Matt Nolan
Menzie Chen on currency wars - The Dismal Science
Jan 30, 2013 •
You know I don’t believe that the “currency war” is a negative thing in a world of insufficient demand (*,*,*,*,*). But Menzie Chen from Econbrowser has the same view – and to be absolutely honest their view is significantly more reputable than mine . Furthermore, it was a point that Chen made all the way [...]
A hypothetical chat – exchange rate overvaluation - The Dismal Science
Jan 28, 2013 •
With people in NZ constantly yelling about the dollar, and yelling at the Reserve Bank, I thought I would host a hypothetical discussion that hopefully helps to explain the issues – and why inflation targeting isn’t the cause of any of the perceived problems. Here it goes: Intelligent non-economist (INE): The dollar is too high, [...]
Mark Carney points out the currency war myth - The Dismal Science
Jan 28, 2013 •
In this piece on Bloomberg, Mark Carney (the govenor of the Bank of Canada, and soon to be governor of the Bank of England) points out that the criticism of the BOJ for the drop in the Yen isn’t fair: Speaking on the same Davos panel, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney commended Japan’s focus [...]
Housing wealth and consumption – an upper bound, not an estimate - The Dismal Science
Jan 27, 2013 •
Via Economist’s View, I saw this paper by Case, Quigley, and Shiller (REPEC). Let me start with the positives, which are many: They are excellent writers, They get to the point – and have a clear idea of how important this sort of issue is for trying to understand cyclical phenomenon, They have pulled together [...]
The symbol-archetype distinction when discussing economic primatives - The Dismal Science
Jan 25, 2013 •
One thing that was clear from my post about economic primatives (such as production functions) being archetypes was that my distinction between symbol and archetype in that context wasn’t clear. I realised that even before the post went up. At the base level, an archetype is a subset of symbols – it is a symbol [...]
The currency “war” myth that won’t die - The Dismal Science
Jan 23, 2013 •
Over on Rate’s Blog I’ve seen an approving link to an article discussing the “currency wars” that are going on around the world. As Lars Christensen says here, and as we’ve said on many occassions ourselves given that monetary policy is pegged to an implicit inflation target this isn’t “beggar thy neighbour” policy at all [...]
Why revisions matter - The Dismal Science
Jan 10, 2013 •
Via James I saw this excellent post by Lars Christensen on why data revisions don’t matter for NGDP targeting. I think it shows how much traction that the NGDP people are getting, when critiques like this start to appear – and it is good they are making a concerted effort to answer them. Now I’m [...]
Again with the middle class … - The Dismal Science
Dec 17, 2012 •
Good article in the Sunday Star Times on the middle class in NZ – the author seemed to share some of the sentiments I’ve had in the past (*, *, *, *,*), where he feels that concerns should be for the worst off in NZ not the “doing alright”. I love this quote: Of course, [...]
Why cyclical Kiwisaver would be an awful tool - The Dismal Science
Dec 11, 2012 •
Via Rates blog I see that, at the conference on government finances over the past couple of days Michael Cullen suggested making compulsory Kiwisaver contributions pro-cyclical (combined with the scheme becoming universal) as a monetary policy tool. I appreciate he wanted the auidence of academics there to think outside the box, but this is actually a [...]
Another example of why we need a full story - The Dismal Science
Dec 10, 2012 •
I was sitting around working the other day, and at that point in time it involved downloading and playing with PPP (purchasing power parity) data in order to compare a bunch of GDP and consumption figures for work. All very exciting. At that moment I looked around the internet a bit, and noticed people complaining [...]