I was interested to read this recent article on Inside Higher Education, about ‘Swiftonomics’:Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, Nobel Prize winner and Distinguished Professor of economics at the CUNY Graduate Center, began working on the curriculum for the course last summer. Swift’s massive Eras Tour had just kicked off, creating such a frenzy…
‘Swiftonomics’ and the optimal number of Taylor Swift examples
‘Swiftonomics’ and the optimal number of Taylor Swift examples
11 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of information, economics of media and culture, history of economic thought, industrial organisation
This kind of macro theory is underrated
01 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, business cycles, fiscal policy, history of economic thought, job search and matching, macroeconomics, monetary economics Tags: real business cycle theory
Demand shocks as technology shocks: We provide a macroeconomic theory where demand for goods has a productive role. A search friction prevents perfect matching between producers and potential customers. Larger demand induces more search, which in turn increases GDP and measured TFP. We embed the product-market friction in a standard neoclassical model and estimate it […]
This kind of macro theory is underrated
Four Myths about Price Discrimination
26 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, history of economic thought, industrial organisation Tags: competition and monopoly
In an earlier post, Soda Prices are Too Low for the FTC, the Biden Administration seems to be trying to turn back the clock to a time when price discrimination was viewed as bad. Lest we repeat the mistakes of the past, it is worthwhile to remember its lessons. See this 2003 talk by some middling FTC…
Four Myths about Price Discrimination
How good was Paul Samuelson’s macroeconomics?
25 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic history, history of economic thought, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, monetary economics Tags: monetary policy, wage and price controls
Reading the new Nicholas Wapshott book and also Krugman’s review (NYT) of it, it all seemed a little too rosy to me. So I went back and took a look at Paul Samuelson the macroeconomist. I regret that I cannot report any good news, in fact Samuelson was downright poor — you might say awful […]
How good was Paul Samuelson’s macroeconomics?
T. C. Koopmans Demolishes the Phillips Curve as a Guide to Policy
12 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in business cycles, econometerics, economic history, history of economic thought, macroeconomics, monetary economics
Nobel Laureate T. C. Koopmans wrote one of the most famous economics articles of the twentieth century, “Measurement Without Theory,” a devastating review of an important, and in many ways useful and meritorious, study of business cycles by two of the fathers of empirical business-cycles research, Arthur F. Burns and Wesley C. Mitchell, Measuring Business […]
T. C. Koopmans Demolishes the Phillips Curve as a Guide to Policy
Some Links
06 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, economics of regulation, health economics, history of economic thought, labour economics, law and economics, macroeconomics
TweetWriting in the Wall Street Journal, David Henderson and Charley Hooper explain why we should be thankful for high drug prices. Two slices: For Americans, paying for the discovery and development of new drugs rests on our shoulders. If we pay, we get new lifesaving medicines. If we don’t, we don’t. Almost all new drugs…
Some Links
The Rise of Human Capital
28 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in Gary Becker, history of economic thought, human capital, labour economics, labour supply
No economist was more responsible for the appreciation, understanding and analysis of the fact that people invest in improving their productivity than was Gary Becker.
The Rise of Human Capital
Quotation of the Day…
24 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, history of economic thought, international economics
Tweet… is from page 4 of the 1976 second edition of my late, great teacher Leland Yeager’s magisterial International Monetary Relations: Theory, History, and Policy (original emphases; footnote deleted): Our opportunity for gain is genuine regardless of why foreigners sell so cheaply. Perhaps the foreign widgets are cheap because the climate is ideal for their…
Quotation of the Day…
Milei Speaks Truth to WEF Elite Power
19 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic growth, economic history, entrepreneurship, growth disasters, growth miracles, history of economic thought, labour economics, law and economics, macroeconomics, property rights Tags: Argentina
Argentina’s President Javier Milei had a warning for those attending the annual WEF meeting in Davos, Switzerland; ‘the Western world is in danger’ from ‘collectivist experiments’ such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), and has called on the world to reject socialism and instead embrace “free enterprise capitalism” to end global poverty. H/T zerohedge “Today, […]
Milei Speaks Truth to WEF Elite Power
Unfettered: Fishback 25 Years Later
17 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, economic history, economics of information, economics of regulation, health and safety, history of economic thought, human capital, industrial organisation, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, liberalism, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, minimum wage, occupational choice, occupational regulation, poverty and inequality, unemployment, unions
A quarter century ago, economist Price Fishback published “Operations of ‘Unfettered’ Labor Markets: Exit and Voice in American Labor Markets at the Turn of the Century” in the prestigious Journal of Economic Literature. Fishback’s article is packed with insight… and understatement. But let’s back up. Virtually every standard history textbook describes U.S. labor markets before…
Unfettered: Fishback 25 Years Later
A congestion theory of unemployment fluctuations
17 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in business cycles, econometerics, economic history, history of economic thought, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, monetary economics, unemployment
Yusuf Mercan, Benjamin Schoefer, and Petr Sedláček, newly published in American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. I best liked this excerpt from p.2, noting that “DMP” refers to the Nobel-winning Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides search model of unemployment: This congestion mechanism improves the business cycle performance of the DMP model considerably. It raises the volatility of labor market tightness tenfold, […]
A congestion theory of unemployment fluctuations
Deirdre McCloskey: What Is Classical Liberalism? | Robinson’s Podcast #145
17 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, history of economic thought, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, Marxist economics, political change, Public Choice, public economics
Mattei Misjudges Hawtrey
15 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economic history, fiscal policy, great depression, history of economic thought, macroeconomics, monetary economics
Clara Mattei, associate professor of economics at the New School for Social Research, recently published a book, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism, (University of Chicago Press) in which she argues that the fiscal and monetary austerity imposed on Great Britain after World War I to restore the […]
Mattei Misjudges Hawtrey
What Economics Gets Wrong Today – David Friedman | Podcast EP 29
15 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, David Friedman, economic history, economics of crime, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, history of economic thought, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, market efficiency, Marxist economics, Milton Friedman, property rights
Economists Love Fables And Parables (Or, The Essence Of Economic Analysis)
12 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, history of economic thought
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman wrote the following in Slate magazine back in the 1990s:“Economic theory is not a collection of dictums laid down by pompous authority figures. Mainly, it is a menagerie of thought experiments–parables, if you like–that are intended to capture the logic of economic processes in a simplified way. In the…
Economists Love Fables And Parables (Or, The Essence Of Economic Analysis)
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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