Economics Roundtable
Database Maintenance
Over the July 4 holiday, scheduled database maintenance will likely produce some odd reposts as the database resynchonizes to the various blog formats.
Thinking About Jobs
Jeff Frankel lays out a balanced view of the current employment statistics.
Last Month: Jeff Frankel says that the labor market has NOT yet signalled a turning point. Check the graph of weekly hours at the bottom of the page.
Clive Granger, 1934-2009
We have lost an original thinker of the first magnitude. Clive W. J. Granger.
Auctions and Politicians
Catch up on the background for one of the newest areas of Economics Engineering.
The Clark Medal: A Hindcast
David Warsh identifies the likely winners of the John Bates Clark Medal for even-numbered years. The award has, of course, been announced only in odd-numbered years. Who did we miss?
Why Card Issuers Engage In Rate-Jacking
Adam Levitin of Credit Slips explains another "benefit" of securitization. The economics of this market structure are stunningly bad.
The Geithner Plan
Will it work? Paul Krugman says no.
The New York Times'
Room for Debate
includes Simon Johnson, Brad DeLong, and Mark Toma.
Equilibrium and Meltdown
George Waters addresses the economic crisis and the state of macroeconomics.
Gzing! Gzing! Gzing!
David Warsh offers a fascinating account of the invention of earmarks. Catch his review of So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government, by Robert G. Kaiser.
Monetary Policy in Three Steps
Step 1: Buy private assets from banks while selling Treasuries, effectively trading private assets for Treasuries, leaving reserves with the Fed unchanged.
Step 2: Buy private assets from banks, paying with deposits with the Fed (new money) because the portfolio of Treasuries is shrinking. Banks make little attempt to convert deposits with the Fed into loans. Nothing much happens to loans and the money supply, but excess reserves explode.
Step 3: Banks start to expand loans on the basis of massive excess reserves. The Fed has to drain hundreds of billions in excess reserves to regain control of the money supply. The Fed does this by selling private assets back to the banks.
We are now well into Step 2. Step 3 should be interesting.
Why AIG was in the CDS Business
Felix Salmon explains how taxpayers get to pay the claims after AIG collected the premiums. It is really very simple.
VoxEU -- Free Online Book
Rescuing our jobs and savings: What G7/8 leaders can do to solve the global credit crisis -- Contents Page
Richard Baldwin, Barry Eichengreen
"Without rapid and coordinated action by G7/8 leaders, this financial crisis could turn into a jobs crisis, a pension crisis and much more. This column introduces a collection of essays by leading economists on what the G7/8 leaders should do this weekend. The dozen essays present a remarkable consensus on a few points: we need immediate, coordinated global action that includes recapitalisation of the banks."
Economic Principals
Congratulations to David Warsh on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of EP.
The First Global Financial Crisis
of the 21st Century
A VoxEU.org Publication
Edited by Andrew Felton and Carmen Reinhart
Read the announcement
and/or download selected chapters.
Review: the topic itself is important, but this book also marks a new direction for online discussion.
Great Articles by Famous Economists
The Library of Economics and Liberty includes The Concise Encyclopeida of Economics. To see how many well-known economists have contributed browse by category .
EconModel
The Economics Roundtable is sponsored by EconModel.
The Classic Economic Models cover micro, macro, and financial markets.
Adam Smith Institute
I have to admit that I did something of a double take when I saw this from George Soros:
Regulators have abandoned their duty by letting markets regulate themselves. It's because a market fundamentalist ideology has come to dominate the behaviour of market participants and market regulatorsover the past ...
Narcotics are evil, and sensible people should not go down that road. However, they are out there, and young people will be exposed to them. To some their very illegality adds the spice of ...
Why not attend a free freedom seminar for UK students?
Freedom Week is a one week free seminar for thirty students about the principles of a free society based on the free market and individual liberty. It is taught by eminent academics and supported by the main UK free market think ...
Nigel Lawson's new book on global warming gets a great couple of write ups. The biggest concern is probably that what the science and the scientists are saying seems not to be what the politicians are listening to.
It's only April and already we have a ...
I must say, I think this is an absolutely marvellous advance. We pay for the BBC, after all, so we really shouldn't have any of that elitist nonsense about a factual reality or anything. No, news should be presented to show the world as "you" believe it to be, not ...
More selections of those old Tory posters mentioned above (or, erm, below, given the reverse order of blogs....). Here and here. There's some thought that the immediacy, the force, of the messages has declined over the years.
Here's the numbers on one country that has successfully ...
Sweden is often depicted as a Social Democratic paradise. However, her welfare state has achieved less and cost more than most believed. The point is that wealth distribution and flat income have not significantly changed after Sweden expanded her welfare programmes during the 1950s and 1960s, when workers enjoyed lower ...
85. "Curbs on budget airlines are needed to protect the environment."
Budget air flights emit a tiny fraction of the CO2 and other 'greenhouse gases' that are put out from all sources. They are insignificant compared to the emissions of agriculture, road transport and power generation. The problem is ...
That American recession/depression. You know, it looks like the falling dollar is boosting exports, curbing imports and taking up the slack. Just like, umm, economic theory would predict.
The most important question in climate change science is, what is climate sensitivity? As several ...