Economist's View

Inequality and Economic Growth: Paul Krugman and Tony Atkinson

Note: The video starts around the 43 minute mark

The Future of Money: What's in Your Digital Wallet?

I thought this session on electronic payments was interesting:

The Future of Money: What's in Your Digital Wallet?
Tuesday, April 30, 2013 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM

Speakers:

• Eric Dunn, Senior Vice President, Commerce Network Solutions, Intuit
• Paul Galant, CEO, Citi Enterprise Payments
• Mark Lavelle, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, PayPal
• Ed McLaughlin, Chief Emerging Payments Officer, MasterCard

Moderator: Lauren Lyster, Co-Host, "Daily Ticker," Yahoo! Finance

Money is by nature symbolic - representing the erratic value of goods and services - but will it become entirely electronic? Some digital evangelists, touting the frictionlessness of cashlessness, think so. E-transactions are burgeoning along with the capabilities and reach of the Internet. Software engineering has fused with financial engineering and online communities are creating new forms of digital currency. Yet cash in circulation is also rising. Hand-held currency is an easy, uncomplicated means to know what you have and get what you want, which is all the more appealing in an era of economic insecurity and bitcoin chaos. Why rely on intermediaries and invisible transactions? Why trust if one can't readily verify? This panel will explore the forces that are changing money and, at the same time, keeping it in its traditional forms.

Video: Global Overview

This shouldn't be overly surprising, but Nouriel Roubini is pessimistic about the global economy (bubble/boom for two years, then a big crash):

Lunch Panel: Global Overview
Monday, April 29, 2013 12:00 PM - 1:45 PM

Introduction By: Michael Klowden, CEO, Milken Institute

Speakers:

• Pierre Beaudoin, President and CEO, Bombardier Inc.
• Scott Minerd, Managing Partner and Global Chief Investment Officer, Guggenheim Partners
• Nouriel Roubini, Chairman and Co-Founder, Roubini Global Economics; Professor of Economics and International Business, Stern School of Business, New York University
• Geraldine Sundstrom, Partner and Portfolio Manager, Emerging Markets Strategies Master Fund Limited, Brevan Howard

Moderator: Paul Gigot, Editorial Page Editor and Vice President, The Wall Street Journal

As mid-2013 comes into view, the crisis sparked by the international mortgage meltdown is receding into memory, spreading a sense of relief. In the eurozone, the debate is about austerity versus spending, but not dissolution. Meanwhile, living conditions are rising in many parts of the globe as millions join a swelling middle class. The expanding availability of healthcare could have a profound effect as well. Yet some regions continue to struggle. In our annual big-picture look at the world economy, we'll discuss whether China and the U.S. can pull other players along and how the debt bomb can be defused. What are the most potent trends steering capital markets? Which industries are rising, which are fading, and what governments are demonstrating they know how to solve problems? Can the flare-up in the Middle East be contained and give way to democracy and economic growth?

China in the World: Growth, Adjustment, and Integration

Here's the video I mentioned in the post "Is China's Growth Model Sustainable":

The Chinese economy has developed at a remarkable pace over the last 30 years.  The integration of China into the world economy has led to extraordinary flows of foreign direct investment, infrastructure buildup, and an impressive export capacity.   As we look to the future, both domestic and international considerations bear on the capacity for China to continue on this robust course and for the world to adjust to China’s growth and changed role. The differences in philosophical, legal, and governance systems between China and the West suggest that the challenges will be formidable and that cooperation and mutual benefit will require extraordinary attention.

• Daniel A. Bell - Professor, Tsinghua University
• Jan Kregel - Senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
• Huang Yiping - Professor of Economics, National School of Development, Peking University
• Yu Yongding - Director, Institute of World Economics and Politics, CASS
• Moderator: Xiao Geng - Director of Research and Senior Fellow, Fung  Global Institute

What is the Role of Psychological Considerations in Economics? - INET

I went to a different breakout session, but heard very good things about this one on "psychological considerations in economics":

Many of our global problems – from climate change to financial crises – arise from people’s failure to cooperate adequately to achieve socially desirable outcomes. There is a widespread recognition that we need a deeper understanding of human nature in order to discern new opportunities for human cooperation. The Kiel Institute and the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig are developing an interdisciplinary program with INET to examine new avenues of how psychological and neuroscientific knowledge about human motivation, emotion and social cognition can inform models of economic decision making. How can a profounder understanding of human motivation and preferences lead to a broader appreciation of our prospects for pro-social and sustainable economic behaviors?

