TweetProf. Angus Deaton Princeton University Prof. Deaton: Over the years I’ve learned much from your writings, and I regard your 2013 The Great Escape as one of the most important books published in the past 15 years. So I was quite surprised and disappointed to read that you, as you say, are now “much more…
An Open Letter to Nobel-laureate Economist Angus Deaton
An Open Letter to Nobel-laureate Economist Angus Deaton
13 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, income redistribution, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, rentseeking, survivor principle, unemployment Tags: creative destruction, free trade, tariffs
Child poverty – complex or simple?
26 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, labour economics, labour supply, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, unemployment, welfare reform Tags: child poverty, family poverty
Question: Do you understand how the child poverty statistics are derived? Clearly some people do not. Last week the latest child poverty statistics were all over the media. But there are a number of misunderstandings that need addressing. Like this one from NewstalkZB’s John MacDonald who wrote: “Living in households that get-by on less than…
Child poverty – complex or simple?
Self-selection explained
15 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, unemployment Tags: adverse selection, asymmetric information, moral hazard, screening, self-selection, signaling
What’s the Right Interest Rate for the Fed Anyway?
08 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in business cycles, econometerics, economic growth, inflation targeting, labour economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, unemployment Tags: monetary policy
Standard models watched by economists at the Federal Reserve and elsewhere suggest that rates should now be lowerBy Justin Lahart of The WSJ. Excerpt:”So where should rates be? There has been a lot of focus recently on the long-term neutral rate—the just-right level of rates for when inflation is at the Fed’s 2% target, and…
What’s the Right Interest Rate for the Fed Anyway?
The Conway speech
08 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, econometerics, economic growth, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, fiscal policy, inflation targeting, labour economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, unemployment Tags: monetary policy
I’ve been rather tied up with other stuff for the last few weeks (including here) which is why I’ve not previously gotten round to writing about the first piece of monetary policy communications from our Reserve Bank this year. That was the “speech” by the Bank’s chief economist (and MPC) member Paul Conway given to […]
The Conway speech
Breaking the Culture of Welfare Dependency
02 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, economics of education, entrepreneurship, health economics, human capital, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, liberalism, property rights, Public Choice, unemployment, welfare reform Tags: Canada
One hope that has occasionally been expressed since the beginning of the modern era of Treaty of Waitangi (ToW) settlements, has been that the Iwi showered with money and empowered with control of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars worth of assets, would be able to then make a difference to all the […]
Breaking the Culture of Welfare Dependency
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
03 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, unemployment
📸 Look at this post on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/share/VP3gQp4ts5XHLQoE/?mibextid=RXn8sy
Solow on Market Advantages and Market Failures
31 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, business cycles, economic growth, economic history, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, labour economics, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, monetarism, monetary economics, unemployment
Robert Solow (1924-2023) died last week. As a starting point for understanding his life and his work on growth theory, the Nobel prize website, since he won the award in 1987, includes an overall description, a biographical essay, and his Nobel lecture. I can also strongly recommend an interview that Steven Levitt carried out with…
Solow on Market Advantages and Market Failures
How Were So Many Economists So Wrong About the Recession?
30 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economic history, fiscal policy, labour economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, unemployment Tags: monetary policy
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, I thought it was time to call out all the Orwellian rewriting of intellectual history going on, so here goes: As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week: “So many economists were saying there’s no way for inflation to get back to normal without it entailing a […]
How Were So Many Economists So Wrong About the Recession?
190308 [Webinar] Consistent Economic Policy and Economic Development
29 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, business cycles, defence economics, economic growth, economic history, economics of information, Euro crisis, fiscal policy, fisheries economics, global financial crisis (GFC), great recession, growth disasters, growth miracles, history of economic thought, human capital, inflation targeting, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, monetary economics, Public Choice, public economics, unemployment
Argentina Milei reform impressions
23 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, business cycles, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic growth, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, fiscal policy, growth disasters, history of economic thought, income redistribution, international economics, labour economics, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, monetary economics, property rights, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking, unemployment Tags: Argentina
I didn’t have much time in Argentina, but I can pass along a few impressions about how Milei is doing, noting I hold these with “weak belief”: 1. He is pretty popular with the general population. He is also popular in B.A. in particular. People are fed up with what they have been experiencing. It […]
Argentina Milei reform impressions
Hetzel Withholds Credit from Hawtrey for his Monetary Explanation of the Great Depression
14 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic growth, economic history, financial economics, great depression, history of economic thought, labour economics, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, monetarism, monetary economics, unemployment Tags: monetary policy
In my previous post, I explained how the real-bills doctrine originally espoused by Adam Smith was later misunderstood and misapplied as a policy guide for central banking, not, as Smith understood it, as a guide for individual fractional-reserve banks. In his recent book on the history of the Federal Reserve, Robert Hetzel recounts how the […]
Hetzel Withholds Credit from Hawtrey for his Monetary Explanation of the Great Depression
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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