New and Noteworthy
- Moritz Schularick: Credit Booms Gone Bust
- David Tuckett: How Stories about Economic Fundamentals Drive Financial Markets
- Sanjay Reddy - Facts and Values Are Entangled: Deal with It
- INET in Berlin: The Annual Plenary Conference to Take Place from April 12-14, 2012
- Pavlina Tcherneva: Bottom Up Fiscal Policy: Direct Employment of the Unemployed
- Satyajit Das: The Cultural Transformation of the World of Finance
- Bringing in the Gunslinger: Nicholas Wapshott on Keynes vs. Hayek
Featured Video
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John Fullerton, the founder of the Capital Institute, says that finite natural resources pose a real limit to growth. And when growth becomes scarce, who gets to grow and by how much?
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George Akerlof, professor at the University of California at Berkeley says that in terms of climate change, the economics are pretty simple: tax the bads, like carbon.
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Fred Block thinks that government investment in innovation is essential: in fact, even during the era of Ronald Reagan, the US government played a key role in developing new technologies and the Internet.
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Anwar Shaikh, professor at the New School for Social Research, says that the big sin of our era is not the environment but the poverty of the huge number of people who live at the bottom of our social ladders.
Featured Blog Post
- posted on January 06, 2012
How God, Adam Smith, and the invisible hand changes over time
So with a suitably provocative title I think we can declare 2012 open. And in starting the year I was struck by how words and sentences can change in meaning over time, particularly prompted by this quote: "No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States."
Read More - posted on December 09, 2011
The IMF and the Collateral Crunch
Why is the IMF getting involved in the Eurocrisis, and why is its involvement taking the form of lending to individual member states of the Eurozone? One reason, which is the focus of most commentary, is the IMF's long-honed reputation for "conditionality" as a condition for lending. The ECB is simply not in a position to insist on conditionality, so if you think conditionality is needed, then you think you need the IMF.
Read More - posted on January 05, 2012
Nobody understands money
A correspondent sends us to a column of Paul Krugman's that asserts that "nobody understands debt". Fair enough. To my mind, this line stands out: "And because foreigners tend to put their U.S. investments into safe, low-yield assets, America actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors."
Read More - posted on December 09, 2011
Is there an ECB?
The ECB has always been the protagonist of the eurozone crisis story. At times it has seemed the arch-villain, coldly standing on principle even as the financial system crumbles around it. At other times it has seemed the hero in waiting, ready to step in at the eleventh hour to bring a moral-hazard-free end to the turmoil with its unlimited balance sheet.
Read More - posted on December 23, 2011
Fixed exchange rates
As we prepare to digest the implications of this week's ECB move, it seems worthwhile to take a look at the monetary economics of fixed exchange rates.There are two basic ways to hold fixed the exchange rate between the money of two communities: peg the exchange rate or create a monetary union.
Read More - posted on December 12, 2011
John Whittaker: Eurosystem balances explained
A guest post is by John Whittaker, from whom we have learned much of what we know about how the European payments system works: I'm having some trouble dealing with who said what and where, but let me just try to deal with a couple of points. 1. The SMP (outright) purchases of peripheral government debt ‘by the ECB’ reside on the balance sheets of the NCBs. ...
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