Category Archives: Uncategorized

What if countries could have some built-in flexibility in repaying their debts: specifically, what if the repayment of the debt was linked to whether the domestic economy was growing? Thus, the burden of debt payments would fall in a recession, which is when government sees tax revenues fall and social expenditures rise. Imagine, for example,Continue reading “What if Country Bonds Were Linked to GDP Growth?”

The Federal Reserve has been gradually raising its target interest rate (the “federal funds interest rate) for about two years, since early 2016. This increase has been accompanied by a controversy that I think of as a battle of metaphors. By raising interest rates, is the Fed stepping on the brakes of the economy? OrContinue reading “Rising Interest Rates, but Easier Financial Conditions”

You don’t need to be a weatherman to see that the antitrust winds are blowing toward the big tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and others. But an immediate problem arises. At least under modern US law, being a monopoly (or a near-monopoly) is not illegal. Nor is making high profits illegal, especially whenContinue reading “Network Effects, Big Data, and Antitrust Issues For Big Tech”

Total income earned can be divided into what is earned by labor in wages, salaries, and benefits, and what is earned by capital in profits and interest payments. The line between these categories can be a blurry: for example, should the income received by someone running their own business be counted as “labor” income receivedContinue reading “Behind the Declining Labor Share of Income”

Could driverless trucks create more trucking jobs? It sounds logically impossible. But remember that automatic teller machines did not reduce the number of jobs bank tellers, and may even have increased it slightly,  because it changed altered the range of tasks typically done by a bank teller.  IN general, new technology doesn’t just alter a singleContinue reading “Could Driverless Trucks Create More Trucking Jobs? Uber Says "Maybe"”

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 2018 Journal of Economic Perspectives”

A man is facing 28 charges in connection with a string of gas station and convenience store robberies in Peel and Toronto. Toronto Police say the spree spanned nearly five months, beginning March 23 and ending on Sunday. In each incident, police say, a man entered the business with a note indicating he had aContinue reading “Man charged in robbery spree”

What skills are most important for an employee to succeed at Google? Back in 2013, the company undertook Project Oxygen to answer that question.  Cathy N. Davidson described the result in the Washington Post last month (“The surprising thing Google learned about its employees � and what it means for today�s students,” December 20, 2017). Continue reading “The Rising Importance of Soft Skills”

Imagine yourself as the profit-seeking owner of a chain of retail stores. Would you charge the same (or nearly the same) price across all the stores? Or would you vary prices according to average income level of consumers who use that store, or according to whether the local economy was  robust or shaky, or accordingContinue reading “A Puzzle: Why Do Retail Chains Charge Uniform Prices Across Stores?”

Macroconomists were notorious for their disagreements before 2007. Such wrangling only increased with the carnage of the Great Financial Crisis and its aftermath. The Oxford Review of Economic Policy  has now devoted a special double issue (Spring-Summer 2018) to a symposium on the topic of “Rebuilding macroeconomic theory.” Lots of big names (to economists!) are featured, andContinue reading “What’s Wrong with Macro? A Symposium from the Oxford Review of Economic Policy”