Benjamin Wallace-Well, Daily Intelligencer 

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has thoroughly dominated the elite intellectual conversation during the four weeks since it was published. But it’s now also become a middlebrow phenomenon, the fourth-most popular nonfiction book in the country, according to the New York Times best-seller list and third-best seller (as I write) on Amazon, fiction or non-. That is an astonishing number of books sold to people who are mostly not social scientists. Its sales put it in the same blockbuster category as volumes in which a physician encounters God or Robin Roberts encounters cancer. Its popularity has helped turn inequality into a constant theme not just on MSNBC, but on Fox News. Nadaljujte z branjem→

Nekaterim ljudem ne moreš zaupati niti čuvanje petih ovac narisanih na papirju. Le v nekaj urah bi vsaj tri od petih izginile neznano kam.

Gašpar Gašpar Mišič (v Financah) o pomanjkljivi kontroli nad izvajanjem poglabljanja morskega dna na kontejnerski obali, zaradi česar so v Luki Koper odslovili italijanskega izvajalca Costruzioni Generali Xodo. Nadaljujte z branjem→

• Already in the Lowflation Trap – Paul Krugman
• Yes, economic policy did fail – Simon Wren-Lewis
• Did economics fail? – longandvariable
• Sticky prices: how we confuse students, and sometimes ourselves – Simon Wren-Lewis
• Macro pru is no panacea – Gavyn Davies
• The microfoundational illusion – Lars P. Syll
• Are there meso-level social mechanisms? – Understanding Society

Marcus Eberhardt talks to Viv Davies about his recent research with Andrea Presbitero that analyses the links between debt and growth by using data on total public debt for 105 economies between 1972 and 2009 and two centuries of data for the UK, US, Sweden and Japan. The authors conclude that there is no convincing proof that austerity works and that it is dangerous for policy makers to pretend otherwise. The interview was recorded in April 2014 at the annual conference of the Royal Economic Society.

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• The permanent damage from the crisis – Money Supply
• Shiller’s Data Say Last Two Times Have Been Different – Dean Baker
• Expansionary Fiscal Policy during Extreme Recessions – Econbrowser
• Gary Becker and the Economics Revolution That Wasn’t – New Yorker
• Reforming Europe – Gloomy European Economist
• The Inefficiency of Inequality – Dan Altman

John Cassidy: Gary Becker and the Economics Revolution That Wasn’t 

To some extent, this inertia is inevitable. In economics, progress has always been gradual. Some years ago, in a study of how American economists reacted to the Great Depression, Barnard’s Perry Mehrling questioned the common perception that there was a sudden and mass conversion to Keynesianism. The reality, Mehrling discovered, was that most economists continued to teach what they had always taught. For Keynesianism to take the ascendancy, it needed a new generation of economists to mature.

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Knjiga Thomasa Pikettyja “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” ter predlogi po uvedbi enkratnega kapitalskega davka so neprijetno prizadeli desničarsko sceno v ZDA, zato so lansirali precej negativnih komentarjev na knjigo. Toda problem teh komentarjev je, da so vsebinsko izjemno šibki. Da ne rečem – nedostojni iz vidika akademskih standardov. Kar nakazuje na to, da pravih, vsebinskih argumentov proti ugotovitvam Pikettyja glede naravne tendence kapitalizma po koncentraciji bogastva v zgornjih 5% in 1% nimajo. Nadaljujte z branjem→

Antonio Fatás: Refocusing economics education 

I am sympathetic to some of the arguments made in those posts and the need for some serious rethinking of the way economics is taught but I would put the emphasis on slightly different arguments. First, I  am not sure the recent global crisis should be the main reason to change the economics curriculum. Yes, economists failed to predict many aspects of the crisis but my view is that it was not because of the lack of tools or understanding. We have enough models in economics that explain most of the phenomena that caused and propagated the global financial crisis. There are plenty of models where individuals are not rational, where financial markets are driven by bubbles, with multiple equilbria,… that one can use to understand the last decade. We do have all these tools but as economics teachers (and researchers) we need to choose which ones to focus on. And here is where we failed. And we did it before and during the crisis but we also did it earlier. Why aren’t we focusing on the right models or methodology? Here is my list of mistakes we do in our teaching, which might also reflect on our research:

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Skupina francoskih ekonomistov in intelektualcev pod vodstvom Thomasa Pikettyja je v The Guardianu objavila nov manifest za Evropo, ki je odgovor in nadgradnja podobnega manifesta, ki so ga pripravili nemški kolegi v okviru Glienicke group. Manifest ima tri ključne točke. Prvič, davek od dobička pravnih oseb kot skupen evropski davek, ki bi šel neposredno v skupen evropski proračun in iz katerega bi se financirale velike investicije. To naj bi omogočilo davčno unijo. Drugič, nov “evropski zbor“, sestavljen iz predstavnikov nacionalnih parlamentov, ki bi zastopal samo države z evrom, in sicer glede na število prebivalcev ter odločal po večinskem načelu. To naj bi omogočilo politično unijo. In tretjič, združitev nacionalnih javnih dolgov nad 60% BDP (v skladu s predlogom nemških vladnih ekonomskih svetovalcev). Zniževanje tega presežnega dolga in določanje dovoljenih letnih proračunskih primanjkljajev bi potekalo postopno in v skladu s politično večino v “evropskem zboru”. To naj bi omogočilo fiskalno unijo in zagotovilo demokratično odločanje o fiskalnih zadevah. Nadaljujte z branjem→