Tag Archives: Economics

Jon Elster on mainstream economics — obscurant bullshit In the present article I consider the less frequently phenomenon of “hard obscurantism”, a species of the genus scholarly obscurantism. In academic debates, a more common term for obscurantism is “bullshit” … One may perhaps, distinguish between obscure writers and obscurantist writers. The former aim at truth, but do not respect the norms for arriving at truth, such as focusing on causality, acting as...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Above: Maintaining attention for a long interview is always a challenge Fake news is already disrupting Kenya’s election. Qualtrics, the research software company, did a randomized experiment testing the kinds of extra questions researchers embed in surveys to make sure respondents are paying attention and answering thoughtfully. They found including those questions earlier in a survey actually led to respondents performing...

Why not even Paul Krugman is a real Keynesian Keynes’s insights have enormous practical importance, according to Lance Taylor and Duncan Foley … But isn’t Keynes now mainstream? No, say Foley and Taylor. The mainstream still sees economies as inherently moving to an optimal equilibrium … It still says demand causes short-run fluctuations, but only supply factors, such as the capital stock and technology, can affect long-run growth. EVEN PAUL KRUGMAN, a...

Principal agent problems and incentive pay schemes If bonus or “incentive pay” schemes work so well for senior executives and bankers, why does everyone not get them? The conventional answer is that a bonus scheme or incentive plan will indeed encourage the recipients to make more money for the shareholders or clients on whose behalf they act … A classic paper on the “principal-agent problem” … by Bengt Holmstrom and Paul Milgrom pointed out that the...

Is Robert Lucas a Keynesian? In his Keynote Address to the 2003 History of Political Economy Conference, Nobel laureate Robert Lucas said: Well, I’m not here to tell people in this group about the history of monetary thought. I guess I’m here as a kind of witness from a vanished culture, the heyday of Keynesian economics. My credentials? Was I a Keynesian myself? Absolutely … I thought when I was trying to prepare some notes for this talk that people...

Defenders of microfoundations and its rational expectations equipped representative agent’s intertemporal optimization often argue as if sticking with simple representative agent macroeconomic models doesn’t impart a bias to the analysis. I unequivocally reject that unsubstantiated view, and have given the reasons why here. These defenders often also maintain that there are no methodologically coherent alternatives to microfoundations modeling. That allegation is of course...

By James Kwak A couple of weeks ago I posted a 6,000-word essay laying out a new economic vision for the Democratic Party. It kind of vanished into the ether, although Stephen Metcalf was kind enough to say this: Reupping. I really think this is a critical, possibly foundational, document, and I seriously urge anyone following my account to read it. https://t.co/CXRxe4OfhU — Stephen Metcalf (@Metlandia) June 16, 2017 So here it is, in 27 words: All people need a few basic things: An...

By James Kwak A couple of weeks ago I posted a 6,000-word essay laying out a new economic vision for the Democratic Party. It kind of vanished into the ether, although Stephen Metcalf was kind enough to say this: Reupping. I really think this is a critical, possibly foundational, document, and I seriously urge anyone following my account to read it. https://t.co/CXRxe4OfhU — Stephen Metcalf (@Metlandia) June 16, 2017 So here it is, in 27 words: All people need a few basic things: An...

Marketization undermining the welfare system Sweden has during the last couple of decades tried to marketize the public welfare sector. The prime mover behind the marketization has (allegedly) been the urge for cost-minimization, freedom of choice, and improved quality. The results have (unsurprisingly) been far from successful. In a recent dissertation presented at Uppsala University, Linda Moberg summarizes her findings on the implications of the...

Bank of England goes MMT  [embedded content] div{float:left;margin-right:10px;} div.wpmrec2x div.u > div:nth-child(3n){margin-right:0px;} ]]> Advertisements