Monthly Archives: November 2010
New Keynesian Macroeconomics, with and without barter.
[Update 4 December: after long arguments with Adam P., which finally started to bear fruit in the comments of December 4th, I'm now clearer on what's essential in this model about the difference between "monetary exchange" and "barter exchange". It's this: In monetary exchange, there is no restriction on what the seller can do with […]
Does monitoring charities make a difference?
The website charitynavigator.org rates US charities. Although it's now changing its rating system, a charity that spends a low percentage of its budget on fundraising and administration will usually get a high rating. It's not clear how much influence sites like charitynavigator have. A recent article reported that only 10 percent of Americans consulted a […]
Beyond Magneto Trouble
Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong have both written very good and very depressing posts. The economy had magneto trouble. We failed to prevent it; and we failed to fix it. Their posts are about why we failed to prevent it and why we failed to fix it. Suppose either of them are right in their […]
Monetarism: the hegemony that need not speak its name
Fish don't feel the water they swim in. (I've heard that's false, but it's too good to check). Paul Krugman does not feel the Monetarist hegemony he swims in. The only part of Monetarism that he does feel, and that he now identifies with Monetarism, is that one small part of Monetarism that failed to […]
Conversations with a banker: ATMs and the Money Supply
I met a friend of mine last weekend who holds a regional manager-type position at a bank. We got to talking about banking and economics (go figure) and she described a particularly interesting problem they were discussing at work: What is the optimal policy to refill an ATM with cash?
Can the EU survive?
Just for once, this is not a question best left to the Poli Sci. Because the main forces will be money/macro. For nearly two years now, I've been worried that one or more of the Eurozone countries might do an Argentina. I've been asking whether the Eurozone could survive. I think it's time to change […]
The evolutionary value of cancer
A recent article in Nature Reviews documents the rarity of cancer in antiquity, and speculates that "carcinogenic environmental factors in modern societies" may explain today's much higher cancer rates. Without disputing the authors' basic premise or conclusions, I wish to posit an alternative explanation: old people are useless. Women typically finish child bearing by 40 […]
Plastic and glass
It seems the Eurozone troubles are heating up again. Debt is like glass. If you hit it with a small shock it stays rigid. But if you hit it with a big shock it breaks. Equity is like plastic. If you hit it with a shock it bends. The bigger the shock the more it […]
The Basic Income: Go big, or go home
I used to blog fairly regularly about the Basic Income (aka Citizen's Income, aka Guaranteed Annual Income), but the passage of a decent interval of time, Kevin Milligan's recent Economy Lab columns ([1] , [2]) and Erin Anderssen's long article in Saturday's Globe and Mail gives me an excuse to revisit the issue and perhaps […]
Instrumentalism
It's amateur psychology hour. Sorry. In economics there are two reasons for doing something: because we enjoy it (taking a holiday at the beach); or because it is a means to an end that we enjoy (working to pay for the holiday at the beach). It's an instrumentalist perspective.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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