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Merry christmas and a happy new year! And a picture of an off the shelf heart shaped 2018 Christmas adornment which managed to twinkle 365/24/7 (even when not very bright) on one off the shelf battery, showing the power and the glory of modern contemporary off the shelf led and battery technology. Let’s embrace and welcome the next 365. And dump the last remaining 19th century technology totally outdated short lived energy wasting heat squandering incandescent light bulbs before the next...

from David Ruccio There is a specter haunting capitalist development around the globe. In fact, the latest Human Development Report begins by naming that menacing apparition: The wave of demonstrations sweeping across countries is a clear sign that, for all our progress, something in our globalized society is not working. Different triggers are bringing people onto the streets: the cost of a train ticket, the price of petrol, political demands for independence. A connecting thread,...

According to some economists, ‘Divisia money’ is, as a monetary aggregate, a superior and neoclassical alternative to the more often used M2 or M3 ‘single sum’ aggregates. But looking at such money aggregates in isolation prevents economists from analyzing monetary developments using the integrated and statistically coherent Flow of Funds framework which ties the growth of money to the growth of credit. Divisia money is not a sound alternative. The Flow of Funds are. The graph shows that...

Following some recent discussions, I decided to relax my usual policy of banning climate denialists. So, I’m opening a forum where anyone who thinks they have something useful to contribute on the topic. Some rules Real names only, no pseudonyms. If you have something to say on this topic, own it. If your point is on this list, don’t bother making it. For the moment, only climate science arguments, not policy claims like “Australia only contributes 1 per cent”. Initially, at least...

from Lars Syll As a result of the three waves of new classical economics, the field of macroeconomics became increasingly rigorous and increasingly tied to the tools of microeconomics. The real business cycle models were specific, dynamic examples of Arrow–Debreu general equilibrium theory. Indeed, this was one of their main selling points. Over time, proponents of this work have backed away from the assumption that the business cycle is driven by real as opposed to monetary forces, and...

from Asad Zaman  7. Differentiating Between Choice and Preference 8. The Nature of Probability  9. Subjective Probability Does Not Exist

from Dean Baker In debates over protecting the environment, and especially global warming, it is standard practice to refer to the pro-protection side as being in favor of government regulation and the anti-protection side as being pro-free market. This is nonsense and it is nonsense in a way that strongly benefits the enemies of environmental protection. There is a simple way to think about environmental protection. If I build a home and want to dispose of my sewage in the cheapest...

That’s the title of my latest column in Independent Australia, which came out on Thursday. The news has just come in that Morrison is to curtail his trip and return home. Strikingly, it was the lead headline on news outlets, including the ABC, Guardian, and Fairfax/Nine that failed to report Morrison’s absence for days, then buried the news in stories leading with other topics. All of that led me to some ill-tempered Twitter exchanges (the usual kind of Twitter exchange, I guess)...

Lars Syll Since there will generally be many micro foundations consistent with some given aggregate pattern, empirical support for an aggregate hypothesis does not constitute empirical support for any particular micro foundation … Lucas himself points out that short-term macroeconomic forecasting models work perfectly well without choice-theoretic foundations: “But if one wants to know how behaviour is likely to change under some change in policy, it is necessary to model the way people...