Back in 2002, Bennett McCallum did a really nice survey piece on contemporary monetary economics.  The best parts are his insights into some of the controversial issues, but I’d like to focus on something else (in the equations I changed the style a bit—I can’t do subscripts and deltas).  Here’s McCallum, with adjustments: A striking […]

I’ve begun reading a very interesting book by the brilliant Steven Landsburg, entitled The Big Questions.  I find that we share a taste for contrarian opinions.  Of course Steven is much more skilled at defending his views.  Here’s something that caught my eye: I sometimes hear economists defend the unrealism of their models thusly: “Economics […]

Kevin Erdmann has an interesting post discussing the evolution of interest rate futures over time. In recent months the date of the first anticipated rise in rates has moved from late-2015 to mid-2015. But, I expected this to correspond to forward rates for June 2016 Eurodollars of just over 2% and for June 2017 of […]

The transcripts from 2008 are quite long.  I’ve only had time to read the 108 page transcript for September 2008, but already notice some interesting patterns.  Here’s a fairly typical comment (from Kohn): Not all news affecting spending has been negative. Capital goods orders have held up. The decline in interest rates and commodity prices that […]

Marcus Nunes already did a post on this, but now that the GDP numbers for 2013 are in it’s official, Greg Mankiw won by a landslide.  Here’s Mankiw back in 2009: Paul Krugman suggests that my skepticism about the administration’s growth forecast over the next few years is somehow “evil.” Well, Paul, if you are so confident in […]