• David Tuckett - Training and Supervising Analyst in the British Psychoanalytical Society 
• Inske Pirschel - Research Assistant, Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel 
• Gert Pönitzsch - Research Assistant, Kiel Institute for the World Economy 
• Cars Hommes - Professor of Economics Universiteit van Amsterdam
• Moderator: Dennis Snower - President, Kiel Institute for the World Economy

Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Stability - Adair Turner Keynote at INET

Adair Turner calls for "overt monetary finance":

A Conversation with Emmanuel Saez: Taxing away Inequality

Greg Mankiw's post today reminds me that I meant to post this interview with Emmanuel Saez on "taxing away inequality":

Taxing Away Inequality, Interview by David Grusky: David Grusky: In the thirteen years since you secured your PhD, there have been two big developments: first, your research on income inequality, especially its recent takeoff, has taken the world by storm. And, second, the national conversation about income inequality has completely shifted. In fact in the last presidential election it was one of the key topics. I would argue that those two developments are related in the sense that you’re the one, more than anyone else, who has brought about precisely that change in the national conversation.

That said, I suspect that there are some features of your work that you think have been misunderstood or, at the least, inadequately addressed in current debates about inequality. Could you talk a bit about this underappreciated side of your work?

Emmanuel Saez: I did this key work on income concentration in the United States with my colleague Thomas Piketty, and we were indeed quite surprised by how successful our research has been in the public debate. Initially this was really academic work building on the long tradition of the famous economist Simon Kuznets, who started the data series back in the 1950s. So we never approached it in a way that would necessarily be easy for the broader public and the press to use. We had to adjust over time to try to talk to the public and present our findings in a way that was the simplest, because we’ve discovered that to have an impact in the broader world, the way you present your research—the design, the framing—has a tremendous impact.

Naturally the public has focused mostly on the very recent period. But the key goal of our study was to show a very long perspective—a century long perspective—and to think about long-term changes rather than year-to-year changes. And I think there’s a lot to learn about how those long-term changes are related to policy making and government action.

DG: I’m prompted by your last point to suggest that another underappreciated feature of your work is that it delivers rather provocative hints about the causes of the increase in inequality. That is, it not only lays out the descriptive trajectory of income inequality, but also suggests what’s driving that descriptive trajectory.

We participated in a Boston Review debate on one account of the sources of the recent takeoff, namely the expansion of rent, where rent is understood as sweetheart deals, corruption, backdating stock option contracts—all sorts of pay-setting practices that permit those at the top to secure more than they would in a competitive market. On the basis of your research, do you think that rent is an important source of the recent growth in income inequality?

ES: If we define rent in terms of situations where pay doesn’t correspond to what economists call ‘marginal productivity’—that is, the economic contribution a person is providing—I would say yes, because the evolution of income concentration over time and across countries has a number of features that are inconsistent with the story where pay is everywhere equal to productivity. The changes in income concentration are just too abrupt and too closely correlated with policy developments for the standard story about pay equaling productivity to hold everywhere. That is, if pay is equal to productivity, you would think that deep economic changes in skills would evolve slowly and make a gradual difference in the distribution—but what we see in the data are very abrupt changes. Basically all western countries had very high levels of income concentration up to the first decades of the 20th century and then income concentration fell dramatically in most western countries following the historical narrative of each country. For example, in the United States the Great Depression followed by the New Deal and then World War II. And I could go on with other countries. Symmetrically, the reversal—that is, the surge in income concentration in some but not all countries—follows political developments closely. You see the highest increases in income concentration in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, following precisely what has been called the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions: deregulation, cuts in top tax rates, and policy changes that favored upper-income brackets. You don’t see nearly as much of an increase in income concentration in countries such as Japan, Germany, or France, which haven’t gone through such sharp, drastic policy changes. ...[continue]...

