Capital & Interest

Archive for Capital & Interest

Bookkeeping: More Commentary From Others on Piketty

This post is mostly so I don’t lose these links… ==> George Cooper is a blogger after my own heart. He comes up with a fable of a kingdom trying to show why Piketty’s approach confuses cause and effect. However, I think Cooper leaves out one loose end when valuing his capital stock etc.; his […]

A Fleshed Out Example Showing Problems With Piketty

[UPDATE: Note that I clarified the thought experiment to make sure it’s obvious that all physical production is due to labor in an economic sense.] At Mises Canada I elaborate on an example showing Piketty’s approach is flawed even on its own terms. First I’ll refresh your memory about Piketty’s framework: Technology naturally plays a […]

Whether r < g or r > g, We Need Much Bigger Government

I was toying with this idea but hadn’t had time to go document my claims. But now Nick Rowe is saying the same thing, so I’ll let him put his head out there. Anyway here’s the claim: (1) A few months ago, Krugman was agreeing with Larry Summers that we were stuck in a period […]

A Question on Debating Tactics

OK let’s try it this way: Suppose you encountered an economist who argued like this: [HYPOTHETICAL ECONOMIST HOLDING A STRANGE VIEW:] In a market economy, in competitive equilibrium wages are equal to the marginal product of capital. I can prove this to you mathematically in a simple model where physical machines can do all the […]

The Importance of Capital in Economic Theory

This is my EconLib article this month. I told the editor that this isn’t my personal favorite piece, and it’s not my “best” piece in some objective sense. But if I had to pick a single article (word for word) to represent my contribution to professional economics, it would be this one. It summarizes some […]

Piketty on the Marginal Product of Capital

I’m not going to comment on this right now; I have a big article on capital theory coming out next week, and you guys should read that first as foundation. So I’ll wait. In the meantime, however, let me go ahead and type out the following excerpt from pp. 212-213 of Thomas Piketty’s blockbuster Capital […]

Yglesias Interviews Piketty

If you’re getting sick of the coverage, don’t worry: After I post my review (coming in a few weeks), I will probably be done with this topic. In the meantime, Piketty says some interesting things in this interview with Matt Yglesias. For example: I think what [economists are] doing wrong is that in order to […]

More on Piketty

Here’s my latest Mises Canada post, in which I show how Brad DeLong actually (though it’s not his intent) concedes that Piketty’s entire case is built on quicksand. Matt Rognlie (who I think is this PhD econ student at MIT) left what may be the most important comments in a MR blog post this year. […]