Tag Archives: Budget constraint

NZZ, February 1, 2021. PDF. (Title changed by NZZ.) Do negative interest rates render government debt costless? No. What about r<g? I discuss Olivier Blanchard’s presidential address and the conclusions that columnists have drawn. For background: See this post.

NZZ, April 25, 2019. PDF. Modern monetary theory (MMT) is neither a theory, nor modern, nor exclusively monetary. I discuss fallacies related to MMT. Dynamic inefficiency requires permanent, not transitory, r<g. For now, policy makers should rely on common sense rather than MMT.

NZZ, April 25, 2019. PDF. Modern monetary theory (MMT) is neither a theory, nor modern, nor exclusively monetary. I discuss fallacies related to MMT. Dynamic inefficiency requires permanent, not transitory, r<g. For now, policy makers should rely on common sense rather than MMT.

NZZ, March 13, 2019. PDF. Long-term real interest rates do not reflect monetary policy. In the recent past, monetary policy has contributed to lower fixed-income interest rates but also to higher returns on other asset classes. Complaining about low rates but not adjusting one’s portfolio makes little sense; there is no “financial repression.” If politicians want to subsidize pension funds they should contribute funds from the government budget rather than asking the central bank to...

NZZ, March 13, 2019. PDF. Updated: Ökonomenstimme, March 22, 2019. HTML. Long-term real interest rates do not reflect monetary policy. In the recent past, monetary policy has contributed to lower fixed-income interest rates but also to higher returns on other asset classes. Complaining about low rates but not adjusting one’s portfolio makes little sense; there is no “financial repression.” If politicians want to subsidize pension funds they should contribute funds from the government...

The Economist reviews core ideas in economics. The introductory article points out that economists’ fundamental mission is not to forecast recessions but to explain how the world works. It argues that economists have delivered and it discusses six exemplary areas of economic research: Nash equilibrium; Mundell-Fleming trilemma; Minsky financial-instability; Stopper-Samuelson effect of trade on wages; Keynes fiscal-multiplier; and Akerlof’s and others’ work on information asymmetries....