Dirk Niepelt

The Economist reports about the political economy aspects of America’s semi-nationalized mortgage industry.

Enlargeable topographic map of the contiguous United States with hypsometric tints. Source: Wikipedia.

On a new website, Aleksander Berentsen rejects the Swiss Vollgeld initiative. As an alternative, he suggests the Swiss National Bank should offer transaction accounts for everybody, in line with proposals I have made earlier (see here (2016), here (2015), here (2015)). In the Handelszeitung (here and here), Simon Schmid reports.

Webinar about the potential impacts of the Swiss Vollgeldinitiative and other instances of the Chicago plan on banking and finance. Speakers are Prof. Dirk Niepelt (Uni Bern) in Zürich and Ron Rimkus CFA (CFA Institute) in the US. Copyright 2016, CFA Institute. Reproduced with permission from CFA Institute. All rights reserved.

The Economist speculates that central bank independence might be on its way out. The article suggests that motives for independence (i.e., Sargent/Wallace or Barro/Gordon type arguments) might be less relevant given the environment of low inflation and interest rates. See also my earlier, related blog post.

The Economist reports about research published in JAMA Internal Medicine summarizing the views of patients who suffer from various conditions about the quality of life.

The Economist reports about the “American Redoubt” in the U.S. North West. Water, land, game, guns and bounty hunters.

In the FT, Amy Kuzmin reports that after debating for nearly a decade, India’s parliament has approved a long-awaited overhaul of the country’s fragmented tax system … The bill … will amend the constitution to permit replacing the current patchwork of national, state and local levies with a single, unified value added tax system. He expects the reform “to create a genuine single market” and hails it as “one of the most significant reforms to the Indian economy since liberalisation began...

In the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok question whether NSF funds are allocated efficiently. They write: First, a key question is not whether NSF funding is justified relative to laissez-faire, but rather, what is the marginal value of NSF funding given already existing government and nongovernment support for economic research? Second, we consider whether NSF funding might more productively be shifted in various directions that remain within the legal and...