November 27, 2013 – 12:15 pm
Understanding the equation of exchange can help see what a massive evasion of institutional responsibility lies behind the Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis. Economist Irving Fisher developed the original algebraic formulation of the equation of exchange, in his The Purchasing Power of Money (1911): MV = PT Money x Velocity = Prices x Transactions. Fisher’s use of […]
By Lorenzo
|
Posted in Economics, History
|
Also tagged aggregate demand, aggregate supply, Balance sheet recession, BoJ, bubble economy, Cambridge equation, central banks, Debt-deflation, ECB, equation of exchange, Euro, Eurozone, Eurozone crisis, export price norm, FDR, fiscal multiplier, fiscal policy, gold standard, Great Depression, Great Recession, Greece, Howard Government, inflation targeting, Irving Fisher, japan, Lars Svensson, liquidity trap, M.S.Eccles, national accounts, PIIGS, quantity theory of money, RBA, Richard Koo, Sumner critique, supply shock, US Federal Reserve
|
October 2, 2013 – 7:02 am
Canadian economist Nick Rowe made a comment on a blog post on comparative advantage that bugged me: The way I teach it, all gains from trade come either from differences between people, like comparative advantage, or else from economies of scale. So I think gains from trade is not more basic than comparative advantage. Gains […]
By Lorenzo
|
Posted in Blogging, Economics, History, Technology
|
Also tagged club goods, comparative advantage, david ricardo, economies of scale, endogenous, farming, foraging, gains from trade, geographical economics, Hecksher-Ohlin, history of trade, hunter-gatherers, Karl Marx, labour-leisure trade-off, luxury good, Nick Cowan, Nick Rowe, Noah Smith, opportunity costs, Paul Krugman, Ronald Rogowski, specialisation, Stolper-Samuelson, trade
|
September 18, 2013 – 9:30 am
I was intending to make this my Wednesday post for last week, but my iPad ate my draft in Pages (it will not open or email the document: any suggestions for getting to the document would be welcome). But delaying for a week allowed me to provide a more complete post. Ronald Coase, the […]
By Lorenzo
|
Posted in Academia, Economics, Public Policy
|
Also tagged Barry Marshal, Coase Theorem, common property, Deidre McCloskey, Douglass North, Elinor Ostrom, externalities, Frank Knight, George Stigler, Harold Demsetz, Hayek, James Buchanan, John Birch Society, John Maynard Keynes, John R Commons, London School of Economics, Lynne Kiesling, Nobel Memorial Prize, Oliver Williamson, Ottoman Empire, Paul Krugman, Peter Boettke, property rights, risk, Robert Fogel, Ronald Coase, Scott Sumner, Stefano Fenoaltea, Steven Cheung, transaction costs, University of Virginia, Yoram Barzel
|
Ben Bernanke is not a Tea Party sort of person. An academic appointed as Chair of the US Federal Reserve (“the Fed”) by a Republican President (Bush II) and re-appointed by a Democrat President (Obama) who helped organise the bailout of Wall St in response to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), he is the epitome of […]
By Lorenzo
|
Posted in Academia, Economics, History, Politics, Popular culture, Public Policy, The Right
|
Also tagged Bank of England, Bank of France, barack obama, Ben Bernanke, Benjamin Strong, central banking, Condoleezza Rice, credit channel, Euro, European Central Bank, gold standard, Great Depression, Great Moderation, Great Recession, Gunther Grass, John Kerry, money, Nazi Party, Obamacare, plucking model, President George W. Bush, Reichstag, Romneycare, TARP, Tom Wolfe, US Federal Reserve, US tea party, Zero Lower Bound
|
The notion that “easy money” created asset booms is levelled (famously by Austrian school economists such as von Mises and Hayek) against the 1920s boom and by a range of commentators about the Great Moderation boom. In both cases, the Fed (dominated by Benjamin Strong as New York Fed Governor up to 1928 and by Alan Greenspan as Fed Chair 1987-2006) is held to be to […]
By Lorenzo
|
Posted in Economics, History, Law, Public Policy, Technology
|
