Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from Lars Syll Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström won this year’s ‘Nobel Prize’ in economics for work on applying contract theory to questions ranging from how best to reward executives to whether we should have privately owned schools and prisons or not. Their work has according to the prize committee been “incredibly important, not just for economics, but also for other social sciences.” Asked at a news conference about the high levels of executive pay, Holmstrom said, It is somehow demand...

So does the fed somehow see this as ‘improvement’ and ‘solid’? More likely to me that the Fed gets criticized for waiting too long to cut. Not that it would matter, of course… Highlights In downbeat indications on the labor market, job openings fell a sharp 7.3 percent in August to 5.443 million at the same time that hiring, instead of rising, slowed by 0.9 percent to 5.210 million. The openings number is the lowest since December last year while the hiring number is more...

from David Ruccio To read National Public Radio’s [ht: ja] article on the latest World Bank report on Poverty and Shared Prosperity: Taking on Inequality, you’d think the problem of global poverty was well on the way to being solved. Is that just wishful thinking? In terms of the headline numbers, the author of the article is correct: In 2013, fewer than 800 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day. That’s less than 11 percent of the global population. As recently as 1990, about 35...

Another bad one: It’s that other problems have become more important for these small businesses as conditions continue to deteriorate:

from Peter Radford As I awake from my self-imposed slumber and re-survey the state of economics: Nothing has changed. This is predictable, and, I submit, is the most predictable phenomenon within the ambit of the discipline. Economics is in disrepute, and its current elite are determined to keep it there. The latest ersatz Nobel prize went to a couple of guys who theorize a lot about contracts. This is the kind of work that now dominates much of economics. Tinkering with mathematics,...

No one seems to know how much weight the Fed gives to this index: Highlights The labor market conditions index came in at minus 2.2 in September, extending its soft trend this cycle. Definition The Labor Market Conditions Index is an experimental indicator compiled by the Federal Reserve to track labor market activity. It is a broad composite with 19 components. Just my imagination that this has been decelerating since the drop in oil capex? My oil related comments: Any kind...

Went down when consensus expectations were for an increase: Note that it peaked and then fell when oil capex collapsed: The NFIB Index of Small Business Optimism dipped 0.03 points in September for the second consecutive month. Increased inventories fell seven points while hard-to-fill job openings plunged six points landing at 24 percent. Six of the 10 indices dropped, washing away the rise in expected business conditions. Interesting way of saying its going to be down from...

You have until 30 October to submit to [email protected] a paper for the WEA online conference Food and Justice. from Asad Zaman If any group of concerned citizens would gather to discuss economic problems, it would seem natural to begin with the problem of feeding the hungry. Strangely enough, one would not encounter this problem within a standard course of study of economic theory at any of the leading universities throughout the world. This is due to two major mistakes made...

Nice move up vs last month but doesn’t move the year over year needle, and this series has a history of spikes up that are immediately reversed: A bit lower but too soon to suggest the modest uptrend is reversing:

From today’s Guardian The Nobel prize in economics takes too little account of social democracyAvner Offer The Nobel prize in economics will be announced today. For economists, it is the pinnacle of reputation. When the word Nobel becomes attached to a winner’s name, his word acquires newsworthy authority (only one woman, Elinor Ostrom, has won the prize so far). The prize matters to everyone else too, because of market liberalism, which advocates marketisation, deregulation,...