Tag Archives: Pieria

In a lecture presented at the 2011 IMF Annual Research Conference, Hyun Song Shin of Princeton University argued that the driver of the 2007-8 financial crisis was not a global saving glut so much as a global banking glut. He highlighted the role of the European banks in inflating the credit bubble that abruptly burst at the height of the crisis, causing a string of failures of banks and other financial institutions, and economic distress around the globe. European banks borrowed large...

This post originally appeared on Pieria in July 2014. Roger Farmer has a blogpost in which he shows that labour markets don’t clear. Specifically, employment varies with the business cycle, whereas the labour force participation rate and hours worked only show long-term secular trends. During cyclical downturns, therefore, we must conclude that there is more labour available than there are jobs. New Keynesians say that the reason for this is sticky wages. If only nominal wages could fall...

My latest post at Pieria looks at the role of design in a time of change. Using mirrors and glass as metaphors, it maps the transformation of the "spirit of the age" from anxiety to empathy as the world heals from the trauma of the twentieth century's three Great Wars (yes, you read that correctly). And although it is optimistic about the new opportunities for collaboration and sharing that technology creates, it asks whether replacing introspection with connection and opacity with...