Articles
Articles and analyses from the INET community on the key economic questions of our time.
German Court decision: Legal authority and deep power implications
Who wields supreme power over the ECB? This column analyses the recent ruling by the German Constitutional Court that the ECB cannot act as lender of last resort. Although seemingly couched by the referral of this decision to the European Court of Justice, this is a bid for power and the return to the pre-crisis paradigm of ‘ultra posse nemo obligatur’.
Macroeconomics in Perspective
When is a Bubble a Bubble?
Modeling a World of Imperfect Knowledge
Does it matter if the Rational Expectations Hypothesis is unrealistic?
Solomonic Judgment vs. Sophists, Economists and Calculators [1] [2]
Given the choice, would you accept to live in a society where happiness and prosperity is guaranteed for all on the condition that one single person be kept permanently unhappy? Is the well-being of thousands of people “worth” the sacrifice and suffering of a single innocent child? Such is the dilemma to which the inhabitants of the utopian city of Omelas are confronted in Ursula Le Guin’s philosophical short-story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”. In her parable, most people are ultimately able to come to terms with the atrocity. The few citizens who cannot end up walking away from the city — nobody knows where they go and they are never heard from again.