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My latest book has recently been published by Edward Elgar. The book explores the impact of neoliberal policies on the US, Europe, and the global economy. It shows how the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession were predictable outcomes of the neoliberal policy experiment, as is the emergence of global “race to the bottom” competition. […]

from Lars Syll Studying mathematics and logic is interesting and fun. It sharpens the mind. But economics is not pure mathematics or logic. It’s about society. The real world. Forgetting that, economics becomes nothing but an irrelevant and uninteresting ‘Glasperlenspiel.’ Or as Knut Wicksell put it already a century ago: One must, of course, beware of expecting from this method more than it can give. Out of the crucible of calculation comes not an atom more truth than was put in. The...

from Dean Baker   Inflation has stayed higher longer than I expected. I got that one wrong. I am happy to acknowledge my mistake, but I also want to know the reason why. This is not a question of finding excuses, I want to know why the economy is acting differently than I thought it would. The most obvious reason is the supply chain disruptions that led to the original jump in prices have lasted longer and been more far-reaching than I expected. Part of this is due to the persistence...

That’s the latest post from my Blogstack, responding to recent inflation figures. Text over the fold. A 5 per cent annual rate of inflation is not, in itself, a major problem. It has become evident that very low rates of inflation can be just as damaging as high inflation, by not allowing the Reserve Bank room to cut interest rates far enough when the economy is depressed. The 2-3 per cent target adopted in the 1990s made sense as a way to break the inflationary expectations...

from David Ruccio There’s been a lot of talk about oligarchs these past couple of months. Russian oligarchs, that is—the billionaires who have accumulated vast amounts of wealth, including large stakes in Russian industries, mines, and banks, as well as superyachts, private jets, investment accounts, and real estate in the West. We’ve even learned their names: Vladimir Potanin, Leonid Mikhelson, Alexey Mordashov, and so on.* They’re a pretty easy target, given Russia’s savage war on...

from Rod Hill and the WEA Textbook Commentaries Project The definition of economics. Mankiw begins by defining economics: “Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources. In most societies, resources are allocated … through the combined choices of millions of households and firms. Economists therefore study how people make decisions” about working, spending, saving and investing their savings. Economists “examine how the many buyers and sellers of a good together...

from Lars Syll After having mastered all the technicalities of regression analysis and econometrics, students often feel as though they are masters of the universe. I usually cool them down with the required reading of Christopher Achen’s modern classic Interpreting and Using Regression. It usually gets​ them back on track again, and they understand that no increase in methodological sophistication … alter the fundamental nature of the subject. It remains a wondrous mixture of rigorous...

RJS, Focus on Fracking Summary: Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a 20 year low, US oil supplies at a 14 year low after record jump in exports; distillates supplies at a 14 year low, total oil + products inventories at an 8 year low; a total oil + products exports at a record high The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending April 15th indicated that...