Asymptosis: always approaching

Scott Sumner makes a very good point (though my interest here is somewhat peripheral to the main thrust of his post): Government price indices don’t measure the prices that are of macroeconomic interest.  For instance in the 6 years after the housing bubble peaked the US, BLS data shows housing prices rising by about 10%, while Case-Shiller…

You might well ask: “Whaddaya mean by ‘his,’ buster?” Nick does a full-faith effort here (including the comments) to characterize Steve Keen’s position (aggregate demand = GDP + change in debt), using Nick’s preferred language and mental modeling. It’s a darned good effort, but I think it’s crippled (as is Steve’s construct) by a conceptual failing…

Scott Sumner nods with approbation toward this Ychuan Wang post at Noahpinion. For which hat tip I must thank him because Wang so clearly explicates what he calls the “canonical” understanding, and illustrates so perfectly the wackiness and incoherence of of the Walrasian view: Prices don’t always adjust instantly, so we can have excess supplies…

Unlearning Econ: The story goes like this: an Israeli day care centre found that parents were picking up their children too late, so they introduced a small charge of $3 to try and disincentivise lateness. However, instead of discouraging this behaviour, the payment served to legitimise it and buy the parents piece of mind. The…

DIN. We should print up lapel buttons. I suggested this campaign some time ago: This would: • Transfer relative purchasing power (hence power) from holders of financial assets to holders of real assets — from Wall Street to Main Street — and from (relatively few) creditors to (many more) debtors. • Spur both consumption spending…

No, not that kind of “special.” Though it sure is tempting… Paul Krugman, Scott Sumner (seemingly unlikely bedfellows, but…), and most other mainstream economists want to argue that banks are not special — that there’s no reason for economists to understand and analyze their operations in detail, or incorporate those understandings in their (mental and formal) economic…

Says John Aziz, “Economics, broadly defined, is the study of human action and interaction.” Which reminds me to post this, which has been long brewing in my head. More carefully and precisely defined, I posit the title of this post: Economics is (should be) the study of how individuals and groups react to changing circumstances (which circumstances include…

Gentle Readers: I remember learning many decades ago that Fama and French’s seminal research had demonstrated that very few trades and very few traders are necessary for a market to achieve “efficiency.” (Either strong form — “the price is right” — or weak form — “individual traders can’t tell if the ‘the price is right,’…

It can be tough to articulate a cogent argument against high-frequency trading in the context of highly liquid, efficiently functioning securities markets, but I think Rajiv Sethi has done so (riffing off Michael Lewis’s typically scathing and revealing article on Goldman’s recent bad behavior). In brief, in my words: 1. Value investors are trying to buy shares in…

I see this logical error so constantly, almost every day, that I feel the need to reiterate. Personal saving, virtuous and useful as it is for individuals, does not increase investment. This is what I call the “lump of money” fallacy (a.k.a. the loanable funds model). Ask yourself: If you transfer $10K from your bank…

A few people have asked me to provide a quick introduction to Edward Lambert’s recent work on Effective Demand, which work I’ve mentioned a few times. That’s ironic, because I made those mentions  in hopes that more-accomplished others would do the same for me. That help hasn’t been forthcoming, because quite a bit of work…

Frances Coppola sums up and expresses a great deal of great thinking in her recent Pieria piece, The wastefulness of automation. I’d like to highlight one point, one that I’ve been pondering for a long time. There’s one area where machines — until they get sentient — can’t replace people (here from her response in comments): only…

Or: Why Banks Aren’t Like People Steve Keen does a good job of addressing Paul Krugman’s befuddlement with Richard Koo’s balance-sheet-based thinking, here, with detailed models showing how funds flow and stocks change over time. I’d like to address it more succinctly and I hope intuitively, by pointing out a simple misunderstanding that Paul shares…

Just read this too-modestly titled post, and all the links as needed, until you understand it all the way down to your bones: A quick note on “helicopter drops” Kudos also to David Beckworth and Cardiff Garcia. Cross-posted at Angry Bear. Related posts: A Surfeit of Dearth Revisited: The Global Shortage of Safe Assets David Beckworth…