Over at Econospeak Michael Perelman is discussing how he feels economists ignore the concept of a worker when they discuss economic theory. There appears to be a fair amount of disdain in his post about the mathematical nature of economics. However, I will forgive him for this – he is a heterodox economist after all, […]
Yesterday I was talking to my partner about the lack of videos available for her iPod. I was prattling on about how there probably isn’t many videos because the penetration of the video iPod is probably quite low. The reason I believed that the penetration was quite low, was because I couldn’t see lots of […]
So, New Zealand has a stock of debt that is equivalent to 86% of annual GDP and ran a 7.8% current account deficit over the year to March 2008. My article in the Dom today states that “this isn’t a big deal”. Discuss 🙂
If you want to know, have a look at this post. It is completely non-technical, and explains the way macro-economists look at things pretty danged well! (ht Marginal Revolution). Fundamentally, this view of the business cycle is highly focused on methodological individualism – the business cycle occurs in the context of individuals maximising their happiness […]
Over at the Standard, Steve Pierson raises the fair point that borrowing to “spend” at the moment is likely to increase inflationary pressures – as capacity in the economy is limited. He uses this idea as a criticism of Nationals “borrow to fund infrastructure policy”. As a purely demand story this makes sense – however […]
This follows from Part One. Well, the unemployment rate rose to 3.9% – this was above market expectations, so the immediate feeling would be that the labour market is in trouble. However, then you see the increase in employment and HOURS WORKED (the indicator I wanted to keep an eye on) and you realise “this […]