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from Lars Syll In Michel De Vroey’s version of the history of macroeconomics, Robert Lucas’ declaration of the need for macroeconomics to be pursued only within ‘equilibrium discipline’ and declaring equilibrium to exist as a postulate, is hailed as a ‘Copernican revolution.’ Equilibrium is not to be considered something that characterises real economies, but rather “a property of the way we look at things.” De Vroey, approvingly, notices that this — as well as Lucas’ banning of...

I missed this when it first came out: We think that the debate regarding extreme social distancing has a clear verdict — it is imperative that we should engage in this social distancing (shelter in place for all but essential workers) at least for the foreseeable short-term, but for reasons that both sides have missed. Our country does not need to decide today whether it is worth shutting down the economy for a prolonged period to protect against...

The House yesterday approved the Payroll Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act.  The PPP part of the law quite literally just increases the amount of money allocated to the program.  That’s it.  The law does almost nothing to fix the serious defects of the program in the original CARES act.  This is remarkable because the initial law was so poorly drafted: The sign-up process was first come, first served, which favored larger businesses with...

That’s the headline for my recent piece in Inside Story, responding to statements from the IMF that “the world is about to experience the worst recession since the Great Depression”. My complaint isn’t so much about the numerical estimates made by the IMF (which are actually optimistic) but about the framing in terms of the Great Depression. It’s almost certain that we will see a larger decline in global income and output in 2020 than we did in the GFC year of 2008. However, if things...

A couple of days ago, Adam Creighton had a piece in the Oz, downplaying the risks of the coronavirus pandemic, under the headline “Under 60, in good health? Crossing the road is more risky” Authors don’t choose headlines, but in this case, it’s an exact quote from the article. There was no supporting analysis, so I decided to do the numbers myself. I looked at Sweden (quoted as a success by Creighton) which seems reasonably comparable to Australia, except that they haven’t gone...

from Peter Radford 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 they divide income among...

from Dean Baker For all the suffering caused by the pandemic, one important positive effect is that it may lead to clearer thinking about government debt and deficits. To Congress’s credit, it has focused on dealing with the problem of sustaining the country through a period in which much of the economy is shut down, rather than worrying about the large deficit it will run this year, as well as the amount it is adding to the national debt. (I strongly suspect that this would not be the...

from Asad Zaman I am in process of creating an online course on the history of Central Banking. The era of online courses has been forced upon us by the Corona Virus, though I have been meaning to do this for a long time. The WEA Pedagogy Blog seems like a great place to do a beta-test. I would like to start by inviting the audience to read through Charles Goodhart’s book on the Evolution of Central Banking. We would plan to read one chapter a week and discuss it on posts and/or comments...

Matt Yglesias has a good piece up explaining why “opening” the economy now won’t save the economy.  The reason is that people will continue to avoid contact with others until the epidemic is brought under control.  Simply allowing restaurants, theaters, and workplaces to open will not change this basic fact.  Indeed, airlines are still open for business, but the demand for air travel has nosedived as people (understandably) avoid being sealed in a poorly...

from David Ruccio The coronavirus outbreak is serving as a mind-expansion exercise, making hitherto unthinkable solutions thinkable. Debts that can’t be paid won’t be. A debt jubilee may be the best way out. — Michael Hudson The United States is currently experiencing a dystopian orgy of death and destruction. In the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Americans are falling ill, tens of thousands are dying, and everyone else is living in fear they’ll...