Dirk Niepelt

In the FT, Tim Harford (here) and Martin Sandbu (here) review Kenneth Arrow’s monumental contributions to economics.

MA course at the University of Bern. The classes follow chapters 11–13 in this text (to be updated) and build on the material covered in chapters 1–5. Uni Bern’s official course page. The course TA is Christian Myohl. Main contents: Concepts. RA model with government spending and taxes. Government debt in RA model. Government debt and social security in OLG model. Neutrality results. Consolidated government budget constraint. Fiscal effects on inflation. Game of chicken. FTPL. Active and...

Sweden’s tabloid Aftonbladet (in English) about what happened on Friday, 17 February 2017 in Sweden (nothing extraordinary).

The IMF has released a report with an ex-post evaluation of Greece’s 2012 Extended Fund Facility (Exceptional Access under the 2012 Extended Arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility with Greece). A critical discussion by Charles Wyplosz on VoxEU. The Greek authorities are more optimistic than IMF staff about the economy’s outlook.

On Bank Underground, Gene Kindberg-Hanlon criticizes the secular stagnation hypothesis: Real interest rates have fallen by around 5 percentage points since the 1980s.  Many economists attribute this to “secular” trends such as a structural slowdown in global growth, changing demographics and a fall in the relative price of capital goods which will hold equilibrium rates low for a decade or more (Eggertsson et al., Summers, Rachel and Smith, and IMF).  In this blog post, I argue this...

Topics discussed in the report include: Support for a “strong leader” as opposed to checks and balances has increased in many countries. The share of households with flat or falling market incomes during the 2005-14 period has been around 65% in advanced economies, and 97% in Italy. In the preceding decade, it had been negligible. The Eurasia Group’s top ten risks for 2017: Independent America China overreacts A weaker Merkel No reform Technology and the Middle East Central banks get...

The Federal Council aims at strengthening the deposit insurance system and has asked the ministry of finance to work out new rules. Banks will have to pledge securities as collateral, rather than solely contribute cash ex post. The council rejects the proposal to prefund a deposit fund.

The Economist reports that implementation gradually changes: [T]he way in which the People’s Bank of China conducts monetary policy is changing. It is beginning to look a little more like central banks in developed economies as it shifts towards liberalised interest rates. Rather than simply ordering banks to set specific lending or deposit rates—the focus for many years in China—it is altering the monetary environment around them. China does not yet have an equivalent of the...

Martin Feldstein, Ted Halstead, and Gregory Mankiw (in the New York Times), as well as George Shultz and James Baker III (in the Wall Street Journal) call for a carbon tax. John Cochrane comments on his blog.

On the FT Alphaville blog, Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati argue that re-denomination risk in the Euro zone is most prominent in France and Italy. Bonds with CACs trade at higher prices. Most French and Italian [but not Greek] debt is governed by local law. … the governments could pass legislation redenominating their bonds from euros to francs or lira. … [But] some French and Italian bonds — bonds issued after January 1, 2013, with maturities over a year — have Collective Action Clauses...