Economics Roundtable
-- Recession? --
Are back-to-back quarters of 0.6% GDP growth a recession? The blogs weigh in at Recession?
Will a 2% Fed Funds rate help? Fed Watch
-- Economic Principals --
David Warsh reports the latest on this year's free agent season for academic economists.
-- EconModel --
The Economics Roundtable is sponsored by EconModel.
Online, interactive models cover micro, macro, and financial markets.
-- Statistics --
137 Commentators
As of 2/19/08, the Economics Roundtable includes
137 commentators.
Daniel W. Drezner
Daneil W. Drezner
April 29, 2008, 10:03 am, 283662
One of the more invidious comparisons analysts like to make is to compare the size of something with a country's gross domestic product. An old warhorse of political economy/anti-corporate types, for example, is to say that the sales of multinational corporations exceeds many countries GDP. This is true but irrelevant ...
March 6, 2008, 8:17 am, 258268
Robert Lighthizer has an op-ed in today's New York Times that essentially argues that conservatives have a long tradition of trade protectionism that John McCain should embrace: Free trade has long been popular with liberals, and it remains so with liberal elites today. The editorial pages of major newspapers consistently ...
February 27, 2008, 8:47 am, 254205
Perhaps an unanticipated benefit of Clinton and Obama outbidding each other to see who could savage NAFTA more is that the mainstream media will actually point out that NAFTA is not responsible for the rust belt's economic woes. David Leonhardt makes this point in his New York Times column today: ...
February 19, 2008, 10:58 am, 251848
Peter T. Leeson, "An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization," Journal of Political Economy, vol. 115, no. 6 (December 2007): 1049-1094. Here's the abstract: This article investigates the internal governance institutions of violent criminal enterprise by examining the law, economics, and organization of pirates. To effectively organize their banditry, ...
February 18, 2008, 8:01 pm, 251737
My latest commentary for Marketplace concerns whether the penny should be abolished. In light of plagiarism accusations currently running rampant, I should acknowledge that I was "inspired" by a previously published work. Here's how it opens: Four score and nineteen years ago, our national mint brought forth on this country ...
February 3, 2008, 11:53 am, 248087
Rachel Donadio's essay in the New York Times Book Review asks a very good question: why, in this age of digitized publication, does it still take friggin' forever for a completed book manuscript to actually become a book? Donadio's answer -- marketing a book is essentially like marketing a movie: ...
January 25, 2008, 8:47 am, 245924
A follow-upon my last post on sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). I quoted the head of the Norway's fund saying, ""It seems you don't like us, but you need our money." It strikes me that one could flip that around. Not for norway, but for most of the countries now sprouting ...
January 24, 2008, 3:10 pm, 245792
Like the rest of the known universe, I've been reading up on sovereign wealth funds as of late. And, to be blunt, I have yet to find much to get exercised about in terms of economic vulnerability to the United States or the west more generally. Basically, in order for ...
January 22, 2008, 8:55 am, 244994
From the Federal Reserve this morning: The Federal Open Market Committee has decided to lower its target for the federal funds rate 75 basis points to 3-1/2 percent. The Committee took this action in view of a weakening of the economic outlook and increasing downside risks to growth. While strains ...
January 16, 2008, 7:29 pm, 243912
Sure, I have a Newsweek column and a bloggingheads appearance in the past 24 hours, but what have I done for my dear readers lately? My latest commentary for Marketplace is now available online. It's about the fallibility of political prediction markets. I'm very grateful to Columbia's Andrew Gelman for ...