Angling for Dollars: A Review of Akerlof and Shiller’s Phishing for Phools
A fine stocking stuffer. And I’m not phishing!
Read more...Category Archives: The dismal science
Rebooting the Eurozone: Step 1 – Agreeing a Crisis Narrative
The Eurozone needs fixing, but it is impossible to agree upon the steps to be taken without agreement on what went wrong. This column introduces a new CEPR Policy Insight that presents a consensus-narrative of the causes of the EZ Crisis. It was authored by a dozen leading economists from across the spectrum. The consensus narrative is supported by a long and growing list of economists.
Read more...Cameron Murray: Unpopular Economic Opinions
1. School is mostly about indoctrination into the national identity. It is also about child care, and for older children, about keeping them out of the labour force. If we were honest we could talk about education policy with this in mind, though no one does (okay, there are some exceptions).
Read more...To Fix Inequality and Steady the Economy, Think Radically
Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website Adair Turner, Chairman of the Board of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and former Chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority (2008-13), is the author of a new book that takes aim at economic and political orthodoxies, Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and […]
Read more...Greed! Announcing Econ4 Video Contest
Announcing a contest with cash and prizes for the winners! And it’s to poke a stick in the eye of avarice! What’s not to like?
Read more...How Pursuing “Competitiveness” Crushes Labor and Lowers Growth
Why pursuing national “competitiveness,” as in squeezing labor pay and rights, does not produce the promised benefit of more growth.
Read more...Liquidity Traps as Black Holes
Beware! Liquidity traps are even nastier than you thought.
Read more...Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the Rise in the US
While the new neoliberal economic order is not a replay of fascism,, there is a remarkable amount of inhibition in calling out the similarities where they exist.
Read more...How Repo Works
A primer on repo, which due to its critical role in funding major dealer banks, is an important component of bank reform efforts.
Read more...Weaker Unions Correlated with More Inequality, Higher Pay for Top Earners
The decline in union power plays an important role in explaining the rise in inequality in advanced economies.
Read more...Negative Real Rates Signify a Broken Financial System
How the debate on negative real rates has missed role of demand for “safe” collateral for derivative positions, and why that is central.
Read more...Michael Hudson: The Paradox of Financialized Industrialization
The great question today is whether post-feudal rentier capitalism will stifle industrial capitalism instead of serving it. The aim of finance is not merely to exploit labor, but to conquer and appropriate industry, real estate and government. The result is a financial oligarchy, neither industrial capitalism nor a tendency to evolve into socialism.
Read more...Michael Perelman: The Essential Handbook for Engineering an Unequal Society
While the thrust of Perelman’s post is no doubt familiar to readers, take note of how simple and few in number are the essential principles for creating a highly unequal society, and how easy it is to describe them them in antiseptic language.
Read more...Steve Keen: “Mainstream Economics” and Its Deadly Equilibrium Assumption
Steve Keen, one of the very few economists who forecast the crisis, on “What is ‘mainstream economics’ and why has it gone off the rails?”
Read more...Mark Blyth: “Austerity Cures Nothing”
This is a bracing, no-nonsene talk from economist Mark Blyth of Brown University, who is the author of Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century and Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.
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