It’s not every evening that you are able to pack a room full of a hundred libertarians on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, let alone at the bastion of leftism that is Columbia University.  But tonight was different, as Loyola Professor and Columbia alum Walter Block was on campus, leading a spirited lecture on [...]

In NY Times, Paul Krugman (link) wrote about the comparison of European and U.S economic model, concluding that in the last 10 years, the European model of social democracy led to higher standard of living and, compared to U.S in output per hour and standard of living, and relative convergence of European countries relative to [...]

Frederic Mishkin says not all bubbles are a threat to the economy (link):
“Nonetheless, if a bubble poses a sufficient danger to the economy as credit boom bubbles do, there might be a case for monetary policy to step in. However, there are also strong arguments against doing so, which is why there are active debates [...]

In my last post I presented evidence that people in countries with relatively high growth rates tend to perceive that their lives are improving. This is one of the reasons why I reject the view that economic growth makes people unhappy and that so called ‘unhappy growth’ can explain the reluctance of [...]

1. The interest rate is a price – the price of credit like the price of any good.  In a free market the price would be set like the price of any good at the intersection of the supply of funds (our savings), and demand for funds (businesses’ and individuals’ investing [...]

In yesterday’s edition of NY Times, Paul Krugman opened a puzzling discussion on the economic performance of Europe relative to the United States (link), suggesting that the European model of social democracy is an envy for economic success compared to the U.S economy.

Several researchers have noted that there is a tendency for average life satisfaction to be lower in the countries with high economic growth rates even though there is strong evidence that average life satisfaction is higher in countries with higher incomes. Carol Graham and Eduardo Lora have referred to this as the ‘paradox of unhappy [...]

In thinking of protectionism, the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and what might come next, here are two interesting angles.
Governments with their backs against the wall
Ideally, stabilisation using monetary and fiscal policy, alongside actions by the private sector, should restrain the decline in consumption, and yield conditions which are not too harsh for households. At [...]

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Churchill 1942
Summary

The extent, so far, of the internal devaluation process depends on the time period used for analysis. Using Q3-2007 as the beginning of the economic crisis suggest that Greece and [...]

Dani Rodrik offers a nice insight into one of the most remarkable theorems in international trade (link).
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