Paul Walker
The Economist’s Greg Ip on economics reporting - The Dismal Science
Dec 09, 2012
As Canterbury is starting up its journalism program again this interview with The Economists's Greg Ip could be of use to would be economics journalists. Ip is the U.S. economics editor for The Economist and a keen observer of the intersection of busin...
Keen still keen on attacking standard micro (updated) - The Dismal Science
Dec 07, 2012 •
Steve Keen has a another paper out on Debunking the theory of the firm—a chronology. Its by Keen and Russell Standish and appeared in issue 53 of Real-world Economics Review (never heard of it). Matt Nolan and myself have commented on Keen's analysi...
Just for fun: the theory of privatisation - The Dismal Science
Nov 29, 2012 •
Having been working on a survey of the theory of the firm I noted that an often neglected topic in the literature is that of state owned firms and their privatisation. Thus I added a short section on the literature on privatisation. There is a surpris...
Adam Darwin - The Dismal Science
Nov 27, 2012 •
This video is of a talk by Matt Ridley, given at the Adam Smith Institute, entitled Adam Darwin - Spontaneous order in biology and economics..
Innovative govenrment? - The Dismal Science
Nov 22, 2012 •
When writing, at the Groping towards Bethlehem blog, about how to make government more innovative Bill Kaye-Blake says that private business has a pretty clear goal - make money - and this forces them to be innovative. But he says, Government, on the ...
What’s a vote worth? - The Dismal Science
Nov 17, 2012 •
A question asked by John Gibson in a column at VoxEU.org. He notes that even before the turmoil of Hurricane Sandy, many Americans were considering not bothering to register a vote for their next president. By looking at the costs and benefits of voti...
Interview of Ronald Coase and Ning Wang - The Dismal Science
Nov 15, 2012 •
Nick Schulz interviews Ronald Coase and Ning Wang about issues to so with their new book, "How China Became Capitalist." The last question is interesting: NS: You are critical of much modern economics, saying it has been transformed “from a moral s...
Consumer prices and advertising - The Dismal Science
Nov 13, 2012 •
There is a question in economic theory about the effects of advertising on the prices that consumers pay. Does advertising increase or decrease consumer prices? This debate, which goes back at least to Marshall (1919), is the subject of a new column at...
Who is exploiting who? - The Dismal Science
Nov 12, 2012 •
Are we all Marxists now? At least as far as the theory of the firm is concerned. In a Journal of Finance paper back in 2000 Luigi Zingales wrote, [...] there is a clear Marxian flavor in the role played by ownership in Grossman and Hart (1986) and Har...
EconTalk for 3 weeks - The Dismal Science
Nov 12, 2012 •
Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins and the Cato Institute talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about hyperinflation and the U.S. fiscal situation. Hanke argues that despite the seemingly aggressive policies of the Federal Reserve over the last four years, t...