Economics

Archive for Economics

Potpourri

==> This is an old but very interesting post from Mark Bahner on atmospheric CO2 and how quickly it could be removed if need be. ==> A very interesting post from David Beckworth on the yield curve (HT2 Scott Sumner). But most important–look at this analysis from Ben Bernanke back in 2006!! Not only was […]

A Thought Experiment on Fractional Reserve Banking

Enrico in the comments of my FRB lecture writes: “if someone lends 100$ to a bank for a fixed time period, and then the bank makes a loan of 90$, no boom&bust cycle will happen. The reason is that the 90$ loan granted by the bank is “backed” by (at least) 90$ real savings from […]

NYU Reminiscences on Mario Rizzo’s 70th Birthday

My contribution here. Be sure to go to ThinkMarkets and scroll down to see all the entries. (Thanks to the alert von Pepe for telling me about these!)

Murphy Interviewed by Mance Rayder

This is mostly standard stuff probably for a lot of you, but we do get into some nuances that you might like. We mostly talk economics, just a little an-cap stuff.

Krugman Unwittingly Compliments Conservatives

I really think this is a case where Krugman’s argument blew up in his face. The Trump Administration came back to the idea of subsidizing nuclear and coal-fired power plants, and so Krugman naturally screamed hypocrisy. Yet the link Krugman gave to the news story showed why conservatives were being consistent on this; I spell […]

The Primary Determinants of Your Child’s Weight

“They just grow up so fast…” said one of the parents as we watched the graduation ceremony. People talk like this a lot, but there’s really no mystery about the size of your child, once we specify the units (such as pounds). School lunch policy drives the growth in class calorie consumption, and the growth […]

Free Traders Should Be More Careful When Defending Trade Deficits

In a recent WSJ piece, Robert Barro pushed back against Trump’s mercantilism by arguing: “Imports are things we want, whether consumer goods, raw materials or intermediate goods. Exports are the price we have to pay to get the imports. It would be great, in fact, if we could get more imports without having to pay […]

Another Arrow in Your Quiver

Here are my class notes on Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem (thanks to Transformer for hosting the PDF). You have to be able to read formal set theory notation, but other than that there’s no prior knowledge required.