Friday 31 August 2012

End August Links

Rational overconfidence -  I like the 10 heads strategy for predicting a biased coin: your prediction will be biased, but given only a single prediction can be made, this is the optimal strategy.
Filters and full employment (not wonkish really) & HP filters and potential output (good description of HP filters - unconvinced by attempt to rubbish Krugman for essentially just sloppy language, and unconvinced as well by the rest of the post)
Heterodox and mainstream macroeconomics, The heterodox versus the superhuman representative agent, sector financial balances as a diagnostic check & Can heterodox economists constructively engage the mainstream?
Something big happened in early 70's; Producitivty growth: the long term; Is economic growth going down the drain; & American growth could be higher than the pessimists think - I'm very interested in this - has to form the basis for some future project or two...
Unemployment: a brief history
Michal Kalecki on the Great Moderation - another brilliant post from Interfluidity which links to the stability versus robustness trade-off of complex adaptive systems
Why are (almost all) economists unaware of Milton Friedman's thermostat?
Unit roots and pro-cyclical fiscal policy
Trade-offs between inequality, productivity, and employment  - this post is one of the most interesting ideas I've read about inequality and its effect on economic activity: utterly brilliant.
No theory X in shining armour - fascinating economic philosophy, I can think of objections though...
Innocent Bystanders? Monetary policy in the U.S. and inequality - this reinforces my priors: the so called 'Austrians' economic model just seems like nonsense to me. Also QE & Inequality: Don't blame the bank
Inflation target at 1.5% since 2008 - this is something that is not at all appreciated: the BoE is running tight monetary policy relative to it's policy objective (expected (not actual!) inflation = 2%)
House prices consumption and aggregation - a very clarifying post on relationship between house prices and aggregate consumption levels.
2014 v 2016: An open letter to Angus Robertson and all yes campaigners - Kevin Williamson hammers away at the conflation of SNP policy and policies that may be enacted in an independent Scotland. Can't be said often enough.
Austerity's not working - I don't know how many times it needs said, but this is a fairly eloquent repetition of the basic argument.
Why do we need to pay billions of pounds for big projects? - an excellent question! John Kay proposes that technological advances have reduced rather than raised productivity. Not sure, but very interesting...
The new gold rush - excellent point that in exploiting a non-renewable resource to maximise value, we should decrease production if current yields are lower than expected growth in prices. Related to my paper that presents a mechanism for growth in prices to be negatively related to future scarcity.
Neo fights (slightly wonkish and vague) - I love this put down of "Austrians" (and I think it applies also to other so-called "heterodox economists" - even though I'm inclined to agree with the policy prescriptions of some of these other heterodox economists whilst not at all with the Austrians): "They claim to reject neoclassical economics, but their alternative is not an alternative model but a lot of verbiage; they talk at the economy, and imagine that by so doing they achieve a higher level of sophistication and realism than economists who try to express their ideas in terms of little models. And they’re kidding themselves; all they’ve done is hide their implicit models and prejudices behind a dust cloud."
Arctic sea ice volume - scary stuff. Fitting a quadratic trend to Annual Minimum Sea Ice Volume from 1979-2011 and projecting forward, we get zero volume by 2017...

Sunday 19 August 2012

Songs in econ blogs

Economics blogs often feature the blogger's choice of music. For example Paul Krugman's aye posting Arcade Fire, Brian Ashcroft likes Julie Fowlis, and Tyler Cowan recomended King Creosote & Jon Hopkins. I'm not entirely sure why they do this: the fact that I enjoy their musings on economic policy or theory, surely doesn't provide any signal that we share musical tastes?

Therefore, in keeping with this practice, but instead of my picks being a musical recommendation, I'm posting songs with economic relevance:
  • The central message of the new economic geography literature is that density is good. I think this can be nicely summarised by "Mmm skyscraper, I love you"

  • Economic growth is usually modelled as being due to `technological progress'. And there surely cannot be a better description of the technological progress we have enjoyed over the past 2000 years than the lines: "If Jesus came to Earth today, They’d crucify him straight away, Upon a cross of `MDF', And they’d use `No Need For Nails' "

  • More seriously... Is there a harsher description of Factor Price Equalisation than "They complained in the East, They're payin' too high, They say that your ore ain't worth diggin', That it's much cheaper down, In the South American towns, Where the miners work almost for nothin'."?


This is unlikely to be a regular feature...