Last week, two major wage data releases came out from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. On Wednesday (February, 24, 2021), the – Wage Price Index, Australia – which was followed on Thursday (February 25, 2021)…
Have mainstream economists really embraced large deficits and…
When John Maynard Keynes wrote his essay – Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren – which was published in 1930 he considered that workers would be able to work just 15 hours a week because of…
Bitcoin and baseball cards
from Dean Baker I saw this piece last week on the soaring price of baseball cards, and naturally started thinking about Bitcoin. The article begins with a story about how a rare LeBron James trading card (it’s…
Keynes on the methodology of econometrics
from Lars Syll There is first of all the central question of methodology — the logic of applying the method of multiple correlation to unanalysed economic material, which we know to be non-homogeneous through time.…
AI and democracy
from Peter Radford Just a quick thought prompted by my reading of a talk given by Allison Stanger during the Santa Fe Institute’s 2019 Fall symposium. First she gives us a nice quote from Hannah…
The ‘disciplining role of markets’ should be replaced…
When we elect governments we should expect that they will do what they promised and represent our best interests. We don’t expect them to represent a small, privileged sector of the economy at the expense…
Complexity, institutions and firms
from Peter Radford Are they associated? We all know that one of the central problems of economics is the existence of uncertainty. At least since Frank Knight’s work in the 1920s, uncertainty has been something…
The Weekend Quiz – February 20-21, 2021 –…
Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then…
Say ‘consistent’ one more time and I …
from Lars Syll Being able to model a credible world, a world that somehow could be considered ‘similar’ to the real world is not the same as investigating the real world. The minimalist demand on…