Economics

Archive for Economics

The Myth of Wartime Prosperity

This ran a while ago but I forgot to blog about it. Half of my piece is just the standard case against World War II “prosperity,” with a link to Steve Horwitz’s co-authored piece drawing on primary sources to show how tough things were on the homefront. However, after that I take Krugman et al. […]

Krugman, Karl, and Kalculus

I want to follow-up on my initial thoughts on Krugman saying that rich people don’t add anything (net) to the economy, since I personally am seeing this whole thing much more clearly now, largely thanks to you guys and (believe it or not) my working through a mathematical model that is standard in grad programs. […]

Potpourri

==> David R. Henderson, clearly jealous of my notoriety, points out that he debated Paul Krugman when I was an undergrad. ==> Scott Sumner and von Pepe go toe-to-toe. Von Pepe tells Sumner that the word “market” doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. ==> After that warm-up, for something even more surreal: Joseph Fetz […]

Entrepreneur Hero Worship and Calculus

How’s that for an obscure post title? I’m referring to Krugman’s accusation that right-wingers are hypocrites. (I hope you were sitting down for that one.) Their latest abomination refers to their claim that people with high incomes are engines of job creation and therefore we don’t want the government to drop the hammer on them. […]

Updated Yield Curve Chart

For my Anatomy of the Fed class, I showed how the Austrian theory of the business cycle actually has a very natural explanation of the yield curve’s ability to “predict” recessions. (Details in my paper here.) Some people asked me to update the charts. Here ya go:

Revisiting the Economics of Climate Change: Nordhaus, Tol, and Surprising Findings

I have a long post up at MasterResource, revisiting the issues that came up in my earlier response to Nordhaus. If you are interested in climate science, particularly the economics of climate change, I would immodestly recommend that you wait till you have a good 15 minutes and read this thing through. It’s by no […]

Potpourri

==> Oh boy, here we go again, flirting with the event horizon in economics known as capital & interest theory. If I were an academic, puffing on my pipe and flaunting a tweed sportcoat, I could really get into this. As it is, you will have to content yourself with my comments in Nick Rowe’s […]

The Dangers of the Modern Greenbacker Movement

Uh oh, I ask for a comeuppance by the MMTers in this new piece at The American Conservative: Lately there has been growing interest in what might be called the modern Greenbacker movement, in homage to the historical political party. The new movement deplores the current system under which the government issues interest-bearing debt to commercial […]