Via Scott Sumner comes the following primer on NGDP targeting. Its a cool little explanation of the benefits, and the functioning of monetary policy – specifically through expectations. I also appreciated that Hayek was mentioned – Hayek was a fan of the nominal income rule, a fact many people don’t realise given belief that NGDP […]
I was impressed to see Geoff Bascand, the head of Statistics New Zealand, come out in defence of the labour market data – specifically the way unemployment and underemployment are calculated. It is true that the labour market data jumps around, and that what it defines might not be exactly what everyone trying to use […]
As a general rule of thumb, whenever someone offers you something for nothing they aren’t telling you the full story – and that is exactly what we have with the Greens stating the Reserve Bank should start rebuilding Christchurch themselves by printing money. Now, in order to come to this conclusion a bunch of points […]
So it seems that Stuff has decided that now it’s outsourcing its journalism to the public, it might as well try to do it with other people’s discipines as well – that combined with not knowing what economics is has led to the question “how do we fix the economy” 😉 The first solution has […]
A recent opinion piece in the Herald, pitting Don Brash and Brendan Doyle in to debate the issue of monetary policy was good. They seemed to agree that, ultimately, any issue is one of the real exchange rate – which is due to real economy factors. A point I’ve heard a number of times before […]
Previously we’ve talked a lot here about the lender of last resort function of a central bank. In discussions a trade-off is often discussed, whereby having a lender of last resort can help to prevent financial crises when financial intermediaries are suffering from issues of “illiquidity”, but are not “insolvent” – however, the existence of […]