Dirk Niepelt

Blog post by Dave Peck and the PSL team. Some issues they discuss: Very few categories of data belong on-chain … Today’s smart contract programming models are deeply flawed … Smart contracts can’t reference the “real-world”. They can only reference the blockchain itself. This is known as the “oracle problem” and it makes blockchains a necessarily closed system. This may sound like a trivial problem, but it is actually profound. For instance, it forces smart contract developers to jump...

BA seminar at the University of Bern. Uni Bern’s official course page: The seminar targets students who have completed their mandatory training in microeconomics, macroeconomics and mathematics (i.e., students in the second half of their BA studies) and who are interested in modern macroeconomic theory. We analyze arguments according to which the government does, or does not face an intertemporal budget constraint. What does the literature on asset pricing, rational bubbles, or the fiscal...

BA course at the University of Bern. Uni Bern’s official course page: The course targets students who have completed their mandatory training in microeconomics, macroeconomics and mathematics (i.e., students in the second half of their BA studies) and who are interested in modern macroeconomic theory. The objective of the course is threefold: Students should learn to think analytically, like economists do; they should understand select tools of modern macroeconomic theory; and they should...

MA course at the University of Bern. Uni Bern’s official course page: This course covers macroeconomic theories of fiscal policy (including tax and debt policy) and the interaction between fiscal and monetary policy. Participants should be familiar with the material covered in the course Macroeconomics II. The course grade reflects the final exam grade. Monday, 12.15 – 14.00 h 1st exam: Monday, May 30, 2022, 12.15 – 14.00h 2nd exam: Monday, September 12, 2022, 12.15 – 14.00h The classes...

Goodreads rating: 4.39. The book offers a brief tour of the physics behind climate change and the role played by human activity; a skeptical discussion of climate models; some stronger, some weaker examples of distorted reports, by scientists and the media, regarding causal links between human activity, climate change, and extreme weather events, sea level change, or production (opponents claim that these examples are cherry-picked; Koonin retorts that scientific reports should be...

David Baqaee in SED Newsletter, November 2021. Hulten’s theorem: … the elasticity of aggregate TFP to a microeconomic TFP shock is equal to the sales of the producer being shocked divided by GDP. … Furthermore, if labor supply is inelastic or if the definition of GDP is expanded to include the market value of leisure, then this irrelevance result also applies to real GDP (or under some additional assumptions to welfare). This result, oftentimes known as Hulten’s Theorem (Hulten, 1978), is...

Riksbank Research News 2021, December 2021. PDF (pp. 2–3), HTML. Q: You have been leader of the CEPR Research and Policy Network on FinTech and Digital Currencies since 2021 and explored issues at the heart of monetary theory and payment systems in your research. What do you think is new about digital central bank money and what makes it different from other digital means of payment? A: Societies have been using digital means of payment for decades. Commercial banks use digital claims...

Goodreads rating 4.19. Graeber’s book contains many interesting historical observations but lacks a concise argument to convince a brainwashed neoclassical economist looking for coherent arguments on money and debt. After 60 pages, 340 more seemed too much. Chapter one: … the central question of this book: What, precisely, does it man to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal? What does it mean when we reduce moral obligations to debts? …...

Goodreads rating 4.09. Enlightenment: Schon der Mythos ist Aufklärung, und: Aufklärung schlägt in Mythologie zurück. … Seit je hat Aufklärung im umfassendsten Sinn fortschreitenden Denkens das Ziel verfolgt, von den Menschen die Furcht zu nehmen und sie als Herren einzusetzen. Aber die vollends aufgeklärte Erde strahlt im Zeichen triumphalen Unheils. … Als Sein und Geschehen wird von der Aufklärung nur anerkannt, was durch Einheit sich erfassen lässt; ihr Ideal ist das System, aus dem...

Finanz und Wirtschaft, December 8, 2021. PDF. I draw some conclusions from the CEPR eBook on CBDC, namely: Banks will change, whatever happens to CBDC. The main risk of retail CBDC is not bank disintermediation. CBDC may not be the best option even if it has net benefits. It should be for parliaments and voters, not central banks, to decide about the introduction of CBDC.