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from Lars Syll In connection with being awarded The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel a couple of years ago, Thomas Sargent, in an interview with Swedish Television, declared that workers ought to be prepared for having low unemployment compensations in order to get the right incentives to search for jobs. This old mercantilist idea has very little support in research, since it has turned out to be exceedingly difficult to really get clear cut results...

from Julie Nelson I thought that any reasonable person would be revolted by the narcissistic, juvenile, bullying, lying behavior of the Republican candidate, and realize that he was clearly unfit for office. As an economist, I was taken aback by the variously kleptocratic and fantastical aspects of Trump’s intended economic directions. As a feminist and ecological economist, I was especially appalled by Trump’s braggadocious pussy-grabbing and climate-change-denying. While, according to...

Excerpts from Randolph Bourne’s The State: War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties. The minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly around by...

Looking at the chart today’s number looks entirely consistent with the near linear rate of deceleration since oil capex collapsed about 2 1/2 years ago or so. And so far there’s no reason to expect the trend to reverse: Highlights Throw ADP out, it was the weather in March! Or at least the Category 3 storm that swept the Northeast may explain a much weaker-than-expected 98,000 increase in March nonfarm payrolls. This compares with Econoday’s consensus for 175,000 and a low...

from Norbert Häring The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington has published a Working Paper on “de-cashing”. It gives advice to governments who want to abolish cash against the will of their citizenry. Move slowly, start with harmless seeming measures, is part of that advice. In “The Macroeconomics of De-Cashing”, IMF-Analyst Alexei Kireyev recommends in his conclusions: Although some countries most likely will de-cash in a few years, going completely cashless should be phased...

Looks like Saudis are moving to lower prices? Saudi Aramco Said to Cut Pricing For May Arab Light Oil to Asia By Serene Cheong and Sharon Cho Apr 5 (Bloomberg) — Saudi Aramco sets Arab Light crude differential at 45c/bbl discount to Oman-Dubai benchmark for May sales to Asia, say people with knowledge of matter who asked not to be identified because the information is confidential. That’s a 30c/bbl decrease from April OSP NOTE: Co. was expected to decrease Arab Light...

from David Ruccio This semester, we’re teaching A Tale of Two Depressions, a course designed as a comparison of the first and second Great Depressions in the United States. And one of the themes of the course is that, in considering the conditions and consequences of the two depressions, we’re talking about a tale of two countries. As it turns out, the tale of two countries may be even more true in the case of the most recent crises of capitalism. That’s because the two countries were...

from Robert Wade In this context globalization refers to the opening of domestic markets and the integration of global production via multinational corporations (MNCs). More broadly, it refers to  movement in the world economy towards “one country”, or “deep (not shallow) integration”, where nation states have no more influence over flows of goods, services, capital, finance, ideas and people across borders than South Dakota or the other US states have across theirs. Ever since the 1980s...

from Asad Zaman I am currently engaged in teaching the final semester of Advanced Micro in our Ph.D. program. I have freedom to do here at PIDE, Pakistan, what may be extremely difficult in US/Europe — My course is built around demonstrating how conventional micro theory is strongly contradicted by empirical evidence. I also go on to build a convincing alternative. The first lecture on micro topics, starts by dismantling the fundamental Supply and Demand model in the context of the Labor...