Source: Tom Sargent "The Ends of Four Big Inflations
The shrewdest summary of rational expectations economic policy was by Paul Samuelson
02 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, fiscal policy, inflation targeting, macroeconomics, monetary economics Tags: new classical macroeconomics, Paul Samuelson, policy credibility, rational expectations, regime uncertainty, Stephen Williamson, time inconsistency, Tom Sargent
Hayek on why Keynesian macroeconomics initially became popular and stayed popular despite eventual empirical failure
31 Jan 2015 8 Comments
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
Paul Samuelson and Robert Lucas both agree that economists have solved the problem of economic depressions
24 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, fiscal policy, great depression, great recession, history of economic thought, macroeconomics, monetary economics, Robert E. Lucas Tags: Paul Samuelson, prosperity and depression, The fatal conceit, The pretence to knowledge
Henry Hazlett on the fiscal stimulus and other manifestations of the broken window fallacy
19 Dec 2014 1 Comment
in applied welfare economics, fiscal policy, macroeconomics Tags: broken window fallacy, fiscal stimulus, Henry Hazlett
Interview with Robert Lucas on the global financial crisis and the great recession
17 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, fiscal policy, global financial crisis (GFC), great depression, great recession, macroeconomics, monetarism, monetary economics Tags: bank runs, GFC, great depression, great recession, Robert E. Lucas
My bullet train trip deep into the Japanese mountains
15 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in fiscal policy, transport economics
My first trip on the bullet train was zipping from Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka and then to Hiroshima. A great experience was my trip to Japan in 1993. An excellent tourist destination. I recommend Japan to anyone as a tourist destination. The language barrier is not a problem – there are plenty of English signs.
When I returned to Japan as a student in 1995, the last of my bullet train trips was into the Japanese mountains.
The class field trip travelled on a spur on the Bullet train to the Yamagata city in Yamagata prefecture.
This bullet train line weaved its way through the mountains and rarely hit any sort of speed. The bullet train was no faster than the ordinary Japanese trains I have taken through the mountains in Japan.
When I asked my Professor of Land Transport when we are heading back from our field trip at an isolated rural train station waiting for the Bullet train, why was the Bullet train to such a remote place, he said that the Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic party always wanted the Bullet train to come to his home district.
Yamagata prefecture has a population of about 1 ½ million. Yamagata city has a population of about a quarter of 1 million. That is smaller than Greater Wellington.
The final station in this spur into Yamagata prefecture has a population of 40,000. Perhaps a Bullet train should come to my suburb in the eastern suburbs of Wellington?
Ideas and Growth Lecture with Nobel Laureate Robert E. Lucas Jr
12 Dec 2014 1 Comment
in economic growth, fiscal policy, macroeconomics, Robert E. Lucas Tags: ideas and growth, Robert E. Lucas
Tom Sargent’s Keynote Address BYU CPEC 2012 on taxation and redistribution
11 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in fiscal policy, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, public economics Tags: taxation and the labour supply, Tom Sargent
The shape of the welfare state in the USA
08 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in fiscal policy, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, politics - USA, public economics, welfare reform Tags: effective marginal tax rates, Obama care, poverty traps, welfare reform
One in five Americans on Medicaid; this image does not include those on Medicare –those over 65 who get their healthcare paid by the government.
The Grumpy Economist: What’s wrong with macro?
06 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in business cycles, fiscal policy, global financial crisis (GFC), great recession, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - USA Tags: Macroeconomics
Operations Research and The Revolution in Aggregate Economics – Edward Prescott 2012
18 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, business cycles, economic growth, fiscal policy, global financial crisis (GFC), great depression, great recession, macroeconomics Tags: Edward Prescott, real business cycle theory
The extension of recursive methods to dynamic equilibrium modelling spawned a revolution in aggregate economics.
This revolution has resulted in aggregate economics becoming, like physics, a hard science and not exercises in storytelling.
Operations research played a major role in the development of practical methods to model dynamic aggregate economic phenomena and to predict the consequences of policy regimes.
Subsequently recursive methods were used to develop a quantitative theory of aggregate fluctuations and other aggregate phenomena.
Average Marginal Income Tax Rates for New Zealand, 1907-2009 (WP 12/04) — The Treasury – New Zealand
07 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, fiscal policy, politics - New Zealand Tags: Marginal tax rates, public economics, public finance
Note: Average marginal tax rate calculations exclude the impact of ACC levies, the Benefit system and the Family Tax Credit (FTC) system which, at various times since the 1970s, involved lump sum transfers to lower income families with children that were withdrawn at higher income levels at rates of up to 30c/$, thereby adding to effective MTRs.
Comment: The average marginal tax rate has been pretty stable in New Zealand since about 1990 excepting for a drop in the late 1990s and then an increase in 1999.
via http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/wp/2012/12-04
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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