The Inaugural John Kenneth Galbraith Lecture
At this year’s Canadian Economics Association meetings, the Progressive Economics Forum was thrilled to have James Galbraith come to inaugurate the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize and Lecture, to be given...
View ArticleA Minskian analysis of US economy and financial markets
Nouriel Roubini invokes the great, but relatively unknown, Post-Keynesian economist, Hyman Minsky, in his latest dispatch about the state of US financial markets and economy. Minsky made the point that...
View ArticleLevitt’s Been Thunderstruck: Is Economics on the Highway to Hell?
A couple of months ago, Robert Oxoby of the University of Calgary posted a joke paper comparing AC/DC’s original lead signer, Bon Scott, with his successor, Brian Johnson. The paper presented the...
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PEF in The Globe and Mail
Several of us regularly provide media commentary through our jobs at the CCPA, CAW and CLC. Once in a while, reporters quote statements posted on this blog in that capacity. However, the Progressive...
View ArticleAdam Smith did not wear an Adam Smith tie
A theme I’ve posted on many times before but perhaps worth repeating once again, thanks to this post: How Laissez Faire was Adam Smith?Greg Whiteside writes in The Condo Metropolis Blog (7 December)...
View ArticlePalley on the Neoclassical Monopoly in Economics
Thomas Palley has posted a good discussion of the relationship between economic theory and policy, which includes a useful taxonomy of contemporary economists.
View ArticleStock Markets vs. The Real Economy
In Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Brian Milner summarized Vitaliy Katsenelson’s historical analysis of American stock markets. He distinguishes “bull markets” from “range-bound markets”: . . . growth...
View ArticleThe Affluent Society
Since Galbraith has appeared in two recent posts, a timely salvo came to me from Christopher Nowlin: I happen to think that Galbraith’s 1958 classic, The Affluent Society, speaks more loudly to today’s...
View ArticleLife After the Economic Crisis
Much has been written on this blog about immediate responses to the crisis. We have analyzed proposed measures in depth and advocated for bold novel solutions. But it seems to me that we haven’t spent...
View ArticleThe Battle for History: Robson on the Great Depression
William Robson, President of the C. D. Howe Institute, mounted a rear-guard defence of the conventional wisdom against Keynesian fiscal policy in yesterday’s Globe and Mail. He argues that we should...
View ArticleConfessions of a Newspaper Economist
Declan picks up on Stephen’s suggestion that economists were too diffident to raise concerns about the real estate bubble: How to square the group of economists in the front pages of the paper offering...
View ArticleCutting to Zero
The Bank of Canada should announce a target interest rate of 0% on Tuesday. This move would match the action taken by the US Federal Reserve a month ago. Recent experience suggests that the chartered...
View ArticleFresh water and salt water macroeconomics
Angry Bear has an excellent synopsis of the state of macroeconomics, and its relationship to the central monetary and fiscal policy debates of today. The post plays on a division of US economists into...
View ArticleThe Future of Capitalism
Some weekend reading: Amartya Sen, that other voice of sanity among recent Nobel laureates in economics, draws lines between the current economic crisis and the history of economic thought (with an...
View ArticleDavidson: Efficient Market Theory Vs. Keynes’s Liquidity Theory
Paul Davidson gave a great talk to the Progressive Economics Forum at the recent Canadian Economics Association meetings. Below is a teaser; the full talk is here. ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS OF THE...
View ArticleNeoclassical economics fighting back from “the Ropes”?
In 2003 the the heterodox economics faculty at Notre Dame University were removed from the Economics Department. Now I gather their new home, The Department of Economics and Policy Studies, will be...
View ArticlePaul A. Samuelson 1915-2009
Paul Samuelson was the greatest economic theorist of the 20th century. If we see Leon Walras, with his general equilibrium theory, as the Newton of economics – which I think Samuelson did – then...
View ArticleDo Economists Have a Country?
We do, but many of us, particularly of the orthodox persuasion, do our best to hide it in our work. Where we live is “content” but the models we use, we insist, are universal. But that begs the...
View ArticleHow Markets Fail
If you want to be reminded of the myriad of ways in which markets fail, you will welcome the new and timely book by John Cassidy titled simply How Markets Fail. Cassidy is not only an economist but a...
View ArticleGreat Minds Think Alike
Serge Coulombe, an economics professor at the University of Ottawa, has a great op-ed in today’s Financial Post: The Fraser report looks at the change in the contribution of government expenditures to...
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