There's also, as Greg notes, a video:

Emmanuel Saez discusses income equality at Stanford’s Center for Ethics in Society. (Jan. 24, 2013)

Video: Chrystia Freeland Interviews Larry Summers

The Future of the American Public Sector

Video: Paul Krugman Explains the Keys to Our Recovery

[via]

Video: David Leonhardt Interviews Paul Krugman

Banking in 1947

[via]

Video: Krugman and Stiglitz

[Note: The video starts at the 16:15 mark, and the Krugman and Stiglitz discussion begins at 25:30]

Video: Eichengreen on Dollar Dominance

Something to watch -- if you're so inclined -- while I try to come up with something to post:

And, for more video, Stiglitz on Up With Chris.

Recent Developments in CEO Compensation

SCOTUS ACA Health Care Decision Panel: U.C. Berkeley (Video)

Via Brad DeLong, here's the schedule of speakers:

John Ellwood: 00:55
Jesse Choper: 15:00
Steve Shortell: 30:30
Brad DeLong: 45:50
Ann O'Leary: 55:30
Ann Marie Marciarille: 1:07:33
General Questions: 1:19:40

Milken Global Conference Video: What's Happened to the American Dream?

I missed this session, but I hear that the interaction between Niall Ferguson and Steven Rattner, among others, was, shall we say, lively (if you don't want to hear "Ferguson’s fury: Harvard historian decries female welfare recipients" then you should probably skip this one):

What's Happened to the American Dream?, Tuesday, May 1, 2012, 12:15 - 2:00 PM

Speakers:

• Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, Harvard University; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
• Jeff Greene, Investor and Philanthropist
• Charles Murray, W.H. Brady Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; Author, "Coming Apart: The State of White America"
• Steven Rattner, Chairman, Willett Advisors; former Counselor and Lead Auto Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury

Moderator:

• Harold Ford Jr.

Milken Global Conference Video: Jobs for America

The words "private sector," "education," and "regulatory uncertainty" play a starring role in this session on job creation (this was one of the more annoying sessions I attended, especially towards the end when Richard Fisher elevates teaching Congress a lesson over job creation - he says low interest rate policy allows Congress to escape accountability, and stopping that comes first):

Jobs for America Monday, April 30, 2012 2:30 PM - 3:45 PM

Speakers:

• John Engler, President, Business Roundtable; former Governor, State of Michigan
• Richard Fisher, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
• Javier Palomarez, President and CEO, U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
• Rafael Pastor, Chairman and CEO, Vistage International Inc.

Moderator:

• Zachary Karabell, Senior Fellow, Milken Institute; President, River Twice Research

Video: Ron Paul versus Paul Krugman

[Source]

Update: Paul Krugman comments:

Don’t Know Much About (Ancient) History: The things I do for book sales. I debated, sort of, Ron Paul on Bloomberg.Video here. I thought we might have a discussion of why the runaway inflation he and his allies keep predicting keeps not happening. But no, he insisted (if I understood him correctly) that currency debasement and price controls destroyed the Roman Empire. I responded that I am not a defender of the economic policies of the Emperor Diocletian.

Actually, though, appeals to what supposedly happened somewhere in the distant past are quite common on the goldbug side of economics. And it’s kind of telling.

I mean, history is essential to economic analysis. You really do want to know, say, about the failure of Argentina’s convertibility law, of the effects of Chancellor Brüning’s dedication to the gold standard, and many other episodes.

Somehow, though, people like Ron Paul don’t like to talk about events of the past century, for which we have reasonably good data; they like to talk about events in the dim mists of history, where we don’t really know what happened. And I think that’s no accident. Partly it’s the attempt of the autodidact to show off his esoteric knowledge; but it’s also the fact that because we don’t really know what happened — what really did go down during the Diocletian era? — you can project what you think should have happened onto the sketchy record, then claim vindication for whatever you want to believe.

It’s funny, in a way — except that this sort of thinking dominates one of our two main political parties.

Milken Global Conference Video: The Future of Capitalism

The Future of Capitalism Monday, April 30, 2012 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Speakers:

• Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, Harvard University; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
• Ana Palacio, Member, Spanish Council of State; former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Spain
• Peter Passell, Senior Fellow, Milken Institute; Editor, The Milken Institute Review
• Raghuram Rajan, Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Moderator:

• James McCaughan, CEO, Principal Global Investors

Milken Global Conference Video: Tax Reform: What's Fair Got to Do With It?

