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from Peter Radford What is about technology?  It’s either a panacea for all our ills, or it’s the cause of all the aforesaid ills.  Why can’t we make up our minds? This morning’s Financial Times is, sort of, a good demonstration of the confusion we are in. On the one hand there’s any article about cryptocurrencies.  On the other there’s a rather less techno-centric article about bank culture.  In both cases technology looms large.  In neither is technology really mentioned in detail.  It...

RIP Steve Horwitz Steven G. Horwitz died the day before yesterday of lymphoma at age 57.  Probably most reading this do not know who he was, but he was somebody I knew quite well, even as I disagreed with him quite a lot about economics. He was arguably the leading monetary economist out of the group of neo-Austrian economists who came out of George Mason University and who have been closely linked to Peter Boettke who is there, arguably the...

This paper critically assesses the economics of New Developmentalism (ND). It begins by identifying and formalizing the principal components of ND which are identified as neutralizing Dutch disease, ending growth with foreign saving, development driven by a technologically advanced and internationally competitive manufacturing private sector, and getting macroeconomic prices right. It then examines four strands […]

from Lars Syll Development actions and interventions (policies/programs/projects/practices) should be based on the evidence. This truism now comes with a radical proposal about the meaning of “the evidence.” In development practice, where there are hundreds of complex, sometimes rapidly changing, contexts seemingly innocuous phrases like “rely on the rigorous evidence” are taken to mean: “Ignore evidence from your context and rely in your context on evidence that was ‘rigorous’ for...

from Peter Radford The Bank for International Settlements issued its annual report yesterday.  Perhaps the central banks are feeling a little insecure, or perhaps they are a little more sensitive to economic reality, but the BIS felt compelled to use one third of its report to tackle inequality.  Here’s the summary as given in the report: “Key takeaways The long-term rise in economic inequality since the 1980s is largely due to structural factors, well outside the reach of monetary...

from Dean Baker I know I harp a lot on all the ways we structure the market to redistribute income upward, but that’s because we keep digging in deeper on these policies, and almost no one else talks about it. I get that it’s cool to talk about all sorts of tax and transfer schemes to redistribute some of the money we give to the rich and super-rich. But, I’m one of those old-fashion sorts who thinks it’s simpler just not to give them all the money in the first place. So, now that you...

Now that much of Australia, but not Victoria, is locked down, it seems like a good time to reconsider last year’s epic lockdown in the light of subsequent experience. What have we learned that is useful? Hotel quarantine doesn’t work. Immense amounts of effort were devoted into working out who made what mistakes in setting up Melbourne quarantine, whether it was bad contracting, security guards fraternsing with the inmates returned travellers, or something else. After a dozen or...

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