Category Archives: Uncategorized

It can be hard to draw broad lessons about macroeconomics from the experience of one country alone, or from the experience of one or two recessions. Thus, a group of researchers including �scar Jord�, Katharina Knoll, Dmitry Kuvshinov, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor have been working to compile macroeconomic and financial data for 16 high-incomeContinue reading “Some Puzzles About Asset Returns in the Long Run”

Simon Kuznets (Nobel 1971) usually gets the credit for doing as much as anyone to organize our modern thinking about what should be included in GDP, or left out. But I had not known that Kuznets apparently argued for leaving military spending out of GDP, on the grounds that it wasn’t actually “consumed” by anyone,Continue reading “Why Did Simon Kuznets Want to Leave Military Spending out of GDP?”

A wealth tax is what it sounds like: a tax imposed not on income, but on wealth. The standard economic definition of wealth includes both nonfinancial assets like real estate and financial assets like stocks and bonds. Thus, a wealth tax doesn’t care if the value of someone’s wealth went up or down in theContinue reading “Why Have Other Countries Been Dropping Their Wealth Taxes?”

Steve Hanke has devoted considerable effort to building up data on hyperinflations during the last century or so. He offers a quick overview of this work in Forbes (January 20, 2019). Below is his list of hyperinflations. When it comes to Venezuela, he writes: Now, let�s turn to the world�s only current hyperinflation: Venezuela. ItContinue reading “58 Episodes of Hyperinflation (Venezuela is #23)”

In the long-run, the average standard of living in an economy is determined by the average productivity of its workers. For example, Paul Krugman started Chapter 1 of his 1990 book, The Age of Diminished Expectations, by stating: “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country’s ability to improve itsContinue reading “The Puzzle of the US Productivity Slowdown”

I was hired back in 1986 to be the Managing Editor for a new academic economics journal, at the time unnamed, but which soon launched as the Journal of Economic Perspectives. The JEP is published by the American Economic Association, which back in 2011 decided–to my delight–that it would be freely available on-line, from theContinue reading “Winter 2019 Journal of Economic Perspectives Available Online”

The concept of the “gig economy” clearly captures something real, but it can be hard to measure define in the statistical sense that brings joy to my heart. For example, it clearly refers to those who drive for Uber and Lyft. But does it refer more broadly to all workers with “alternative work arrangements,” whoContinue reading “Do We Even Know If the Gig Economy Is Growing?”

Twice a year the Congressional Budget Office publishes a “just the facts” overview of the federal budget picture and the US economy. The latest version is “The Budget andEconomic Outlook:2019 to 2029 (January 2019). Here, I’ll focus on the US budget deficit and debt. Here’s the pattern of US federal government spending and revenues inContinue reading “Budget Deficits and Debt: Background and Tradeoffs”

Economic growth in Mexico presents a puzzle. Mexico has followed many of the standard recommendations that are said to support economic growth. For example, it has prevented a recurrence of the inflationary fevers that used to grip Mexico every few years. Rates of national investment are up. Investment in education and human capital is up.Continue reading “Mexico Misallocated”

Some hard questions defy easy answers. What is the meaning of life? What happens right at the event horizon of a black hole? How can the US substantially reduce health care spending? But for other questions, the answers are fairly clear, and what is lacking is a willingness to choose. Fixing Social Security falls intoContinue reading “A Plan to Fix Social Security”