Category Nick Rowe
David Levine’s accidental Monetarism
I confess this is a bit of a "Gotcha!". But it's a bit more than that as well. It illustrates the difficulty that people (even economists) have in "seeing" money. Brad DeLong flatters me (but he's right that this is right up my street), then sends me to David Levine. Here's the "money quote" (sorry).
Lump of Labour, Say’s Law, and the slope of the AD curve
I wrote this partly for Sandwichman, and mostly I wrote it because this same question crops up time and time again. It's a very old question, but it always looks like a new question if the technology is new enough. People in caves were probably arguing about whether 3-D printing robots flints would cause mass […]
How much of a deficit will in fact be money-financed?
I want to do some very back-of-the-envelope calculations. (I will probably get the arithmetic wrong.) A bond-financed deficit is where the government prints bonds to finance a deficit. A money-financed deficit is where the government (or the central bank it owns) prints money to finance the deficit. They are different for two reasons: 1. Money […]
“Involuntary” unemployment as worsening trade-off
This is what I think an increase in "involuntary" unemployment looks like:
The Land Theory of Value
Last night I spoke with my Dutch ancestor again. Nick van Rowe told me about the Land Theory of Value, which began with the French, but was perfected by the Dutch. This is what he told me: Science has proved that land existed prior to both labour and capital. The Universe existed billions of years […]
A silly question for anti-austerians
Let's make up some silly numbers. Suppose the national debt was, let's say, 1,000% (ten times) annual GDP. And suppose the budget deficit was, let's say, 50% of GDP. And suppose your economy hit the Zero Lower Bound, and suppose you thought that your own central bank's monetary policy could do no more to increase […]
Babies as Human Capital in an OLG model
I'm trolling Elizabeth Breunig. Because she said that "Human capital is one of the more odious terms in the capitalist lexicon". And I like the term "human capital", because I think it helps us think more clearly about investment in training and education. Are new-born babies "human capital"? My first thought was that they possess […]
Steve Poloz on inflation targeting
Stephen Poloz is Governor of the Bank of Canada. Here is the speech he delivered at Western. The whole thing is worth reading. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it. But I see a tension in Steve's speech. He recognises that Divine Coincidence has failed, and that inflation targeting has failed. But he doesn't want […]
Does capital income exist?
[Ages ago, as a graduate student, I "wasted" my time (when I should have been finishing my thesis) reading capital theory, including the more "heterodox" stuff. My memory is pretty hazy, but I still think about the old questions occasionally. There's nothing really new here for economists familiar with "dated goods".] 1. Suppose I know […]
Ours the task eternal — investing in human capital
That's the motto of Carleton University, where I work. Carleton's task, and my task, and the students' task, is to produce educated students. It takes a lot of resources to do this: my time, the students' time, the support staff's time, plus the use of buildings and land, and hydro. All those resources could be […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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