Economics Roundtable

Economists frequently complain that even when 98% of the profession agrees on something (say a free-trade proposition), the media will go to lengths to dig up an economist from the 2% minority in order to balance one from the 98% majority, in its feverish and misguided attempt ...

 As widely noted, payroll employment peaked in December, and had declined by 232,000 jobs as of March.   (We await the April figure on Friday, from the BLS.)   This is easily the most tangible statistical evidence we have so far that the much-heralded recession ...

Nicholas Kristof’s column in the New York Times today, “Better Roses than Cocaine,” says it all.   There is no good reason to oppose the free trade agreement with Colombia that has been held up in the US Congress.   

Free trade with Colombia can’t have anything to do with loss of US jobs:   Colombia’s exports ...

[Source: Institute of International Finance, Washington, DC]Continuing on the theme of the unusual spread that banks ...

While some aspects of the subprime mortgage crisis were predictable, the freezing up the most liquid risk-free markets in the world was not.   The illiquidity has been especially striking in the interbank market.    The following chart was kindly made available by the Institute of International Finance, ...

In my earlier post, I catalogued some quotes from high Bush Administration officials asserting the supply-side claim  that a cut in US tax rates stimulates income so much that the Treasury ends up taking in more revenue than before.   I didn’t then quote in detail the extensive statements made ...

My friend Barry Eichengreen, together with Marc Flandreau, has written a column in today’s Financial Times, that appears under the headline “Why the euro is unlikely to eclipse the dollar.”     The body of the article is a claim that network externalities and tipping points are not ...

Following up on my preceding post, I will here document who has said what.    

High officials in the Reagan Administration apparently did subscribe to the Laffer Hypothesis:
•         Reagan himself: “…our kind of tax cut will so stimulate the economy that we will actually increase ...

So Arthur Laffer – still arguing the improbable “supply side” proposition that cutting income tax rates generally raises total tax revenue – is apparently now a special adviser to John McCain.   The political temptation for a Republican candidate to promise both lower tax rates and higher revenues is ...

At the 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq, estimates of its long-run cost range from $1.2-$1.7 trillion by my former colleague Peter Orszag, now Director of the Congressional Budget Office, to $2 - 3 trillion by my current colleague Linda Bilmes (with another ...