Tag Archives: Economics

from Peter Radford  This is something I need to get off my desktop.  It’s just for fun … Asymmetry is the very beginning and end of an economy.  It’s the bumps that matter.  Explain them and you explain the economy.  After all the very notion of exchange presumes differences between those involved, and difference is just another way off saying asymmetry.  Sweep the bumps away with a broad brush of supposedly superb logic and you eliminate the very object of your study.  That is if your...

Årets ‘Nobelpris’ i ekonomi — gammal skåpmat! Bo Rothstein, seniorforskare i statsvetenskap vid Göteborgs universitet, har två invändningar mot att Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien delar ut 2024 års ekonomipris till den amerikanska forskartrion Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson och James A. Robinson.  – Jag kan inte se att de har kommit med någonting teoretiskt nytt. Denna idé om institutionernas betydelse fick ju Douglass North ekonomipriset för redan för 31 år...

Germany’s ‘debt brake’ — a ridiculously bad idea .[embedded content]

[unable to retrieve full-text content]When an economy produces goods and services above and beyond the requisite, i.e., produces an abundance, it creates wealth.  Ten-eleven thousand years ago, this wealth was likely food stored for winter, that rainy day, that dry season, … .  Today, for some, this abundance/wealth might include assets such as fine houses, lifestyle, money, …; and […] The post Wealth –  Money – Worth appeared first on Angry Bear.

Pourquoi la dette publique n’est pas un problème. .[embedded content] Une des erreurs fondamentales dans le débat actuel sur la dette publique et le déficit budgétaire est de ne pas distinguer entre différents types de dettes. Même s’il est vrai qu’à l’échelle macroéconomique, les dettes et les actifs s’équilibrent nécessairement, il est loin d’être insignifiant de savoir qui détient les actifs et qui supporte les dettes. Pendant longtemps, on a hésité à...

It is a great fault of symbolic pseudo-mathematical methods of formalising a system of economic analysis … that they expressly assume strict independence between the factors involved and lose all their cogency and authority if this hypothesis is disallowed; whereas, in ordinary discourse, where we are not blindly manipulating but know all the time what we are doing and what the words mean, we can keep “at the back of our heads” the necessary reserves and qualifications and the...

Wir sparen uns zu Tode: Gegen die Schuldenbremse .[embedded content] Viele Politiker und mediale ‘Experten’ scheinen (oder wollen) nicht verstehen, dass ein entscheidender Unterschied zwischen privaten und öffentlichen Schulden besteht. Wenn eine Einzelperson versucht zu sparen und ihre Schulden zu reduzieren, kann das durchaus vernünftig sein. Aber wenn alle dies tun, sinkt die gesamtwirtschaftliche Nachfrage, und das Risiko einer steigenden...

Uncertainty, learning, and rational expectations The rational expectations hypothesis presupposes — basically for reasons of consistency — that agents have complete knowledge of all of the relevant probability distribution functions. When trying to incorporate learning in these models — trying to take the heat of some of the criticism launched against it up to date — it is always a very restricted kind of learning that is considered. A learning where truly...

from Dean Baker New York Times columnist Christopher Caldwell devoted his Thanksgiving piece to describing the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck’s views on capitalism and democracy.  I have not read much of Streeck’s work, but as recounted by Caldwell, he gets many of the basic facts about the U.S. economy badly wrong. According to Caldwell’s account, capitalists were willing to sacrifice profits in the decades after World War II for stability. This meant less dynamism but allowed...

Top 100 Economics Blogs Mainstream economics has sadly made economics increasingly irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. Trying to contribute to making economics a more realist and relevant science, yours truly launched this blog in March 2011. Now, thirteen years later and with millions of page views, yours truly’s blog is ranked on Top 100 Economics Blogs. I am — of course — truly awed, honoured and delighted.