past are not necessarily those that will rule the future. When we cannot accept that the observations, along the time-series available to us, are independent … we have, in strict logic, no more than one observation, all of...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Maybe It’s the “Job Creators” That Should Be More Grateful…: I guess the good news is that Trump was just doing what everyone else dows. The bad news is that Trump was just doing what everyone else does.

Public debt — an economic necessity We are not going to get out of the economic doldrums as long as we continue to be obsessed with the unreasoned ideological goal of reducing the so-called deficit. The “deficit” is not an economic sin but an economic necessity. […] The administration is trying to bring the Titanic into harbor with a canoe paddle, while Congress is arguing over whether to use an oar or a paddle, and the Perot’s and budget balancers seem...

In case you wanted to spend your evening reading me not knowing much about 5G… :) Technology knowledge gaps notwithstanding, I think there’s a lot to consider regarding new communication technologies from an economic standpoint- as you can probably tell from the transcript, the big thing that I find interesting is that existing broadband and, to some degree, wireless companies have higher opportunity costs of offering new technologies since they would at least partially be cannibalizing...

Seven sins of economics There has always been some level of scepticism about the ability of economists to offer meaningful predictions and prognosis about economic and social phenomenon. That scepticism has heightened in the wake of the global financial crisis, leading to what is arguably the biggest credibility crisis the discipline has faced in the modern era. Some of the criticisms against economists are misdirected. But the major thrust of the...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Causal Friday: Some Real Effects of the Flint Water Crisis…: Depressing and a good use of data analysis tools, all in one…

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Madina Nalwanga as chess champion Phiona Mutesi in the film Queen of Katwe.Photo: Edward Echwalu/Disney Recognizing that an increasing amount of development policy is being done in developing countries, the prominent British NGO Oxfam is moving its headquarters from the UK to Nairobi. There’s some evidence that being exposed to relatable role models can improve performance in school or at work. A newly-published RCT...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Madina Nalwanga as chess champion Phiona Mutesi in the film Queen of Katwe.Photo: Edward Echwalu/Disney Recognizing that an increasing amount of development policy is being done in developing countries, the prominent British NGO Oxfam is moving its headquarters from the UK to Nairobi. There’s some evidence that being exposed to relatable role models can improve performance in school or at work. A newly-published RCT compared the...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Madina Nalwanga as chess champion Phiona Mutesi in the film Queen of Katwe.Photo: Edward Echwalu/Disney Recognizing that an increasing amount of development policy is being done in developing countries, the prominent British NGO Oxfam is moving its headquarters from the UK to Nairobi. There’s some evidence that being exposed to relatable role models can improve performance in school or at work. A newly-published RCT compared the...

Game theory and the shaping of neoliberal capitalism Neoliberal subjectivity arises from the intricate pedagogy of game theory that comes to the fore in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game and is interchangeable with contemporary paradigmatic instrumental rationality. Rational choice is promoted as an exhaustive science of decision making, but only by smuggling in a characteristic​ confusion​ suggesting​ that everything of value​ to agents can be reflected in...