Wednesday 13 June 2012

End May Links

Austerity has brought Europe to the brink again, particularly the line: "Normally, an individual helps his creditors by borrowing less; but a person who stops borrowing to finance commuting to his job does his creditors no favor."
Macro: Intuition vs Theory. The number of Noah Smith posts that I'm linking to is getting embarassing. I've no idea why I like the politically liberal, physics to economics switcher...
The incredulity problem, brilliant argument for general rather than partial equilibrium analysis.
Ex-President Bling-Bling, especially the starkness of the policy choice: "But this means, yes, overall inflation in the euro area significantly higher than the less than 2 % target. It certainly means a lot higher than the 1.5% the market currently expects. Don’t like that? OK, so no euro. It’s that stark."
The problem of living with capital-ism, this plays to my prejudices. I need to compare and contrast with the Ed Glaeser book "Triumph of the city" that I'm reading at the moment.
The left & shareholder activism
Is it all Gordon Brown's fault, which follows on from On major macroeconomic policy mistakes
The return of schools of thought in macroeconomics
The zero lower bound and output gap uncertainty
Inflation targeting is not working
Dangerous voices and macroeconomic spin & Cameron is consigning the UK to stagnation
What makes countries rich or poor? Jared Diamond reviews Robinson & Acemoglu's Why Nations Fail
The liberal Keynesian dilemma "Very few people are arguing for a big shift from current to capital public spending" - not sure about this? I'd argue that we certainly don't want to be cutting current spending in a depression (but if it's more than average revenues over the business cycle then it does need to be cut eventually) but the countercyclical boost to government spending should be predominantly capital spending. To at least some extent therefore, I would definitely argue for a big shift, at least in relative terms, from current to capital public spending.
State dependence and fiscal multipliers
The end of the Euro: A survivors guide
The riddle of German self-interest
Economists who don't do it with models
Mervyn King and the fiscal multiplier - I heard the interview on Radio Scotland of Spencer Dale (by Gillian Marles I think): it was another BBC Scotland can't do economics moment - all "inflation's bad" and "government deficits are bad" as self evident truths, true at all times and in all circumstances, that don't need questioned.
Balance sheet monetary policy a primer

No comments:

Post a Comment