I just finished reading “Saving Ryan” by Emil Kakkis. Kakkis is a physician who pioneered enzyme replacement therapy for Mucopolysaccharidosis I (MPS I), a progressive and fatal disease. The story is about the patients and their families who struggle with the disease and Emil’s struggle to deliver life-enhancing therapy against terribly long odds. The Ryan of the book’s title is a kid with MPS I. His working class parents were not content to watch...

My philosophy of economics A critique yours truly sometimes encounters is that as long as I cannot come up with some own alternative to the failing mainstream theory, I shouldn’t expect people to pay attention. This is however to misunderstand the role of philosophy and methodology of economics! As John Locke wrote in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: The Commonwealth of Learning is not at this time without Master-Builders, whose mighty Designs, in...

A decade ago, when the issue of Republican anti-science bias was raised, a common response was to point to attitudes to vaccination, where, it was claimed, Democrats were the anti-science party. I observed at the time that this claim wasn’t justified by the available evidence. A little later, I noted the likelihood of the Republicans becoming anti-vax , a point on have been proved tragically right by the Covid pandemic. But this case, and many more like it, hasn’t prevented the...

Blog NEF’s 2022 reading list A reading list of our most fascinating, interesting or insightful work from this year, for you to digest over the festive season 28 December 2022 With three prime ministers and four chancellors, this has been a busy year for NEF. We present a reading list of our most...

The U.S. economy is back on track for "normal" economic growth, like we have seen over the past 30 years, and everyone hates that. That's not normal. Trade and invest using the concepts of MMT. Get a 30-day free trial to MMT Trader. https://www.mmteconomics.com/ Moses the Jeweler on 47th Street https://www.instagram.com/mosesjewelry/?hl=en https://www.tiktok.com/@moses_jewelers/ Mike Norman Twitter https://twitter.com/mikenorman Mike Norman Economics:...

House price indexes decline, unchanged in October; further evidence of real declines since summer The Case Shiller national house price index declined another -0.3% in November, and is now up 9.2% YoY, compared with a peak of +20.8% YoY in March (note that is in line with my rule of thumb that a decline of 1/2 or more in YoY growth over the past 12 months indicates a series has peaked and rolled over). The FHFA purchase only house price index...

Figure 1: Wage Curves and Rent for an Example of Extensive Rent This is basically an introduction to a draft research article. Maybe I have difficulty in justifying paying attention to the type of fluke points I haqve been exploring and in formally defining why they are flukes. In this post, I present a partition of a parameter space associated with an example of extensive rent. It is probably too complicated to replace this example. Anyways, I have constructed a new fluke case. Here a...

Open thread Dec. 23, 2022, Angry Bear, angry bear blog Tags: open thread

from Lars Syll Economics students today are complaining more and more about the way economics is taught. The lack of fundamental diversity — not just path-dependent elaborations of the mainstream canon — and narrowing of the curriculum, dissatisfy econ students all over the world. The frustrating lack of real-world relevance has led many of them to demand the discipline to start developing a more open and pluralistic theoretical and methodological attitude. Dani Rodrik — among economics...

Economic Policy covers the aims and the instruments of state economic interventionism. As a broad problematique it existed from the very birth of the science of the economy. However, as a special subject-area it was inaugurated in the interwar era and formalized by the beginning of the post-World War II era. Since then, Economic Policy faced serious ups and lows within economic analysis and policymaking. Particularly within Mainstream Economics (the nowadays dominant tradition within...