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from Peter Radford and WEA Commentaries I have been digging around a fair bit lately trying to understand the role of economics in the extent of the inequality being laid bare by the pandemic — more on that later.  A few interesting nuggets worthy of a quick note popped out along the way. Thomas Phillipon opens chapter one of his recent book this way: “The big debates in economics are about growth and inequality.  As economists, we seek to understand how and why countries grow and how...

from Lars Syll In L. J. Savage’s seminal The Foundations of Satistics the reader is invited to tackle the problem of an uncertain future using the concept of ‘lottery tickets’ and the principle of ‘look before you leap.’ Carried to its logical extreme, the ‘Look before you leap’ principle demands that one envisage every conceivable policy for the government of his whole life (at least from now on) in its most minute details, in the light of the vast number of unknown states of the world,...

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from The New York Times David Graeber, the radical anthropologist, provocative critic of economic and social inequality and self-proclaimed anarchist who was a coiner of “We Are the 99 Percent,” the slogan of the Occupy Wall Street movement, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Venice. He was 59. His death was announced on social media by his wife, Nika Dubrovsky, an artist. She did not specify the cause, but Dr. Graeber reported on YouTube last week that he had been feeling ill. A...

from C. P. Chandrasekhar Declared the leading threat to global stability by the United States and a group of its allies, China has been accused of transgressions varying from stealing hi-tech secrets, spying, and interfering in domestic politics abroad to spreading viruses. Sometimes, even normal measures adopted by countries as part of their international economic relations are presented as crimes when practised by China. A case in point is lending abroad, especially to developing...

from Lars Syll Radical uncertainty arises when we know something, but not enough to enable us to act with confidence. And that is a situation we all too frequently encounter … The language and mathematics of probability is a compelling way of analysing games of chance. And similar models have proved useful in some branches of physics. Probabilities can also be used to describe overall mortality risk just as they also form the basis of short-term weather forecasting and expectations about...

from Asad Zaman This continues from previous post on New Directions in Macroeconomics. Among the heterodox responses to the crisis in economic theory created by the Global Financial Crisis 2007, we will briefly discuss the following:  Post-Keynesian Economics, Modern Monetary Theory, Political Economy, Evolution of Global Finance, Ecological Economics, Complexity Economics, Islamic Economics. This post is about Post-Keynesian Economics. The response of mainstream macroeconomists to this...

from Lars Syll As every mainstream textbook on growth theory, most mainstream economists choose to turn a blind eye to the concept of capital and the Cambridge controversy over it and pretend it’s much fuss about nothing. But they are wrong! The production function has been a powerful instrument of miseducation. The student of economic theory is taught to write Q = f(L, K) where L is a quantity of labor, K a quantity of capital and Q a rate of output of commodities. He is instructed to...

WEA CommentariesVolume 10, Issue 3  –    August 2020download the whole issue Human rights and fiscal policy: a necessary link           – Grazielle David, Pedro Rossi, Sergio ChaparroMitja Stefancic interviews Guy Standing Pandemic Musings           – Peter RadfordIs this the end of globalisation (as we know it)?            – Karim Errouaki WEA Conference: Trade Wars After Coronavirus