Tag Archives: Economics

Mainstream economics — a waste of time on a staggering scale Though an enthusiast of reason, I believe that rational choice theory has failed abysmally, and it saddens me that this failure has brought discredit upon the very enterprise of serious theorizing in the field of social study … Rational choice theory is far too ambitious. In fact, it claims to explain everything social in terms of just three assumptions that would hold for all individuals in all...

The Keynes-Ramsey-Savage debate on probability Mainstream economics nowadays usually assumes that agents that have to make choices under conditions of uncertainty behave according to Bayesian rules, axiomatized by Ramsey (1931) and Savage (1954) — that is, they maximize expected utility with respect to some subjective probability measure that is continually updated according to Bayes theorem. If not, they are supposed to be irrational, and ultimately — via...

How Richard Posner became a Keynesian Until [2008], when the banking industry came crashing down and depression loomed for the first time in my lifetime, I had never thought to read The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, despite my interest in economics … I had heard that it was a very difficult book and that the book had been refuted by Milton Friedman, though he admired Keynes’s earlier work on monetarism. I would not have been surprised...

A government with the authority to tax can ensure acceptance of a particular currency. By nominating a currency in which income and wealth are to be assessed, and imposing taxes that can only be paid in the nominated currency, the government establishes a demand for the currency. This is true whether the government issues its own currency or instead adopts a currency issued by some other entity. But a government that adopts somebody else’s currency is reduced to the status of mere...

Leontief’s devastating critique of econom(etr)ics Much of current academic teaching and research has been criticized for its lack of relevance, that is, of immediate practical impact … I submit that the consistently indifferent performance in practical applications is in fact a symptom of a fundamental imbalance in the present state of our discipline. The weak and all too slowly growing empirical foundation clearly cannot support the proliferating...

Vi undersöker hur skolsegregationen rent hypotetiskt skulle ha utvecklats om alla elever gått i den närmsta kommunala skolan, och inte haft möjlighet att välja skola. I figuren visas denna utveckling med den svarta linjen. I början av 1990-talet gick nästan alla elever i den närmsta skolan och därför är skillnaden mellan verklig skolsegregation (blå linje) och hypotetisk skolsegregation (svart linje) inte så stor. Utvecklingen av den svarta linjen visar att skolsegregationen...

The latest I’ve seen on the Uganda election is that ballot counting continues, I thought I saw police had disrupted counting at at least one location, and opposition candidate, singer Bobi Wine says the military has stationed themselves in and around his home without explanation. My boss, Annie Duflo, is profiled in the Wall Street Journal this weekend. Charles Kenny has a new paper and blog post out arguing aid would help the most people if it prioritized the poorest places first. He also...

MMT-perspektiv på pengar och skatter Om stater inte alls behöver sina medborgares pengar, varför betalar vi då överhuvudtaget skatt? Stephanie Kelton: – Ponera att den amerikanska staten skulle slopa alla skatter utan att samtidigt skära ned på sina utgifter. Om jag inte längre behöver betala någon skatt kan jag såklart göra av med mer pengar – problemet är bara att ekonomin och dess samlade arbetsstyrka samtidigt endast har en begränsad mängd extra varor...

Interview mit Stephanie Kelton Kelton: Die Vorstellung, dass Staaten nur eine begrenzte Menge an Geld zur Verfügung hätten, kommt aus einer Zeit, in der die Währung in den meisten Ländern in der einen oder anderen Form an Edelmetalle wie Gold oder Silber gekoppelt war. Heute ist das nicht mehr so. Geld wird einfach gedruckt – genauer gesagt: im Computer erzeugt. Es lässt sich beliebig vermehren. ZEIT: Das klingt jetzt so, als würden Sie einem Kind sagen:...

This paper critiques the trilemma framing of the political economy of globalization, and offers an alternative framing rooted in the construct of national policy space. Globalization causes changes in policy space which have drop-down implications for national sovereignty and democratic politics. Globalization involves choices regarding the “degree”, “type”, and “dimensions” of international economic integration. Contrary […]