By Paul Homewood So much for the Bank’s much vaunted independence! Rachel Reeves is planning to make the Bank of England take climate change as seriously as growth, as the Chancellor seeks to use her maiden Budget to overhaul the economy. In a letter to Governor Andrew Bailey on Wednesday, Ms Reeves is […]
Milton Friedman used to advise researchers to focus on large policy changes rather than attempting to separate a small change’s signal from the noise. In this sense, the “ambitious” policy agenda of the Biden-Harris administration was expected to be a gift to the research community. Accepting this gift, since 2020 I have been making forecasts…
Japan is known for many things, but two of them are the Shinkansen high-speed trains and the nation’s three Lost Decades of slow economic growth. Unfortunately, most tourists who go to Japan see the former and don’t see the latter and especially don’t see the connection between the two. The … Continue reading →
In total size, Japan’s economy is fourth-largest in the world, just behind Germany for third-largest. In per capita GDP, Japan is ahead of Spain and South Korea, although well behind Italy and France. With a life expectancy at birth of 84 years, ,Japan has one of the highest levels in the world. Clearly, Japan has…
Here is one excerpt: Over-regulation was the enemy at many presentations, but this wasn’t a libertarian conference. Everyone agreed that safety, quality, the environment, etc, were important and should be regulated for. They just thought existing regulations were colossally stupid, so much so that they made everything worse including safety, the environment, etc. With enough political will, […]
I’m back from my first trip to India, where I visited Mumbai, Delhi, Agra, and Amritsar. I enjoyed fine company in all four cities. In Mumbai, my new friend Sachin Aggarwal, head of the local EconTalk Club, rolled out the red carpet — and ACX Mumbai joined the festivities. (Thank you, Scott Alexander, for creating…
The Nobel prize goes to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson for their work on institutions, prosperity, and economic growth. Here is a key piece summarizing their work: Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth. This paper develops the empirical and theoretical case that differences in economic institutions are the fundamental cause of […]
Over time, a rising US standard of living is driven by productivity growth. Michael Peters succinctly describes the problem in “America Must Rediscover Its Dynamism” (Finance & Development, September 2024). He writes: The US economy has a multitrillion-dollar problem. It’s the dramatic slowdown in productivity growth over the past couple of decades. Between 1947 and…
Hard on the heels of the Commerce Commission’s inquiry into some aspects of banking competition, Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee is also holding an inquiry. Submissions weren’t open for very long and have now closed, but the full terms of reference are here. It is a select committee inquiry, so it is hard to be […]
Economists widely agree with the theory of “convergence,” which is the (mostly true) idea that poor nations should grow faster than rich nations as they catch up (converge). But there are exceptions. Sometimes a richer country will grow faster than a poorer country over a significant period of time, and we can learn from these examples. This is […]
Popular New Keynesian macroeconomic models predict that cuts in various types of distortionary taxes are contractionary when monetary policy is constrained at the zero lower bound. We turn to a long span of history in the United Kingdom to test this hypothesis. Using a new long-run dataset of narrative-identified tax changes from 1918to 2020, we […]
In the past few hours, it has been stated that the US economy grew at a solid 3% rate last quarter, as given in the American government’s final estimate. New Zealand’s economy, on the other hand, shrank at a rate of -0.2%. The US Federal Funds rate (the equivalent of NZ’s Official Cash Rate, OCR)…
On tax policy, our friends on the left are motivated by envy and hatred. As shown in this Stossel video, Robert Reich is a sad example of this mindset. John Stossel understates his argument. It’s not that Reich is wrong. He’s wildly wrong. There are four points in the video that deserve attention. It is […]
When rates go low, future profits go high. Everyone wants a cutBy Richard B. McKenzie. Excerpt:”Profits in the future, dollar for dollar, are worth less than current dollars. This is because current profits can earn interest between now and the future, which means that future profits must be discounted by some percentage to make them…
Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
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