The Anglo-Saxon Hide, Adam Smith, Karl Marx and the 35 Hour Work Week
How the Doomsday book,and the unit of assessment called the “hide,” suggest that medieval laborers had very civilized work weeks.
Read more...Category Archives: The dismal science
Why Lowering the Marginal Corporate Tax Rate Does Not Increase Growth
A new paper puts another nail in the coffin to the idea that lowering corporate tax rates will boost growth.
Read more...Another Slow Year for the Global Economy
The factors that dragged down the global economy in 2015 will persist – and in some cases worsen – in the new year.
Read more...Deflation Denialism: No, Chancellor, 0.5% Inflation is Not “Welcome News”
What is deflation? What has caused inflation to fall? And why is there no such thing as ‘good deflation’?
Read more...Start-Up Governments, or Can Bureaucracies Innovate?
What makes bureaucracies innovative?
Read more...Social Engagement and Cooperative Behaviour: Experimental Evidence
Are you more likely to get a job if you’re seen to be intensively social?
Read more...Job Guarantee Versus Basic Income Guarantee
A lively and well-informed debate on the merits of a job guarantee versus a basic income guarantee.
Read more...Economics Joke Time
An economics joke open thread. Of course, economists might have the presence of mind to retort that economics is too important to be taken seriously.
Read more...Matthew Cunningham-Cook: Five Reasons Tariffs Are Great
Saying tariffs could be a good thing is close to a taboo in economics. Is that distaste justified?
Read more...Debunking the Magnitude of Markets: A Holiday Story
Why markets, the god of neoliberalism, are not what they are cracked up to be.
Read more...The Sneaky Way Austerity Got Sold to the Public Like Snake Oil
How a budget approach cloaked in the aura of science and technical jargon became a tool for promoting austerity.
Read more...Randy Wray: Debt-Free Money and Banana Republics, Part II
More discussion of the problems with the “debt-free money” construct, to the extent that it can even be called a construct.
Read more...Capitalism – Not China – Is to Blame for the Current Global Economic Decline
Capitalism’s “recovery” now proceeds like another speeding train headed toward contradiction and catastrophe.
Read more...The Scientific Limits of Understanding Complex Social Phenomena
Economists, for the most part, resist the idea that economics can never be a scientific enterprise. Sadly, that posture has proven profitable for them.
Read more...The Puzzle of Technical Dis-Employment and Productivity Slowdown
How can recent technical change could both be a major source of dis-employment and not be associated with productivity improvement?
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