Tax Reform: What's Fair Got to Do With It?, Monday, April 30, 2012, 9:30 - 10:45 AM

Speakers:

• Jared Bernstein, Economic Policy Fellow, Milken Institute; Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; former Chief Economist to Vice President Joe Biden
• Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, Forbes Media
• William Gale, Director, Retirement Security Project, Brookings Institution; Co-Director, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center
• Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President, American Action Forum; former Director, Congressional Budget Office; former Chief Economist, Council of Economic Advisors

Moderator:

• Bradley Belt, Senior Managing Director, Milken Institute

Update: Richard Green:

I am watching the Milken Global Conference panel on tax reform, and I want to shout: ...the reason fewer people are paying federal income taxes is that more people are making low incomes.

Milken Global Conference Video: Where Will Economic Growth Come From?

 

Where Will Economic Growth Come From? Monday, April 30, 2012
8:00 AM - 9:15 AM

Speakers:

• Willem Buiter, Chief Economist, Citigroup
• Terry Duffy, Executive Chairman, CME Group Inc.
• Mohamed El-Erian, CEO and Co-Chief Investment Officer, PIMCO
• Kevin Warsh, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, and former Member, Federal Reserve Board of Governors

Moderator:

• Maria Bartiromo, Anchor, CNBC

More INET Videos: Sessions on Complexity and Fiscal Policy

These videos are from the recent INET conference in Berlin:

Taking Stock of Complexity Economics: Which Problems Does It Illuminate?

Moderator

• Thomas Homer-Dixon, Director, Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation, University of Waterloo [On Farmer Video]

Speakers

• Doyne Farmer, Professor at Santa Fe Institute. Presentation Video
• Ricardo Hausmann, Professor of the Practice of Economic Development, Harvard University. Presentation Video
• Mauro Gallegati, Professor of Economics, Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona. Paper / Presentation Video
• Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, Professor of Physics, École Polytechnique. Presentation Video
• Q&A Video

Does the Effectiveness of Fiscal Stimulus Depend on the Context? Balance Sheet Overhangs, Open Economy Leakages, and Idle Resources

Moderator

• Robin Wells, former Research Professor of Economics at Princeton University [On Corsetti Video]

Speakers

• Giancarlo Corsetti, Professor of Macroeconomics, University of Cambridge. Presentation Video
• Steven Fazzari, Professor of Economics, Washington University in St Louis. Paper / Presentation Video
• Atif Mian, Joe Shoong Chair in International Business, Haas School of Business,University of California at Berkeley. Presentation Video
• Q&A Video

60 Minutes: The Case Against Lehman Brothers

Via Barry Ritholtz, who says "Other than getting Lehman’s role in the overall crisis wrong, this is a fascinating look at Lehman’s demise":

[transcript]

INET Conference in Berlin: Day 3 Videos

Keynote Address at INET's Paradigm Lost

Amartya Sen

Managing the Global Commons

Peter Victor
Geoffrey Heal
Jiahua Pan
Ottmar Edenhofer
Discussion and Q&A

Creating a Socially Useful Financial System

Katharina Pistor
Andrew Haldane
Dirk Bezemer
John Kay
Discussion and Q&A

Instability in Financial Markets

Domenico Delli Gatti
Michael Goldberg
Steve Keen
Moritz Schularick

Inequality and the Challenge of Employment

Armin Falk
Ronald Schettkat
James Heckman

Where do we go from here?

Thomas Fricke and Sergei Guriev
Richard Koo
Andrew Sheng
Andres Velasco

INET Conference in Berlin: Day 2 Videos

Keynote Address: What Matters: Fundamental Challenges and Self Inflicted Wounds

Adair Turner

Keynote Address: Reflections on the Politics of Deficit Reduction

Paul Martin

Debt: Inflation and Austerity

Jörg Asmussen
Erik Berglöf
Angel Gurría
Axel Leijonhufvud
Hans-Joachim Voth

Debt: The Politics and Economics of Restructuring

Anat Admati
Michael Hudson
Kai Konrad
Arturo O'Connell

Is Mercantilism Doomed to Fail?

