jamesz

Alesina on austerity: round 2

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Alberto Alesina has returned to the fray with a new paper that shows how tax rises are far more damaging than tax cuts. With a new dataset covering the recessionary years, this is the most up-to-date evidence on fiscal consolidation available. Importantly, they are unable to discern evidence that the ZLB caused the effects of fiscal policy to be greater. Of course, this isn’t the final word and it’s only one piece of evidence, but I’ll be reading it closely over the next few days.

Fiscal adjustments based upon cuts in spending appear to have been much less costly, in terms of output losses, than those based upon tax increases. The difference between the two types of adjustment is very large. Our results, however, are mute on the question whether the countries we have studied did the right thing implementing fiscal austerity at the time they did, that is 2009-13.

jamesz

The Economist’s misguided lecture to macroeconomists

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In a bizarre leader article The Economist praises microeconomists for their use of data to better predict people’s behaviour and recommend macroeconomists do the same:

Macroeconomists are puritans, creating theoretical models before testing them against data. The new breed [of microeconomists] ignore the whiteboard, chucking numbers together and letting computers spot the patterns. And macroeconomists should get out more. The success of micro is its magpie approach, stealing ideas from psychology to artificial intelligence. If macroeconomists mimic some of this they might get some cool back. They might even make better predictions.

I’m tempted to label this as obvious baiting but the misunderstanding is deeper than that. Read more

jamesz

Merry Christmas from TVHE

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Have a great Christmas and we’ll be back in the New Year. If you’re feeling starved of economics over the next ten days The Atlantic has a selection of beautiful Christmas cards to send to your loved ones:

If you need something a little more stimulating then you can catch up on some of the debates you missed on the blogs over the past week. Read more

jamesz

QOTD: “”I have a dream. It involves a Star Trek chair and a bank of monitors.”

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Bank of England Chief Economist Andy Haldane:

“I have a dream. It involves a Star Trek chair and a bank of monitors. It would involve tracking the global flow of funds in close to real time, in much the same way as happens with global weather systems.”

Is the binding constraint on better macroprudential policy a lack of timely information? If they had that information, could a world regulator really have averted the crisis in 2007?

Full speech here.

jamesz

There is no One Model to Rule Them All

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I like the influence that physicists are having on economics. Moving towards agent-based modelling in some areas of the discipline is a great idea. But, in addition to lending their novel insights, some seem to enjoy piling on economics generally. Generally you have to take the good with the bad but Mark Buchanan’s latest article is so shockingly bad that I can’t help picking on it. Read more

Shamubeel Eaqub

Aussie: home away from home?

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Matt and I got talking about immigration off an earlier blog. He asked:

“Could it be that Brisbane feels more at like home for people from the rural North Island and South Auckland than Southland or Auckland City do?”

It got me thinking about why people migrate. Read more