December 2012

Merry Christmas

24 December 2012

Merry Christmas to all! (card via bluemountain.com) I have been collecting some quotable quotes from various sources and my bookmarks. Here are some of them: The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists. – Joan Robinson, 1955, [...]

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Random Tidbits On National Accounts And Keynesian Models Of Income And Expenditure

13 December 2012

I came across this article (via a Tweet from Stephen Kinsella): Accounting As The Master Metaphor Of Economics by Arjo Klamer and Donald McCloskey which discusses how the framework of national accounts has been pushed to the background in economic analysis over the years. It is a nice read – although boring in a few places. I [...]

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We Are NOT All Keynesians Now!

13 December 2012

The Jan Hatzius interview on sectoral balances mentioned in the previous post – although has given it some popularity – has led to great confusions among economic commentators. Here is a confused Professor from the famous institute INSEAD - Antonio Fatás on his blog. Fatás implicitly denies that propensities to consume/save and government expenditure and taxing decisions have [...]

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Jan Hatzius On Sectoral Balances

10 December 2012

Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal interviewed Goldman Sachs’ Jan Hatzius recently with questions aimed at his usage of the sectoral balances approach: … BI: Back to the balance sheet, multi-sectoral framework of looking at the economy. How did you come to this view? On Wall Street this is still very rare. I don’t see many economist [...]

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“Maastricht Is A Half-Baked Half-Way House”

8 December 2012

I frequently quote Wynne Godley’s Maastricht And All That written for the London Review Of Books in 1992. Here’s from another article (paywalled) for the same magazine from 1993: I am in favour of Britain having much closer ties with other European countries, provided that appropriate institutions are created and the whole thing is brought under [...]

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