Former Bank of International Settlements chief economist William White criticizes central bank policies sharply, particularly negative interest rates.
Read more...Yet more funny forecasts from the CBO telling you why you can’t have nice things, like a better job market.
Read more...A new story at the New York Times on the global debt overhang is an economically warped account that omits important policy options.
Read more...Why you should expect and applaud federal deficits.
Read more...Even though the former chief economist of the BIS calls for a debt jubilee, it’s only part of the medicine needed to get the economy out of the ditch.
Read more...The failure to use fiscal policy in tandem with monetary policy means that the timid and short-sighted private sector has lacked confidence to ratchet up investment in productive, income-generating activity – as opposed to speculative activity.
Read more...Yves here. Sometimes it is best to let things speak for themselves. In that spirit, I am embedding a very important paper by the well-respected investment management firm GMO which debunks the tenets of “sound finance,” meaning the claim that governments need to balance their budgets. I expect to be referring to it regularly, particularly […]
Read more...Why economic failures argue for the need for more democratic control over policy, or at least the ability to cut the power of institutions that get it wrong.
Read more...Are the eurozone’s continuing woes the result of its incomplete construction or because of policy errors in responding to the crisis?
Read more...Germany is very upset that Poland has voted in a populist, Euroskeptic, anti-austerity government. And Germany is particularly unhappy that the new regime is increasing its control over public media….which Germany already has in place.
Read more...The standard empirical evaluations of labour market policy only consider the direct effects of single programmes on their participants. This column argues that this fails to capture important aspects of real-world labour market policy – policy regimes and strategies. Using Swiss data, it employs a novel empirical approach that concurrently examines the effects of supportive and punitive policies (‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’). Policy regimes are shown to exert economically relevant effects, and accounting for these effects is crucial when designing labour market policy.
Read more...Model railroading as work and play.
Read more...History does hold lessons for economic development, and one of them is that public-order institutions are crucial – for good or ill.
Read more...How a budget approach cloaked in the aura of science and technical jargon became a tool for promoting austerity.
Read more...More discussion of the problems with the “debt-free money” construct, to the extent that it can even be called a construct.
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