Economics Roundtable
NOTICE 4/30/18
The Economics Roundtable is back. The technical problem that has limited the set of blogs has been resolved. The RSS feed is, however, still not working.
Flushing caches will likely cause some old posts to show up for a day or two.
Employment as a Percentage of Population
The graph below shows employment as a fraction of population for people over 16 years old.
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
March 2017 Payroll Employment
Payroll employment has not grown impressively since 2000. Some baby-boomers retired, but that does not totally account for this graph.
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
May 2014 Payroll Employment
After 76 months, we finally got back to the prerecession level of payroll employment.
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Graph-of-the-Year Candidates
Donald Marron likes European interest rates. Click on the image to get a bigger version. Can you find three distinct subperiods?
Brad DeLong favors the U.S. gdp gap.
Crooked Timber
"Out of the CROOKED TIMBER of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”
Thanks to everyone who commented on the first eleven chapters of my book-in-progress, Economics in Two Lessons.
Here’s a draft of Chapter 12 on Predistribution
Comments, criticism and praise are welcome.
Earlier draft chapters are available. These aren’t final versions, as I am now editing the entire manuscript, but you can ...
Thanks to everyone who commented on the first ten chapters of my book-in-progress, Economics in Two Lessons.
Here’s a draft of Chapter 11: Market failure: Information, uncertainty and financial markets
. Comments, criticism and praise are welcome.
Earlier draft chapters are available. These aren’t final versions, as I am now ...
Thanks to everyone who the first nine chapters of my book-in-progress, Economics in Two Lessons.
Here’s a draft of Chapter 10: Market failure -Externalities and pollution. Comments, criticism and praise are welcome.
The book so far is available
Table of Contents
Introduction.
Chapter 1: What is ...
A quick rule of thumb is that when someone seems to be acting like a jerk, an economist will defend the behavior as being the essence of morality, but when someone seems to be doing something nice, an economist will raise the bar and argue that he’s not being ...
I’ve been arguing for a while that a Guarantee Minimum Income (or Universal Basic Income) ought to be combined with a Jobs Guarantee to would make paid work a genuine choice for everyone. To spell this out, the GMI/UBI would make it possible to live decently without paid work, ...
Henry’s recent post on the irrelevance of conservative intellectuals reminded me of this one from 2013, which concluded
Conservative reform of the Republican party is a project that has already failed. The only question is whether the remaining participants will choose hackery or heresy.
Overwhelmingly, the choice has ...Thanks to everyone who the first seven chapters of my book-in-progress, Economics in Two Lessons. I’ve tried to think about all of them and respond to as many as possible, but I’m seeking comments from quite a few sources and may have missed some. Feel free to remind me ...
Thanks to everyone who the first six chapters of my book, Economics in Two Lessons. That brings us to the end of Lesson 1: Market prices reflect and determine opportunity costs faced by consumers and producers.
Now its time for Lesson Two: Market prices don’t reflect all the opportunity ...
Thanks to everyone who the first ficve chapters of my book, Economics in Two Lessons. Now here’s the draft of Chapter 6: The opportunity cost of destruction This is the last part of the book devoted to Lesson 1 Market prices reflect and determine opportunity costs faced by ...
Thanks to everyone who the first five chapters of my book, Economics in Two Lessons. Now here’s the draft of Chapter 6: The opportunity cost of destruction This is the last part of the book devoted to Lesson 1 Market prices reflect and determine opportunity costs faced by ...