Straight from the Money Illusion, Scott Sumner discussing his recent trip to Australia: I was particularly impressed with the talk given by the representative from the New Zealand government (Bill English) but will admit to knowing little about that place, other than that that their people live in Hobbit-style dwellings. Whether you agree with the […]
I see that Rosenberg has created a bit of an uproar in the economics community with his claims around economics (although the articles focus is macroeconomics) not being a science. Unlike other economists I think this is a good thing in terms of forcing economists to defend against the claim – however, like other economists […]
John Cochrane has a great post up on his blog about macroprudential policy, where he notes three important rules to their implementation: Humility about our lack of knowledge, and thereby avoiding fine-tuning (note, the burden of proof may be set in different ways for “structural” policy – but when it comes to changing policy actively […]
Noah Smith recently smashed math in economics (specifically macroeconomics) stating: Math can also be used as obscurantism; if every paper in a field starts with a dense thicket of formal statements and functional equations, it will be difficult for even very smart outsiders to come in and evaluate what the people in a field are […]
Via Vox Eu comes a piece looking at the distributional consequences of resource booms – using Australian data. Their conclusion: We need good time series data from developing countries to see whether the distributional impact is bigger there than what we find for Australia. Until then, the analysis here seems timely and relevant, not just […]
I was hesitant to write this post, until I realised I was writing it on a personal blog that only a few lovely people read and no-one will be too concerned with what I say 🙂 . Then I decided I may as well discuss how I actually feel about the speech from the RBNZ […]