Paul Davidson
Heiner Flassbeck
Norbert Walter
Joseph Stiglitz
Discussion and Q&A

The Future of Europe

Markus Brunnermeier
Wendy Carlin
George Soros
Sven Giegold
Yanis Varoufakis
Discussion and Q&A

Video: Sims and Sargent Nobel Lectures

[Note: Video starts just after the 10 minute mark, lectures start just after the 16:30 mark. Video link from Steven Kinsella who says "Tom Sargent’s Nobel lecture compares the formation  of the US fiscal and monetary union by Alexander Hamilton to the current experience in Europe. Well worth watching..."]

Keynes vs. Hayek

Video: Paul Krugman's "Vision for a Decent Society"

Elizabeth Warren on the Debt Crisis, Fair Taxation, and the Social Contract

Video: Ed Prescott on "The Current State of Aggregate Economics"

Stephen Williamson says, "If you have never seen an Ed Prescott talk, here is your chance. Don't pay attention to how he's saying it, just listen closely. This is interesting, just to hear how he thinks about what he does."

I'd guess I was far less impressed, but here's the video so you can make up your own mind:

Video: Akerlof's Identity Economics and Stiglitz on Macro Models

I enjoyed this talk:

George Akerlof: Identity Economics

Abstract: Identity economics constitutes the first sustained effort to incorporate the effects of social context into our understanding of why people make the economic decisions they do, and why certain people, given different identities, make markedly different decisions in the same situations. It yields a more realistic and deeper account of behavior, and thereby a better basis for shaping organizations and public policies. The lecture will give a brief introduction to the book Identity Economics by George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton. It will give a motivation for identity economics and why it matters.

This one too:

Joseph Stiglitz: Imagining an Economics tthat Works: Crisis, Contagion and the Need for a New Paradigm

Abstract: The standard macroeconomic models have failed, by all the most important tests of scientific theory. They did not predict that the financial crisis would happen; and when it did, they understated its effects. Monetary authorities allowed bubbles to grow and focused on keeping inflation low, partly because the standard models suggested that low inflation was necessary and almost sufficient for efficiency and growth. Advocates of capital market liberalization argued that it would lead to greater stability: countries faced with a negative shock borrow from the rest of the world, allowing cross-country smoothing. The crisis showed the deep flaws in this thinking, but policymakers have been slow to rethink the paradigms they relied on. There is a need for a fundamental re-examination of the models. This lecture first describes the failures of the standard models in broad terms, and then develops the economics of deep downturns, and shows that such downturns are endogenous. Further, the lecture will argue that there have been systemic changes to the structure of the economy that made the economy more vulnerable to crisis, contrary to what the standard models argued. In particular, the lecture will explore how integration can exacerbate contagion; and how a failure in one country can more easily spread to others. There are conditions under which such adverse effects overwhelm the putative positive effects. Finally, the lecture will contrast the policy implications of our framework with those of the standard models; for instance, how capital controls can be welfare enhancing, reducing the risk of adverse effects from contagion.

Video: Paul Samuelson and the Neoclassical Synthesis

Krugman vs. Rogoff: How to Fix the Economy

[Transcript]

Blinder: Forget Debt, the Emergency is Unemployment

[via]

Eichengreen: Why Economics Needs History

Complexity Economics

Video 2, Video 3, Video 4, Video 5

Austerity Can Wait for Sunnier Days

Here's the argument for austerity that seems to be winning in Washington. This is Carmen Reinhart at the recent INET conference at Bretton Woods:

Her argument, essentially, is that yes, immediate austerity makes things worse. But the failure to invoke immediate austerity brings about even bigger problems down the road, so big that the pain now is worth it.

I disagree that immediate austerity is needed. I don't think that waiting, say, two years to begin reducing the deficit will substantially change the chance of big problems down the road. I realize that the credibility of Congress can be questioned, particularly when it involves promises about future actions. But putting a plan in place now that kicks in once predetermined levels of the unemployment rate or some other measure of economic performance are met helps to resolve whatever worries about the long-run might exist. And it does this without imposing immediate austerity measures and endangering the economic recovery.

Here's the entire session:

Grad Students

It's graduation day today here at the University of Oregon. (We do graduation on Monday, which to me is a strange day to hold the ceremony. Having graduation on Monday allows us to host the NCAA Track and Field Championship which ended on Saturday, a money maker for the University. But the Monday graduation is likely to exclude some parents and family, particularly working class families who sacrificed the most to put their kids through school, so I don't like it. We need to make it as conveneint as we can for families to attend the ceremony. It means a lot to people, and students and their families ought to come first.)

