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from C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh Ever since Larry Summers and Alan Heston produced what become known as the “Penn World Tables” comparing prices and thereby the purchasing power of currencies across countries, the urge to use some deflator of market exchange rates to compare incomes across countries has been strong. The economic theory behind this is that exchange rate comparisons of less-developed economies consistently undervalue the non-traded goods sector, especially...

from Daivd Ruccio Liberal mainstream economists all seem to be lip-synching Bobby McFerrin these days. Worried about automation? Be happy, write Laura Tyson and Susan Lund, since “these marvelous new technologies promise higher productivity, greater efficiency, and more safety, flexibility, and convenience.” Worried about the different positions in current debates about economic policy? Be happy, writes Justin Wolfers, and rely on the statistics produced by government agencies and...

from Dean Baker I’m glad to see the debate that Max Sawicky has touched off with his review of Steve Teles and Brink Lindsey’s new book, The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality. The book, and the resulting debate, raises the question: can an attack on rent-seeking by the rich be the basis for a progressive agenda? This is a debate I’ve played some role in getting started, with several books, most recently Rigged: How...

from Lars Syll Eminent statistician David Salsburg is rightfully very critical of the way social scientists — including economists and econometricians — uncritically and without arguments have come to simply assume that they can apply probability distributions from statistical theory on their own area of research: We assume there is an abstract space of elementary things called ‘events’ … If a measure on the abstract space of events fulfils​ certain axioms, then it is a probability. To...

from Robert Locke In his 1927 book, Julien Benda, wrote about the Treason of the Intellectuals (la trahison des clercs) One reviewer (Roger Kimball) noted: “From the time of the pre-Socratics, intellectuals were a breed apart. They were non-materialistic knowledge-seekers who believed in a universal humanism and represented a cornerstone of civilized society. According to Benda, this all began to change in the early twentieth century. In Europe in the 1920s, intellectuals began abandoning...

Some years ago, Cladio Borio from the BIS introduced the ‘financial cycle’. Here, a Borio/Lowe paper from 2002. What’s the financial cycle? From the twenties of the twentieth century onwards Wesley Mitchell and the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) perfected the (monthly) measurement of the classical business cycle (a still ongoing project). The concept of this business cycle of the ‘flow’ economy was and is the cornerstone of much macro-economic theorizing. ‘Chicago style...

from C. P. Chandrasekhar In an otherwise gloomy world economic environment, a new kind of record given the media bizarre cause to cheer: the value of online sales notched up by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on a single discount sales day. Global business headlines screamed that in its annual sale on Singles’ Day, 11 November 2017, Alibaba had registered a record sales value of 168.2 billion yuan or $25.3 billion.  Singles’ Day, or 11 November, was, because of its 11/11 aspect,...

from Peter Radford Well, at least I am being consistent. Whether that’s being a good thing or not I will leave to you to figure out. David Brooks set me off on a rant a few days ago, and he’s doing it again. I have to stop reading his columns. Last time it was about the rotting Republican Party: Brooks is one of those people who realized way too late that the GOP of yore disappeared long ago and has been replaced by a mash-up of far right cause driven groups smeared together with a good...

Complexity in the theory of economic evolution of Thorstein Veblen: an introductionJoão Vitor Oliveira da SilvaThorstein Veblen is a classic author, recognized for his writings on institutions and economic change. The complexity perspective, on the other hand, is a relatively contemporary approach for studying a considerable range of phenomena both in natural and social sciences. …More ›       12 Comments › The evolutionary dimension of Hayek’s thought: cultural selection and spontaneous...