Is the middle-class disappearing?
12 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economic growth, human capital, income redistribution, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: middle class stagnation
When did global technological leadership migrate across the Atlantic?
10 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economic growth, human capital, politics - USA, technological progress Tags: global technological frontier, growth of knowledge, innovation, Schumpeter, technology diffusion
HT: theatlantic.com/a-short-history-of-american-invention/385279/ via Mikko Packalen and Jay Bhattacharya
GDP per New Zealander remains well below leading OECD economies due to a large shortfall in labour productivity
10 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economic growth, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand
Everyone is richer in the USA and the middle class is moving up
09 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economic growth, great recession, macroeconomics, poverty and inequality Tags: The Great Enrichment
The middle class is shrinking in the USA because most of of 10% shrinkage is due to them becoming rich.
Everyone is wealthier than in the past and would have been wealthier but for the Great Recession and the countless tax rises of Obama.
A Report Card for Humanity: 1900-2050
06 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic growth, health economics, technological progress Tags: The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
This map requires the tyranny of distance types to predict the coming boom for New Zealand
05 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economic growth, economic history, politics - New Zealand Tags: geography, global economic hubs
HT: https://twitter.com/tutor2u_econ/status/552013472247341056?s=09
Deflation and Depression: Is There an Empirical Link?
31 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, Euro crisis, great depression, great recession, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: deflation, fiscal policy, liquidity traps, monetary policy, stabilisation policy
Deflation has a bad reputation. People blame deflation for causing the great depression in the 1930s. What worse reputation can you get as a self-respecting macroeconomic phenomena?
The inconvenient truth for this urban legend is empirical evidence of deflation leading to a depression is rather weak.
The most obvious is confounding evidence, is up until the great depression, deflation was commonplace. In the late 19th century, deflation coincided with strong growth, growth so strong that it was called the Industrial Revolution.
For deflation to be a depressing force, something must have happened in the lead up to the Great Depression to change the impact of deflation on economic growth.
Atkeson and Kehoe in the AER looked into the relationship between deflation and depressions and came up empty-handed.
Deflation and depression do seem to have been linked during the 1930s. But in the rest of the data for 17 countries and more than 100 years, there is virtually no evidence of such a link.
Deflation and Depression: Is There an Empirical Link?
Andrew Atkeson, and Patrick J. Kehoe, 2004.
Are deflation and depression empirically linked? No, concludes a broad historical study of inflation and real output growth rates. Deflation and depression do seem to have been linked during the 1930s. But in the rest of the data for 17 countries and more than 100 years, there is virtually no evidence of such a link.
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Postwar vs. New Gilded Age: How did the middle class do?
28 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic growth, income redistribution, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: middle class stagnation
Greece should default and abandon the euro – Jeff Miron
27 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, currency unions, development economics, economic growth, economic history, Euro crisis, fiscal policy, global financial crisis (GFC), growth disasters, law and economics, macroeconomics, poverty and inequality Tags: currency unions, Euroland, Greece, optimal currency area, sovereign default
Has the USA moved to lower trend GDP growth path?
26 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic growth, great recession, macroeconomics, politics - USA Tags: great recession, Jagadeesh Gokhale, prosperity and depression
The Greek depression compared
26 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
Robert Lucas interview in Brazil, 2nd November 2012
24 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, business cycles, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic growth, global financial crisis (GFC), great recession, growth disasters, growth miracles, inflation targeting, macroeconomics, monetarism, Robert E. Lucas Tags: Robert E. Lucas
On the role of R&D and boffins in lab coats in the Industrial Revolution
24 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
The Golden Rule, John Rawls and just saving for the future generations
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economic growth, macroeconomics Tags: Edmund Phelps, Golden rule of savings, intergenerational equity, John Rawls, just savings
Why is the Left so keen to tax the rich of today, which reduces investment, but through this concerns about sustainable development, not tax the rich of the next generation by leaving them a smaller capital stock?
Rawls proposes a principle of just savings. Rawls suggests that each generation puts itself in the place of the next, and asks what it could reasonably expect to receive.
Currently living people have a justice-based reason to save for future people only if such saving is necessary for allowing future people to reach the sufficientarian threshold as specified. This is known as the accumulation stage.
Once just institutions are securely established — this is known as the steady-state stage — justice does not require people to save for future people. Rawls also holds that, in that second stage, people ought to leave their descendants at least the equivalent of what they received from the previous generation.
Edmund Phelps developed a Golden Rule in the 1960s that suggests that it is possible to save and invest too much. Phelps also generated the result that the savings rate can be too high:
The basic significance of the golden rule is as a warning against national policies of over-saving or counterproductive austerity.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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