I was a marshall at the University ceremony this morning (boring), and we have the Department ceremony later today. Yesterday, I went to a graduation party for my Ph.D. students. One is headed to the Federal Reserve Board and the other to an academic position (both got good jobs - yeah!). So unlike the suggestion in the video below, grad school is not always "a terrible life choice." At least not for everyone:

[via]

"Blinder Calls for More Fiscal Stimulus to Boost Jobs"

Nice to see that Alan Blinder agrees with the call for more fiscal stimulus to boost jobs (though I'd go beyond the "somewhat more" fiscal help he calls for to address the unemployment crisis), that there's no evidence of inflation, that the Fed should keep rates low and take other steps to stimulate job growth, and that we should address our long-run budget deficit, but not until the economy is is better shape:

Blinder Calls for More Fiscal Stimulus to Boost Jobs, Bloomberg: Former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder, now a Princeton University economist, talks about the central bank's monetary policy and the need for "somewhat more" fiscal stimulus from Congress in order to boost employment even as it legislates "fiscal consolidation in the future." Blinder speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance Midday." David Blanchflower, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College and a former policy maker at the Bank of England, also speaks.

The Attention Deficit Society: What Technology Is Doing to Our Brains

I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, I've been distracted with other things, but several people told me they enjoyed this session at the Global Conference:

The Attention Deficit Society: What Technology Is Doing to Our Brains

Speakers:

• Nicholas Carr, Author, "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains"
• Cathy Davidson, Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Duke University
• Clifford Nass, Thomas M. Storke Professor, Stanford University
• Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, MIT

Moderator:

• Dennis Kneale, Senior Correspondent, Fox Business Network

The Shape of Things to Come: Understanding the New Global Economy

I missed this session:

Panel: The Shape of Things to Come: Understanding the New Global Economy

Speakers:

• Mohamed El-Erian, CEO and Co-Chief Investment Officer, PIMCO
• Scott Minerd, Chief Investment Officer, Guggenheim
• Laura Tyson, S. K. and Angela Chan Chair in Global Management, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley; former Chairman, National Economic Council
• Ruben Vardanian, Chairman and CEO, Troika Dialog

Moderator:

• Jared Carney, Executive Director, Program Development and Marketing, Milken Institute

[I'll post Tom Keene's interview of Nouriel Roubini as soon as it's processed.]

"Decoding Ben Bernanke"

Here's the video I did on Bernanke's Press Conference that I mentioned in an earlier post: Decoding Ben Bernanke:

Video: Adair Turner's Keynote Address at INET

Video: Richard Koo

Video: Martin Wolf and Larry Summers

Joseph Stiglitz: "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%"

Here's the interview with Joe Stiglitz I highlighted a few days ago: (transcript):

Barry Eichengreen on the End of Dollar Dominance

[edited excerpt]

Koo: The "Strange World" of a Balance Sheet Recession

"Apple and the Charlie Factory"

[Via: Virulent Word of Mouse]

Rational Expectations and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis

Roman Frydman emails that he'd like a chance to respond to Chris Sims' defense of DSGE models. This is from the session "Life After Rational Expectations":

Update: More from Roman Frydman on this topic:

 “The Imperfect Knowledge Imperative in Modern Macroeconomics and Finance Theory,” prepared for the conference on Microfoundations for Modern Macroeconomics, co-authored with Michael D. Goldberg, Center on Capitalism and Society, Columbia University, New York, November 2010, revised version forthcoming in Roman Frydman and Edmund S. Phelps (eds.), Micro-Macro: Back to the Foundations, Princeton University Press.

 “Opening Models of Asset Prices and Risk to Non-Routine Change,” prepared for the conference on Microfoundations for Modern Macroeconomics, Center on Capitalism and Society, Columbia University, New York, November 2010, revised version forthcoming in Roman Frydman and Edmund S. Phelps (eds.), Foundations for a Micro-Macro: Back to the Foundations, Princeton University Press.

And while I'm here again, turning in another direction, here's George Akerlof on whether the efficient markets hypothesis caused the crisis: