Dirk Niepelt

In a Peterson Institute working paper, Jeromin Zettelmeyer, Eike Kreplin, and Ugo Panizza conclude that the answer to that question depends on your assumptions. The authors compare several scenarios, including scenarios A–C, the baseline scenario of the European institutions and two more pessimistic variants; scenario I which underlies the IMF reasoning and which assumes that “Greece will not undertake the structural reforms needed to achieve higher potential growth”; and scenario D,...

On VoxEU, Peter Lindert summarizes his recent work on long-term international comparisons of living standards. Lindert compares nominal incomes per capita, deflated by historical prices (for staple goods). He makes five points: The real income gap between Northwest Europe and the major Asian countries was greater since the 1500s than even Maddison had estimated. Contrary to all previous estimates, Mughal India around 1600 was already far behind both Japan and Northwest Europe. Within...

On VoxEU, Steven Durlauf offers an excellent overview over Kenneth Arrow’s work. Durlauf emphasizes five areas of research: The impossibility theorem, in the tradition of Condorcet. General equilibrium theory and the welfare theorems, in the tradition of Walras. Decision-making under uncertainty, the Arrow-Pratt measures of risk aversion and contingent commodities. Imperfect information, in the context of medical care and as a source of statistical discrimination. Economics of knowledge,...

From the European Council on Foreign Relations, Mark Galeotti reports about ties between Russian criminal networks and the Kremlin. From the summary: The Russian state is highly criminalised, and the interpenetration of the criminal ‘underworld’ and the political ‘upperworld’ has led the regime to use criminals from time to time as instruments of its rule. Russian-based organised crime groups in Europe have been used for a variety of purposes, including as sources of ‘black cash’, to...

Out The Front Door predicts a shelter dog shortage in the US. But prices will adjust.

In the New York Times, Greg Mankiw applauds the tax reform plan discussed in Congress. He emphasizes four points: The reform would move the US tax system toward international norms, from worldwide to territorial taxation. It would move the system from income towards less distorting consumption taxation, by allowing businesses to deduct investment spending immediately. The reform would change the origin-based into a destination-based system (taxing imports and exempting exports, a.k.a....

In an interview with the NZZ, Christoph Schaltegger argues that Swiss cantons loose revenue when new firms move in, due to badly structured inter cantonal revenue sharing (Finanzausgleich).

On their “Quantitative Economics” website, Thomas Sargent and John Stachurski offer great introductions to the Python and Julia programming languages.

The Swiss National Bank has updated its exchange rate indices. In an SNB Economic Studies paper, Robert Müller describes how. The upshot is that the SNB considers the Swiss Franc slightly less overvalued than before. From the abstract: The key aspects of the revision are: the application of the weighting method used by the IMF, which takes into account so-called third-market effects; continuous updating of the countries incorporated into the index; and calculation of a chained index....

In a paper, Ricardo Reis defends macroeconomics against various critiques. He concludes: I have argued that while there is much that is wrong with macroeconomics today, most critiques of the state of macroeconomics are off target. Current macroeconomic research is not mindless DSGE modeling filled with ridiculous assumptions and oblivious of data. Rather, young macroeconomists are doing vibrant, varied, and exciting work, getting jobs, and being published. Macroeconomics informs...