Category Archives: Macroeconomics

The Fiscal Multiplier Wrestling Marathon

Welcome to the academic wrestling match of the recent years. In the left corner, Paul Krugman (with assistance from Bradford DeLong)! In the right corner, John Cochrane (with assistance from Eugene Fama)! They will fight over the size of the Fiscal Multiplier in a match where any trick may, can, and will be used. Both are heavyweights in the economics profession with one of them even with a Nobel Prize to his credit! This is a match not to miss. Well, this is actually not funny at all. But one of the most important questions in macroeconomics, how effective is expansionary fiscal policy in a recession, have recently been subject … Continue reading

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“Dr. Doom” or “Mr. Lucky”?

A colleague of mine recently directed my attention to this interesting article from the January 9 edition of the Boston Globe: “That guy who called the big one? Don’t listen to him.” In the article, journalist Joe Keohane describes the now well-known 2006 prophecies made by Nouriel Roubini of New York University about an upcoming major financial crisis (he is described as, at that time, a “somewhat obscure economist“, which is extremely inaccurate I should say!). Due to his precise forecast about the crisis, which indeed began the year after, and took on an unprecedented world-wide scale in 2008, Roubini became a man to be taken really seriously. He apparently … Continue reading

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The Inflation Fallacy and central banking debates in the US

Among my favorite contemporary academic economists is N. Gregory Mankiw. I have always found his academic writings very lucid and to the point. I was once again reminded of this today, when I stumbled over some debates about abolishing the Federal Reserve System. Opponents of central banking, mostly self-proclaimed followers of the “Austrian school”, view central banks as monopoly powers that undermine free markets and are inherently inflationary – implying a government-supported devaluation of the population’s wealth. In the United States, these opponents are having golden days, as they can blame the Fed for having not only caused the financial crisis, but also for engaging in irresponsible quantitative easing that … Continue reading

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Dead economists can’t analyze the present

Of course they can’t. Yet, many pick up some dead economist and speculate what he or she would have thought about some current economic incident or policy. For example, even though a whole industry is still devoted to try figuring out what Keynes actually meant when he wrote The General Theory three quarters of a century ago, many discuss Keynes’ “advice” for policy in the present times of economic slump. While interesting from the perspective of the History of Economic Thought, it sometimes seem as a lot of wasted intellectual resources. Never mind about what Keynes would or would not have thought. Read him and learn, but don’t bestow him … Continue reading

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