A propos of the Chan-Zuckerberg initiative to save in taxes while pretending to care about the public good, following on…
Remarks on Financialization: the Nature of the Vampire Squid
On May 31, at the 2014 Left Forum held in John Jay College (CUNY), I participated in a discussion on…
Memo to Tim Geithner: You are no hero
You cannot blame “the system” for the premature bout of austerity that frustrated a bigger fiscal stimulus package and allowed…
On Gary Becker: A True Believer
Gary Becker has died. Here’s John Cassidy “postscript.” And here’s the NYT’s obit. Personally, I liked the frankness of his approach…
Piketty via Milanovic
I have written a few comments on Branko Milanovic’s review of Thomas Piketty’s celebrated new book, Capital in the 21st…
On cost disease and “neoliberal” demagoguery
In the 1960s, William Baumol (in his book, co-written with William Bowen, Performing Arts: the Economic Dilemma, as well as…
On moral hazard
I have commented before on contradictory notions of modern economics. Moral hazard, a favorite one in macroeconomics and financial economics, is…
On the “self-correcting mechanism” of our social structures
I find dynamic general equilibrium models — from the Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans versions to the Lucas–Chari–Prescott-Kydland or, if you prefer, to the…
Caveat emptor
At first, I thought I’d devote my blog to commentary on politics and economics, mostly driven by news. At some…
On incentives — i.e. on ownership (Addendum)
An addendum to my previous post on incentives and ownership. This is Marx’s take on the section of Hegel’s Philosophy of…
