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Wealth inequality explained
from Lars Syll [embedded content]
Read More »The global divergence gets bigger
from C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh The Covid-19 pandemic operated to expose various global inequalities in their stark form, but it has also further accentuated them at unprecedented scale and speed. The latest World Economic Outlook from the IMF, released in late October 2021, provides further evidence of how the global divide has increased through the course of the pandemic, most of all the gap between advanced economies and the rest of the world. On the face of it, in terms of...
Read More »The logic of financial markets
from Lars Syll Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of...
Read More »Open thread Nov. 2, 2021
4 ways in which humanity’s consciousness needs to shift
from Richard Norgaard 1 – From material progress to holistic survival and morality The coevolution of economism with the Econocene has led humanity to the brink of disaster. Faith in progress has long been a part of the problem. Actions to stave off climate change have been trimmed and delayed on the presumption that countering environmental destruction has the opportunity cost of foregone human wellbeing through further investments in technology that further increase the production or...
Read More »New issue of WEA Commentaries
WEA Commentaries Volume 11, Issue 3Download whole issue An egalitarian carbon tax: revenue-neutral and dual policy package Fausto Corvino WHAT IS ECOLOGY? What Economics Should Have Been Gregory A Daneke The Theory of Competition of F.A.Hayek as an Inspirer of the Neoliberal Turn of the 1980s Arturo Hermann Don Webber discusses his book, How to enhance your re- search: 100 practical tips for academics Ana Luíza Matos de Oliveira and Magali N. Alloatti...
Read More »A golden age for macro economic statistics. Part 1: homestead rents or house rents?
The post 2009 decade will stand out as a golden age for economic statistics. I do not mean econometric analysis, I mean statistics like asset prices, rents or estimates of inequality and household income. The empirical basis for a truly scientific macro economics has finally become less shaky. On an irregular basis, I will publish some posts on some of the treasure troves which have become available. Here, already one example, based on the recent PhD of Matthijs Korevaar., ”Financial...
Read More »On Diane Coyle’s Cogs and Monsters
from Lars Syll Macroeconomists seem to me the biggest offenders in not taking such empirical issues (of practical data handling) seriously enough. This might sound like sheer contrarianism given that macroeconomists are constantly wielding data; after all, their business is analysing the behaviour of the whole economy and forecasting its future path. My concerns are, first, that too few think about the vast uncertainty associated with the statistics they download and use; and secondly,...
Read More »Thinking the unthinkable
If the last five years have taught us anything it’s this: the fact that something being unimaginable doesn’t mean it isn’t going to happen. So, it’s worth considering the prospect that Donald Trump becomes President after the 2024 election whether by getting enough votes to win the Electoral College under the current rules, or by having a Democratic victory overturned. Trump has made it clear that, in such an event, he would wish to secure at least a third term in office and perhaps a...
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