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Economics in Two Lessons is listed as the #1 New Release in Microeconomics on Amazon. I’m not sure what this means, but it sounds encouraging. It’s now available for preorder now, with a release date of April 23, the hardcover publication date. Apple books also has it for pre-order. Thanks again to everyone who read and commented on the excerpts I published along the way. I’ve tried to mention you all in the acknowledgements, but it’s just about inevitable that I will have missed...

from Lars Syll When the euro was created twenty years ago, it was celebrated with fireworks at the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt. Today we know better. There are no reasons to celebrate the 20-year anniversary. On the contrary. Already since its start, the euro has been in crisis. And the crisis is far from over. The tough austerity measures imposed in the eurozone has made economy after economy contract. And it has not only made things worse in the periphery countries,...

from Peter Radford “The universe is made of energy, matter, and information, and while energy and matter are here by default, information needs to find ways to emerge.  This is not always easy”  Cesar Hidalgo, “Why Information Grows — The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies” Why is it the economics still restricts itself to constructing its narratives around concepts like labor and capital?  Neither are very precise.  Both are amalgams of more fundamental concepts.  And, even in...

I wrote a post about optimal taxation of capital income which (the web is sometimes wonderful) was made legible by the blessed [person who choses to remain anonymous]. But that was back in Obama center left 2008. I want to update given what I learned since then and given the appearance of socialist US citizens. First, what I should have known already is that the standard Judd 85/86 result that the optimal rate of taxation of capital income goes to zero...

from Lars Syll Students all over the world are increasingly questioning if the kind of economics they are taught — mainstream economics — really is of any value. Some have even started to question if economics is a science. Two ‘Nobel laureates’ in economics — Robert Shiller and Paul Krugman — have lately tried to respond: Critics of “economic sciences” sometimes refer to the development of a “pseudoscience” of economics, arguing that it uses the trappings of science, like dense...

If the world is going to avoid dangerous climate change, we need to accelerate the pace of the energy transition towards decarbonization. So, as 2019 begins, it’s worth looking at the state of play. Easing into things, I’ll take a look at the dead horses: nuclear and “clean coal”. AFAICT, hardly any nuclear plants started construction in 2018, continuing the trend of recent years. At the beginning of the year, lots of reports suggested China would start 6-8 plants, but (again...

from Asad Zaman Let us start with Five Fundamental propositions, which would be startling to the general public, but familiar to my current audience of heterodox economists. Mainstream modern economic theory is complete garbage. This is true of Micro, Macro, Econometrics, Trade, Monetary, Industrial Organization — EVERYTHING. It is very EASY to prove this assertion. Fundamental principles on which the entire discipline is built are easily proven to be wrong. The axiomatic theory of human...

I just read (on a plane) The Labyrinth Index the latest novel in Charlie Stross’ Laundry series (a mashup of HP Lovecraft and Len Deighton). The central conceit is a spell which causes Americans to forget the existence of the President whenever they go to sleep. After reading the book and nodding off, I had a dream that someone has a similar office in Australia, with a couple of deputies, one in charge of the bush and another in charge of the money. On waking though, I couldn’t...

from Dean Baker Okay, it’s that time of year when we are all supposed to commit ourselves to performing nearly impossible tasks over the next twelve months. I will play the game. Here is the list of areas where I will try to bring economics into economic policy debates in 2019. 1) Patent and copyright monopolies are government policies: This one is pretty simple, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. It should be pretty obvious that these and other forms of intellectual property are...