The Return of the Very Cruel Economic System
This chapter is divided into three sections. The first section examines the origins of the neoliberal policy consensus at the OECD. The fist major rupture in the hegemony of the…
Travis Fast
Trying to get burned at the stake: heretical Easter edition
Me, I like heretics. Sure hanging out with heretics and being a heretic is fraught with danger: a certain tendency towards a merely reactionary or contrarian stance, a pension for…
Hubris leads to incompetence: the Rowe & Krugman edition
Well a strange lull has fallen on the battle field this evening as the respective sides dig in and at least one side licks its wounds. To keep reading click…
Hubris leads to incompetence: the Rowe & Krugman edition
Well a strange lull has fallen on the battle field this evening as the respective sides dig in and at least one side licks its wounds. To keep reading click…
The case for taxing the family garden
Economists frequently argue that taxing the produce from the family garden is a good idea – for example, see these papers/posts making the case for taxing food in the US,…
Discredited economics and the revered economist
In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007-2008 there was much talk from within and without the economics profession about what went wrong. Many on the outside of the…
I can’t spell: the phonetic problem with homonyms
I can’t, and it has gotten worse. Sure I used to get my i’s and e’s backwards frequently but the difference between there and their or lose and loose almost…
Mulcair Wins. Who Looses?
It is official the NDP now has a former Liberal as the head of their party. Not so bad. The liberals have a former dipper as the head of their…
The ubiquitous economist, the media, and Plato
It is odd. No other discipline in the social science gets away with being considered by the media as a jack of all trades as the economist does. Think about…
Dutch Disease and Oil
CBC’s the Current had an excellent segment on Dutch Disease and what to do about it. The set-up was quite good. First they interviewed an economist about what Dutch disease…
RPPE.ORG is Back
After being moved to an entirely different server RPPE.ORG is back up. The great migration begins again. Filed under: Canadian Politics
Three things I wish heterodox economists would quit talking about
Number 1. Mainstream economics and heterodox economics To be consistent it should be homodox economics and heterodox economics. Those with routine knowledge of Latin would find nothing nefarious in such…
Three things I wish heterodox economists would quit talking about
Number 1. Mainstream economics and heterodox economics To be consistent it should be homodox economics and heterodox economics. Those with routine knowledge of Latin would find nothing nefarious in such…
How Can a Political Scientist get this and many (freshwater) economists do not
O.k. I wrote this years ago. Maybe 2003, maybe 2005: And while NKs accept the basic logic of the rational expectations augmented Philips curve (that is, that the NAIRU is…
Joseph Stiglitz: not a gliberal economist
Stiglitz prefaced his 2001 Memorial Prize Lecture with a clear explanation of what motivated his study in economics: When I began the study of economics some forty one years ago,…
Gliberalism: Keynes and the new classics
At one point I believed this: The ontology of capitalism which animated the multifarious reform projects was quite distinct from that which underwrites the neoliberal vision. In Keynes’ classic formulation,…
Talking about public debt: dumb, dumber and dumbest
As austerity is all the rage among policy making elites I thought it would be a good time to talk about ways of measuring public debt. Here I will deal…
Should Ontario Become an Independent Country?
Ok just forget how crazy the questions sounds. The recent wrangling between Ontario and Alberta over the value of the Canadian dollar, oil output and the decline of manufacturing in…
The mercenary qualities of liberal economists
Here is Mankiw circa 2007: Thursday, July 19, 2007 The Taxation of Carried Interest Several people have asked me my views on the taxation of carried interest. It is a…
Peggy Nash or Bust
OK time to get off the fence. There are presently two visions of social democracy at play within the NDP. One that wants to drag the NDP further to the…