Articles

“The aim would not be to unravel a hidden coherent structure of the philosophical, theoretical, political dimensions of his work, but to give a sense of the contingencies that his work was subject to – both in terms of its origins and its receptions. Don’t make up an Arrow that he himself was not aware of.” -Till to me, email conversation on Kenneth Arrow, summer 2012

Paul De Grauwe raises very important questions on the institutional structure of Europe and how it must be modified to fortify the euro zone.

In what sense are central banks really independent? From whom are they independent? For whom in society do they deliver?

[We are inaugurating something new in this blog: a jointly written post!]

How representation of data can contribute to, or dispel the false certainty of statistical and econometric technique.

Since September 2011, the Swiss National Bank has held a floor of 1.20 francs per euro.

Ivan Moscati is one of the most exciting voices in the historiography of decision theory.

I don’t seem to be able to fully grasp Mark Blaug’s distinction between a relativist and an absolutist approach to the history of economics – first introduced in Economic Theory in Retrospect (1962) – and that is a source of much frustration.

Like many economists, I have enjoyed Axel Leijonhufvud’s “Life among the Econ” and nodded appreciatively when he described the social classifications of the Econ as “Grads, Adults and Elders” and chuckled when the young grad tries to impress the elders of the ‘dept’ through adept ‘modl’ building; so when the man himself was holding a glass of champagne and chatting with me at the INET conference, I had to ask how he got that paper started.

Behind all the technical language and the common theme of bashing bankers, there remains the Great Divide between Germans and the rest.