The Inequality-Bubble Link

Ruccio points out that Martin Wolf doesn’t understand the inequality-bubble link:
Here’s a good question for Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator for the Financial Times:
How could a more equitable distribution of income be instrumental in solving the impact of this crisis? Especially in the UK and the USA the top 20% has close to 50% of [...]

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Keynes v. Hayek, Modern Disciples Edition (with Rap)

Newshour (ht: jw) had a segment that featured a debate between Robert Skidlesky (Keynes’ biographer and most recently author of Keynes: Return of the Master) and Russell Roberts, who is a professor of economics at George Mason and blogs at Cafe Hayek. The debate was pretty much what you’d expect, given the intellectual influence of both, but [...]

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Paradigm Shifts? Sudden Realizations?

There’s a great post on Washington’s Blog about Tuesday’s WSJ article about paradigm shifts in economics.
But the Journal makes it sound like the policy-makers and economists who deployed faulty models were innocently ignorant of any larger truths:
The models “were not able to draw up the red flags,” says Tim Besley, a professor at the London [...]

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Soros’ Big Push

Newsweek (h/t Ezra Klein) reports that George Soros is going to pour $50 million into an economic think tank that will combat free market fundamentalism. The “Institute of New Economic Thinking” will use grants, symposia, and a journal to encourage a wider range of economic thought.
On its face, this idea seems like a good [...]

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(Ig)Nobel Reactions

Geoff Hodgson has compiled some reactions (pdf) to the recent Nobel Prize in Economics for RWER. These reactions are from the web forum/message board Economics Job Market Rumors, which is read by grad students, post-docs, et al. in the PhD econ world. Comments on any web forum, especially anonymous, should be taken with a large [...]

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Rebel Economists Converge on Buffalo

Next weekend (ht @RealWorldEcon), 50 post-Keynesians are converging on Buffalo to discuss the financial crisis. This article places the event in the context of the discipline of economics.
For decades, there has been an overshadowed (and at times bitterly ridiculed) alternative group of economists who have long been warning that the Neoclassical orthodoxy was missing the [...]

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Re: Krugman’s Article

I’ve been slacking…I read Krugman’s piece in the Times mag about 10 days ago, when it was previewed, and I’ve been wanting to post since, but haven’t. I thought Ruccio did a good job yeseterday discussing the article, as well as two other pieces that have come out recently, by Barry Eichengreen and Patricia Cohen. [...]

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A Growing Chorus? I Hope So.

Via Mark Thoma, Richard Posner points to another rejoinder to the letter from two LSE economists, which apologized to Her Majesty but essentially kicked the can down the road. I posted a few weeks back about Thomas Palley’s response to the Besley/Hennessey letter.
Now, in the new rejoinder, ten British and Australian economists point out in [...]

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“G.D.P. R.I.P.”

In an NYT Op-Ed today, Eric Zencey argues that GDP should be subjected to “creative destruction.” He writes,
Creative destruction can apply to economic concepts as well. And this downturn offers an excellent opportunity to get rid of one that has long outlived its usefulness: gross domestic product. G.D.P. is one measure of national income, of [...]

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“Econ Navel-Gazing”

Via Mark Thoma, a post over at Twenty-Cent Paradigms has saved me some time, rounding up some discussion at The Economist and FT about the state of macroeconomics. Go read it. I want to bump up one specific point that was discussed there, which Mark Thoma made in his contribution at The Economist. Thoma wrote,
But [...]

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