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from Lars Syll Markets are never just given. Neither God nor nature hands us a worked-out set of rules determining the way property relations are defined, contracts are enforced, or macroeconomic policy is implemented. These matters are determined by policy choices. The elites have written these rules to redistribute income upward. Needless to say, they are not eager to have the rules rewritten — which means they also have no interest in even having them discussed. But for progressive...

What’s an economic model? A little semantic intro (don’t worry, we will get to Keynes in a moment) I work together with biologists, agronomists and even test animal specialists on a regular basis. These people use words like ‘conceptual models’ or ‘even ‘animal model’ all the time. Check this:  ‘Mouse Models of Diabetic Nephropathy‘. Yes, a live animal is considered to be a scientific model. I had to get used to this as this use of the word ‘model’ transcended the boundaries used in the...

from Lars Syll In his new history of experimental social science — Randomistas: How radical researchers are changing our world — Andrew Leigh gives an introduction to the RCT (randomized controlled trial) method for conducting experiments in medicine, psychology, development economics, and policy evaluation. Although it mentions there are critiques that can be waged against it, the author does not let that shadow his overwhelmingly enthusiastic view on RCT. Among mainstream economists,...

from Asad Zaman In this post, we provide some details regarding the origins of the Bank of England, the mother of all Central Banks and discuss some implications of this early history for our modern world. A link to a video-lecture on the topic is given at the bottom of the post. We start with an excerpt from Ellen Brown in the Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Below, selected passages from Chapter 6: Pulling The Strings Of The King: The...

Global Energy Monitor, Greenpeace India, and the Sierra Club have just released the fifth annual Boom and Bust report, tracking the global coal plant pipeline. The news is mostly good, with three glaring exceptions, all related to China. First, as reported last year, provincial governments appear to have restarted construction on a number of coal-fired power plants, previously suspended on the orders of the central government. Second, the China Electricity Council, which represents...

from Dean Baker In the United States, the pay of a typical worker has badly trailed productivity growth over the last four decades, allowing only marginal improvements in living standards over this period. At the same time, a small number of people have gotten incredibly rich in the finance and tech sectors and by being top executives in major U.S. corporations. There is a similar, if somewhat less stark, picture in most other wealthy countries. The standard story for this rise in...

The last decade has witnessed a significant revival of belief in the efficacy of fiscal policy and mainstream economics is now reverting to the standard positions of mid-1970s Keynesianism. On the coattails of that revival, increased attention is being given to the doctrine of Modern Money Theory (MMT) which makes exaggerated claims about the economic […]

March 27: TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – The United States said on Wednesday it had reached an agreement with three Central American countries to carry out joint police operations in the region, as the Trump administration seeks to stem the flow of migrants across its southern border. The governments of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and the United States said in a statement they had agreed to a series of measures, including joint police work, improved border...

from Lars Syll Nowadays there is almost no place whatsoever in economics education for courses in the history of economic thought and economic methodology. The standard view among mainstream economists is that students shouldn’t think about what they are doing, but just do it. This is deeply worrying. A science that doesn’t self-reflect and asks important methodological and science-theoretical questions about the own activity, is a science in dire straits. The main reason why mainstream...