Category Macro
Keynesian Beauty Contest SRAS shocks
[I'm not fully happy with this post. I think it does an OK job of explaining SRAS shocks that the central bank accommodates. But it doesn't say what happens when the central bank does not accommodate SRAS shocks. And I would like to integrate George Selgin's analysis of SRAS shocks in Less Than Zero, which […]
Bicycle Disequilibrium Theory
Suppose you need a bicycle to get to work. Suppose bicycles are a common property resource, because bike locks don't work. Every night the workers deposit their bicycles in the bike bank, and in the morning it's first come first served. And suppose that sometimes there aren't enough bicycles to go around. So sometimes the […]
The 1 vs 3 Model of Quick Recessions vs Slow Recoveries
Business cycles are not symmetric; if you flipped the time-series data upside-down the fluctuations would look different. Recessions are usually quick; recoveries are usually slow. And Milton Friedman's "Plucking Model" seems to fit the data: big falls in economic activity are usually followed by big increases; but big increases are not usually followed by big […]
The Blind Target Shooter
This is an attempt by someone who is not very good at math to understand the alleged "indeterminacy problem" of central banks using market signals of expected inflation to help them target inflation (or whatever). [I used to do rifle shooting at school. "If you can't group you can't shoot". But if you could group, […]
Micro Profs teaching Intro Macro
My crappy little Twitter poll isn't conclusive of course, but it mostly agrees with my priors based on anecdotal evidence, so I think it's probably mostly right. I think this points to a problem, in two senses: Finding profs willing and able to teach Intro well is not easy. It's low status (and economists dumping […]
Hydraulic Monetarism
There are two ways to increase your stock of money: 1. increase the flow in; 2. reduce the flow out. There is only one way to increase your stock of any other asset: 1. increase the flow in. (Unless you are a producer of that other asset. Or unless you are a dealer in that […]
The Parable of the Fruit Trees
The apple producer produces apples. The banana producer produces bananas. The cherry producer produces cherries. Every year they always work exactly the same number of hours and produce exactly the same quantity of fruit. If you define "recessions" as a decline in output and employment, there cannot be a recession in this economy. By assumption. […]
Public Debt: A Global Perspective
There is much international preoccupation with debt at the public sector, household and corporate levels and the upward creep in interest rates does apparently keep central bankers – including our own Mr. Poloz – awake at night. Given the problem is an international one, sometimes it is useful to try and get a global perspective […]
“Trickle Down”, “Magic Dirt”, memes and deep parameters
"Trickle Down Theory" is a meme used (mostly by non-economists) to ridicule certain economic policies and the theories on which those policies are supposedly based. My first year students sometimes ask me to explain it to them, not understanding that it's a meme and not a theory. "Magic Dirt Theory" is a similar meme, of […]
Monetary and Fiscal Federalism, Debt, Canada, and the Eurozone.
A government that undertakes a commitment to target 2% CPI inflation does not, strictly speaking, "borrow in its own currency". Its bonds are an indirect promise to pay, via transversality transitivity (damn!), a specified quantity of CPI baskets of goods and services. In much the same way that bonds under the gold standard were an […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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