Tag Archives: Notes

In the Boston Review, Dani Rodrik discusses neoliberalism and argues that mainstream economics shades too easily into ideology, constraining the choices that we appear to have and providing cookie-cutter solutions. Rodrik emphasizes that sound economics implies context specific policy recommendations. And therein lies the central conceit, and the fatal flaw, of neoliberalism: the belief that first-order economic principles map onto a unique set of policies, approximated by a...

Jointly with the Council on Economic Policies and the Swiss National Bank, the Study Center Gerzensee organized a conference on Aggregate and Distributive Effects of Unconventional Monetary Policies. The program can be viewed here.

From About this Report: [T]he U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) oversaw the production of this stand-alone report of the state of science relating to climate change and its physical impacts. … The USGCRP is made up of 13 Federal departments and agencies that carry out research and support the Nation’s response to global change. The USGCRP is overseen by the Subcommittee on Global Change Research (SGCR) of the National Science and Technology Council’s Committee on Environment,...

An excellent conference organized by the Monetary Law Forum Switzerland focused on blockchain use cases from a central bank perspective. Program, links to slides. I discussed the macroeconomic perspective and argued for “reserves for all.” Some related links: Nivaura and Allen & Overy (backing Nivaura). OTC Swiss Blockchain, by Roman Bischoff.

How light emissions across the globe changed between 2012 and 2016. Link to a navigable map.

Jointly with the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, the St. Louis Fed, the University of Bern and the Swiss National Bank, the Study Center Gerzensee organized a conference on Fiscal and Monetary Policies. The program can be viewed here.

Greg Mankiw offers a simple example to establish that a reduction in the tax rate on capital income (in a closed economy) raises wages in the long run. John Cochrane patiently typed the solution. And Larry Summers argues on his blog that US realities are not well captured by Mankiw’s example.

On his blog, John Cochrane argues that banks could, and should be 100% equity financed. His points are: (1) There are plenty of safe assets—government debt—out there and banks do not need to “create” additional safe assets—deposits. I share this view partly. First, I don’t know what amount of safe assets are sufficient from a social point of view. Second, I don’t consider government debt to be a safe asset. Third, debt has safety and liquidity properties. The question is not only whether...

On Alphaville, Matthew Klein points out that covered interest parity (dollar vs. yen) is alive and kicking again. It wasn’t during much of 2016. The Reserve Bank of Australia exploited the arbitrage opportunity. Previous post on the topic, and another one.

In an NBER working paper and a column on VoxEU, Michael Bordo and Andrew Levin make the case for central bank issued digital currency (CBDC). Bordo and Levin favor an account-based CBDC system (managed or supervised by the central bank) rather than central bank issued tokens in the blockchain. They emphasize the Friedman rule and the fact that interest paying CBDC affords the possibility to satisfy the rule: These … goals – … a stable unit of account and an efficient medium of exchange –...