Tag Archives: Simon Wren-Lewis

It is Wednesday and only a relatively short blog post. Yes, some more on that Fiscal Rule that seems to be causing people to lose sleep (not me). First, we had the Duck Test debate about the British Labour Party Fiscal Credibility Rule. Those promoting the Rule have been at lengths to deny its neoliberal framing, language and concepts. Not an easy task when the Rule talks about a currency-issuing government wanting to avoid “putting the rent on the credit card month after month”. Sounds...

Good one. Worth reading in full. Richard Murphy gives his summary of the state of the his argument with Jonathan Portes and Simon Wren Lewis. Tax Research UKThe political economy of Labour’s fiscal rule Richard Murphy

Is full employment sustainable? For me, this is one question posed by the row between Richard Murphy and Jonathan Portes and Simon Wren-Lewis over Labour’s proposed fiscal rule.... Disappointing for a someone that is sympathetic to Marx, as Chris Dillow identifies himself. Stumbling and MumblingObstacles to full employmentChris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Richard Murphy challenges Simon Wren-Lewis to put up or shut up. So my question is, I suppose, inevitable. What I would like Simon to do is show how he and Jonathan Portes have written, as he claims, a rule that delivers a real-world political economic solution (because that is what Labour's rule is, because it is not an academic paper) that is the same as modern monetary theory. And I want him to show this even though: i) The rule he has written works subject to financial constraints, and...

Medicine is to science (biology) as public policy is to economics, that is, an application. Medicine based on evidence-based science is relatively successful in diagnosis, etiology and treatment of disease. Public policy based on conventional macroeconomics is nothing like that in approach or outcomes. If there were an economic science that proves itself relative to public policy, there would not be opposing political factions offering economic arguments to rationalize their conflicting...

Must-read. This should suffice as the last word on Simon Wren-Lewis's recent post. But it probably won't be.Bond Economics The Easy Way To Deal With Factionalism In Economics Brian Romanchuk Also My comment was finally approved and posted along with many others in the moderation queue: Tom Hickey2 March 2018 at 07:38 Who is being intransigent? As a non-economist MMT advocate (my PhD is in philosophy), it looks to me like the mainstream is the intransigent party. "The methodological...

I commented there but all comments are moderated so it may take some time to show up. Others have commented and their comments have been posted.Mainly MacroThe dangers of pluralism in economics: the case of MMT Simon Wren-Lewis | Emeritus Professor of Economics, Oxford University

I was part of an epic Twitter thread yesterday, initially drawn in to a conversation about whether the word "mainstream" (vs "heterodox") was used in natural sciences (to which I said: not really, but the concept exists). There was one sub-thread that asked a question that is really more a history of science question (I am not a historian of science, so this is my own distillation of others' work as well a couple of my undergrad research papers). Useful relative to philosophy of science...

A response to the Nov 17 thoughts of Simon Wren-Lewis Simon Wren-Lewis has put up a very considered post on the Job Guarantee which deserves an appropriate response. I have been calling for Simon to write about the Job Guarantee for a very long time, and I’m grateful he has done so. It is a very good piece from an alternative point of view and I hope I can do it justice in this reply. Modern Money MattersThoughts about the Job Guarantee: A Reply Neil Wilson

More thoughts on economic methodology. First a framework is needed and then theories can be constructed and tested in that framework. The simplest frame and most economical theory that explains the data sufficiently to be useful is preferred.A framework involving complexity is not necessarily better than one that doesn't as long as it gets the job done.Smith observes that theories constructed within the conventional framework that conventional economists presume is not getting the job of...