Economics

Archive for Economics

Applying Krugmanian Lessons to the 1990s

Poor Alex Tabarrok. He makes a simple blog post, pointing out the hilarious heads-we-win-tails-you-lose stance of Krugman et al., and the targets of his critique focus on something completely incidental. I will probably muddy the waters myself by focusing on the “incidental” part of his post, but so be it. First, though, let’s review: 1) […]

Nick Rowe Has Solved the Mystery of the Great Recession

Relying on a “very important post” from David Beckworth, Nick informs us that the financial crisis of 2008 occurred because people began expecting it in 2005. Call me hard to please, but I want more, Nick.

Potpourri

==> My thoughts on Earth Day. ==> In the context of the standard debates, I would be classified as an “open borders” kind of guy, but I think that is a terrible label. Somebody should ask Bryan Caplan why they don’t call it “freedom of migration” or “no CheckPoint Charlies” or something. “Open borders” sounds […]

Two Views of R&R

[UPDATE below. Make sure you read that if you are just now stumbling upon this post.] Man, Reinhart and Rogoff are getting hammered by the Keynesians lately. First of all, you’ve got commentators (here’s but one example of many) who are making it sound like all the “austerity” the last 3 years was due to […]

Ariel Rubinstein Has Amazed Me

At NYU my “field” was Game Theory, because I figured, if we’re going to formally model economic actions, then let’s get nuts. I have elsewhere criticized the big guns of game theory when they try to talk to the layperson. So, when Tyler Cowen linked Ariel Rubinstein’s article titled, “How Game Theory will solve the […]

Heads Krugman Wins, Tails Austerians Lose

Man I am just really down lately, because the great experiment in European austerity has proven to be a disaster for “my side” of the debate. You had all these austerians predicting that the way to reassure bond markets and get yields down on fiscally suspect European nations was to make bold promises about reform. […]

Just the Facts, Ma’am: “Testing” Keynesian Theory

I realized that I was being too fair to “Lord Keynes” in the last post, since total GDP statistics include government expenditures. To really test whether the Obama stimulus episode seems more consistent with the Keynesian versus the Austrian story, let’s look at what happened to gross private investment (I couldn’t find any FRED series […]

Believing Is Seeing, Part II

“Lord Keynes” provided the most beautiful confirmation possible in the comments of my recent post. Recall that I had teased a guy for simply assuming the Keynesian theory was correct, when interpreting the economic statistics. Lord Keynes upbraided me: As opposed to your last post, where the data strongly confirms the Keynesian story, but not […]