There has been a lot of negative talk about the maths in economics – like a huge amount. Just look at these links, some of them are poor and reactionary, but some of them are excellent and the last two are my favourite (*, *, *,*,*,*). Now although I believe much of this attack is […]
Dr Bollard is spot on in saying that it isn’t likely that we will catch up to Australia in incomes (ht Kiwiblog and Rates Blog). Simply put, I think the majority of economists believe that the ability of government to influence per capita incomes (especially given the relative size and scope of governance in Aussie […]
Agnitio sent me a couple of links to an interview I did on unemployment last night (here and here). It is consistent with what I wrote yesterday, even if it doesn’t seem that way. Furthermore, I don’t believe the government was too “inactive” in this case – we aren’t a centrally planned economy, blaming the […]
What the hell does my title mean. Well, let me be straight up – the headline number is a lot worse than expected … especially by me personally. However, the more general “underutilisation” measure (the number unemployed + the number of people who want more hours all as a proportion of the labour market) was […]
Over at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Nick Rowe suggests that central banks should find something else to discuss instead of interest rates. The analogy provided is that of oligopoly competition: namely how the Cournot-Nash and Bertrand games have exceedingly different outcomes, even though the only superficial difference is that one game involves choosing output and the […]
Yesterday gave us the Labour cost index. This index provides my favourite (albeit partial) measure of inflation expectations, the adjusted private sector labour cost index. Anyway, what is it doing? In conjunction with the negative annual growth in the money stock during the close of 2009 (note our caution) it looks like inflation isn’t a […]