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from Lars Syll Randomization is an alternative when we do not know enough to control, but is generally inferior to good control when we do. We suspect that at least some of the popular and professional enthusiasm for RCTs, as well as the belief that they are precise by construction, comes from misunderstandings about … random or realized confounding on the one hand and confounding in expectation on the other … The RCT strategy is only successful if we are happy with estimates that are...

from David Ruccio In a 1999 interview with Fortune, legendary investor Warren Buffett coined the term “economic moats” to sum up the main pillar of his investing strategy. He described it like this: The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage. The products or services that have wide, sustainable moats...

from Lars Syll That is the great thing about abstraction. Working with what can be called ‘flex price’ models does not imply that you think price rigidity is unimportant, but instead that it can often be ignored if you want to focus on other processes. Simon Wren-Lewis When applying deductivist thinking to economics, mainstream economists like Wren-Lewis usually set up ‘as if’ models based on a set of tight axiomatic assumptions from which consistent and precise inferences are made. The...

from Mark Weisbrot Every week, and often more than once a week, there is another article in the major media or in foreign policy publications about the demise of the post-World War II Anglo-American world order. These analyses typically single out the Transatlantic Alliance between the US and Europe ― two of the world’s largest economies ― for special concern and anxiety as the underpinning of this world order. Not surprisingly, President Trump’s wildly fluctuating comments on NATO...

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The late Abraham/Abe Rotstein (1929-2015) was an economist of a leftist persuasion, literally a Left Liberal. He left behind an almost completed manuscript which he had been working on for more than three decades. It has now been published.  Its title Myth, Mind and Religion: The Apocalyptic Narrative is indicative of its extraordinary breadth. Problems, possibilities, catastrophes, which compel resolution present themselves in an apocalyptic manner: oppressor/victim, inversion of victims...

from Norbert Häring                                                                                              part 1 The winner takes all is a basic rule of the digital economy. Whoever is ahead has a large advantage, just from being ahead, and has a good chance to end up as a quasi-monopolist. This has two main reasons, called network effects and economies of scale. Network effects make digital services more attractive, if more people use them. This is true for social media or trading...

Humanism is poorer this week. Uri Avnery has died. Soldier number 44410 of the Israel army, spent the following decades defending human decency in the land that he loved and struggled to make a welcoming home for Jews and Arabs alike. From his 1953 report of the raid on Qibya in Jordan, where an Israeli unit commanded by Ariel Sharon destroyed the village, blowing up forty five, to his recent article on...