Economics is a morality play, is the claim. Okay, but if we concede the inseparability of economic policy from politics, we should also concede the inseparability of economic phenomena like inequality and rent-seeking from politics; arguing that institutional constraints predominate when criticizing idealistic intervention should be followed by ( Read more... )

Has a central bank anywhere, ever tried and failed to generate expectations of future inflation?

I was making a strawberry jam sandwich when Lux Aeterna from Requiem for a Dream began playing on my mp3 player.

I've never eaten a more epic sandwich...

How big can advertising really get? Advertisements cannot fund everything; it is, inevitably, a derivative industry built off other industries. If free ad-funded consumer electronics become the norm, those ads wouldn't be advertising consumer electronics (at least, not solely - at best, only to drive out competing ad networks ( Read more... )

Somewhere in here there is an insight, but damn if they aren't doing a good job hiding it.

Inexplicably, I feel like eating a durian.

I shall settle for a custard pie...

Economics is not about the allocation of scarce resources - that would imply a much more restrictive application of economic theory than is generally practiced. Economics is about determining what is invariant about human behavior - when we do certain things, the wider system reacts, but what stays the same? What combination of variables remains ( Read more... )

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Organization is an underprovided public good.

Keynes: Keynes.

Neo-Keynes, neoclassical synthesis: 1940s-1960s attempts to merge Keynes with the earlier neoclassicals; exemplified by Hicks and Samuelson.

New Keynes: post-1970s Keynesian-flavored monetarist formulations of the economy.

Post-Keynes: non-neoclassical formalizations of Keynes.