How Europe works
This time it's Italy
I used to believe that the Eurozone was undemocratic. Now I'm not so sure. The simple view is that national electorates have been neutered. When Greece votes to reject austerity, its gover...
A human life is more than a collection of cells
Legal reform is a moral obligation
This is not one of my typical blogs, and many of you will be surprised to receive it. It is also significantly based-on, and influenced by, discussions with my 18-year old da...
An intellectual virus, a bubble, or both?
The recent phase of market volatility precipitated by the February 2018 ‘flash crash’ has morphed into fears of a growth slowdown, phoney Trumpian trade wars, and real wars. But the initial crash itself may be ...
If you don’t like trade deficits – tax the rich?
Has the word ‘deficit’ done more damage than any other in economics? Deficits are bad, surpluses are good. In economics, nothing could be further from the truth. How can there be virtue, if every virtuous act r...
Values in economics
A philosophical aside
I feel obliged to declare my biases up front. I've spent almost as much time studying moral philosophy as economic theory. Somewhat ironically, I decided to study economics after I had re...
r* and the range of irrelevance
Despite the fact that interest rates determine all asset valuations, there is nothing close to a general theory of interest rate determination. The rule of thumb when I started working in financial markets was ...
Safe asset issuance & the discovery of oil
(with guest author, Tristan Hanson)
Last month, we made a proposal for a sovereign wealth fund (‘SWF’). It triggered a substantial debate. How would it operate in practice? Are we trying to fund investment o...
Rethinking Brexit, via Kilkenny & Oxford
Mark Blyth and I have been arguing that nationalism is a global virus, filling the vacuum created by the erosion of political identity under neo-liberalism. The Cold War era now appears, almost nostalgically, a...
MMT part III – conclusion, and a conversation with Ben Bernanke
My last two blogs have revisited the issue of whether or not base money is a liability of the state. The issue played a central role in a discussion over the future of monetary policy at the Brussels think-tank...