January 17, 2013
Guest Contribution: "Debt Ceilings, Bombs, Cliffs and the Trillion Dollar Coin"
Today, we're very fortunate to have as a guest contributor Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. His weblog can be found here.
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January 16, 2013
Debt-ceiling economics and politics
Let me outsource this topic to some others who've said it better than I could.
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January 14, 2013
Great Moments in Policy Analysis: Heritage on the Debt Ceiling
From the Heritage Foundation, today:
Very simply, reaching the debt limit means spending is limited by revenue arriving at the Treasury and is guided by prioritization among the government’s obligations. How the government would decide to meet these obligations under the circumstances is a matter of some conjecture. Certainly, vast inflows of federal tax receipts—inflows that far exceed amounts needed to pay monthly interest costs on debt—would continue. Thus, the government would never be forced to default on its debt because of a lack of income. [emphasis added - MDC]
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How to Induce Explosive Debt Dynamics
The debt ceiling and implications of:
”We Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown.”
and more recently
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January 13, 2013
The near-term U.S. fiscal situation
Here I briefly survey some recent developments.
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January 11, 2013
Guest Contribution: "Rewriting UK GDP history the chain-linked way"
Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution by Sam Williamson, Research Professor at University of Illinois, Chicago, and President of Measuring Worth.
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January 09, 2013
Guest Contribution: "The Myth of 'Jobless Recoveries'"
(a.k.a. Okun’s Law is Alive and Well)
Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Laurence Ball (Johns Hopkins University), Daniel Leigh (IMF) and Prakash Loungani (IMF) .
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January 08, 2013
Understanding risk aversion in financial markets
At the economics meetings here in San Diego this weekend, I learned about some very interesting new research on one of the core questions in finance and macroeconomics that had long puzzled me.
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January 04, 2013
Think Tanks in the Economics Profession (II)
Updating last year’s post, indicators via representation at the (now ongoing) Allied Social Sciences Association meetings.
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January 02, 2013
The Economy’s Trajectory in 2013
The agreement arrived at on New Year’s day implies that output at the end of 2013 will be between 0.6 to 1.0 percentage points higher than it otherwise would be under what was until New Year’s, current law, according to CBO’s preferred multipliers. The uncertainty arises in part from the unresolved nature of the sequester deal.
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January 01, 2013
QE3 and beyond
Now that we've closed the books on 2012, I thought it might be useful to take a look at where monetary policy has led us over the last four years.
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December 29, 2012
The Year in Review II: Yet More Fantastical Pseudo Economics
Time to emulate the media’s "year in review" pieces, with my own take on the most outrageous, nonsensical assertions presented in the guise of analysis. Here are my ten most hilariously deluded excursions into the fantasy world from my postings to Econbrowser. The inspirations range from (once again) the Heritage Foundation's analyses (where have you gone, Bill Beach!) to the ongoing search for hyperinflation/crowding out.
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December 27, 2012
Metrics for the “Ever Expanding Government”
The latest in a series examining persistent macroeconomic myths [1]
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December 26, 2012
Investment and the business cycle
I fell a little behind on blogging with the holidays, so today I'll outsource to Calculated Risk.
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December 20, 2012
Dragged to the Fiscal Slope
Implications of "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Republican." (with apologies to Will Rogers)
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Confusion in the Anti-Keynesian Ranks
Some people think that if one takes into account intertemporal dynamics, policy must necessarily be ineffective
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