Also tagged Alan Greenspan, asset markets, Austrian business cycle, Austrian school, Bank of France, Benjamin Strong, bimetallism, bubble economy, china, ECB, expectations, FDR, Frederich Hayek, George L Harrison, GFC, gold standard, Great Depression, Great Moderation, Great Recession, housing booms, India, lost decades, monetary policy, natural interest rate, NIRA, permanent income effect, railway manias, Roger W. Garrison, silver standard, theory of the unsustainable boom, Time and Money, US Federal Reserve, von Mises, world war one
|
April 15, 2013 – 10:30 am
Milton Friedman’s 1967 Presidential Address (pdf) is something monetary economists regularly say anyone interested in monetary economics should read. Having recently read it, I have come to the conclusion that it is something anyone interested in monetary economics should read. As is normal with Friedman, it is beautifully clear, one of his great attributes. His analysis […]
By Lorenzo
|
Posted in Economics, Public Policy
|
Also tagged central banks, Chuck Norris Effect, David Glasner, Edmund Phelps, equation of exchange, expectations, Goodhart's Law, Inflation, inflation targeting, interest rates, Irving Fisher, Knut Wicksell, Lars Christensen, Market Monetarism, monetary economics, monetary policy, monetary velocity, natural rate of interest, natural rate of unemployment, Paul Krugman, Phillips Curve, Scott Sumner, stagflation, unemployment
|
August 28, 2012 – 8:00 am
As folks may have noted, I like graphs; they can be very useful illustrations, particularly of historical trends. Consider this graph, taken from the 2012 US Federal Budget (via). What is striking is the long-run stability of economic growth in the US, apart from one episode which stands out fairly dramatically. Very dramatically (pdf) given that: […]
By Lorenzo
|
Posted in Economics, History
|
Also tagged American Civil War, Austrian business cycle, Bank of England, Bank of France, bimetallism, Brad DeLong, business cycle, creative destruction, deflation, expectations, Friedrich Hayek, gold standard, Gustav Cassel, Irving Fisher, John Maynard Keynes, Keynesian school, Market Monetarism, Monetarism, New Keynesianism, Nick Rowe, plucking model, R G Hawtrey, rational expectations, real business cycle theory, Roger Garrison, silver standard, uncertainty, US Federal Reserve, von Mises
|
Today (Tuesday 31st) is Milton Friedman’s centenary. It seems appropriate to link to some Milton Friedman quotes here and here. Various bloggers have offered their comments, including Bryan Caplan’s ode, Tyler Cowen notes how much he is still needed, Lars Christensen writes him a letter, and David Glasner continues his campaign against the Wall St […]
By Lorenzo
|
Posted in Academia, Drugs, Economics, Education, Public Policy, Welfare
|
Also tagged Bryan Caplan, David Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, Lars Christensen, Paul Krugman, Tyler Cowen
|
What do the goldzone Great Depression (1929-3?) and the Eurozone Great Recession (2008-?) have in common? They were both created by European central banks with the US Federal Reserve (the Fed) as accessory during and after the fact. (Yes, the monetary shock which set off the Great Recession started in Europe though the responsibility of the […]
By Lorenzo
|
Posted in Economics, History, Politics, Public Policy
|
Also tagged Barry Eichengreen, business cycle, central banking, Charles Goodhart, deflation, disinflation, European Central Bank, European Union, Eurozone, exchange rates, expectations, fixed exchange rates, Frederich Hayek, free banking, gold standard, Great Depression, Great Inflation, Great Recession, Henry Thornton, hyperinflation, Inflation, land rationing, optimum currency area, Peter Temin, seigniorage, Thomas Sargent, time horizons, UK coalition government, uncertainty, US Federal Reserve, World Bank
|
I have been doing a fair bit of reading in the history of money and monetary theory to try and understand money, particularly its origin and use. A thing reveals its nature through history, to understand the history of something is to much better understand it. I was aware that modern macroeconomics is bedevilled by […]
By Lorenzo
|
Posted in Economics, History
|
Also tagged currency board, equation of exchange, expectations, free banking, gold standard, hyperinflation, Irving Fisher, law of reflux, Mike Sproul, monetary base, money, Nick Rowe, real bills doctrine, Reichsbank, Rudolf Havenstein, US Federal Reserve
|