As we saw recently, Ken Rogoff is interested in engaging on the “innovation v. stagnation” hypotheses for the continuing global economic malaise. Rogoff comes down on the financial crisis as the root of the issue (see here), but the jury is still out. Here is an Oxford Union Debate where Rogoff discusses these matters with …
As part of our continuing discussion of Paul Krugman and Ken Rogoff, we give you CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviewing Paul Krugman and Ken Rogoff. This is an interesting back-and-forth that leaves me with the feeling that there is some uncertainty from the macro side of the profession.
Yesterday, Congress passed legislation designed to avoid the strictures Congress enacted in the summer of 2011 to enable the United States government to borrow in excess of the existent debt ceiling. These provisions would have allowed the income tax cuts enacted in the George W. Bush era to expire as well as imposed spending limits …
Harvard’s Ken Rogoff — of Reinhart and Rogoff fame — has a delicious Project Syndicate piece on the dueling theories of current global economic woes — “Innovation Crisis or Financial Crisis?” As the title implies, once potential cause is that new innovation is simply not bringing the value added to world economic growth — advances …
Much political debate – more appropriate described as hot or even toxic air – attempts to address how poorly the economy has recovered from what Reinhardt and Rogoff call The Great Contraction. As noted in Professor Gerard’s recent post, R and R argue– as they have done many times before – that recoveries from balance …
Robert Higgs has a very readable post about the demand for holding cash these days. To wit, the Fed has been pumping massive amounts of liquidity into the system over the past four years, and what has the public been doing with it? Nothing. Exhibit A, this extraordinary graph from our pal, FRED, shows the …
In Monday’s Financial Times, economics editor Martin Wolf explains why the “end” will not be soon. He notes that it has been almost five years since the beginning of our contemporary financial turmoil, if one marks such by the first major sign of sub-prime mortgage problems in the U.S. He characterizes the past five years …
Continuing our string of posts about the EU, here is a remarkable but perhaps unsurprising fact: Since gaining its independence in 1829, Greece has defaulted on or rescheduled its external debt five times (1826, 1843, 1860, 1893, and 1932). Greece has been in default roughly half the time period since 1829. That is culled from …
Just in time for your Spring break, Roger Lowenstein (of When Genius Failed fame) gives us an exhaustive profile of Fed chair Ben Bernanke in this month’s Atlantic Monthly. I am in the middle of big stacks of papers here, so I haven’t had time to plow through the 8,000+ word article, but I like …
During the winter term, we will focus on visions of the world economy and the role of economics. The Backhouse and Bateman book puts these topics in sharp relief. This discussion continues questions raised by Schumpeter, Hayek, Keynes and many others. In a recent Project Syndicate article, Kenneth Rogoff, co-author of This Time is Different, …
David Warsh has an Economic Principals piece on the direction of the economics profession for the next decade. Warsh points to a compilation of 55 papers, Ten Years & Beyond: Economists Answer NSF’s Call for Long-Term Research Agendas, posted at the Social Science Research Network. Charles Schultze from Brookings provides some perspective in the …
On my daily rounds of the econosphere, including Professor Finkler’s post here, I note that Ken Rogoff’s Project Syndicate post is getting a lot of traction. A perusal of the NYT website shows Rogoff here on the USA credit downgrade: Europe’s plan was to have growth fix the problem. America’s plan was to have growth …
Professor Gerard’s posting on the debate about the role of fiscal policy starts with the Larry Summer’s point that the debt deal “solves the wrong problem.” As pointed out previously (see here), I agree with that conclusion. So, what is the “right problem?” Kenneth Rogoff’s answer requires that we understand that this recession is not …
For today’s recommended reading, The New York Times profiles Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, authors of This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. You may recall this title from our summer reading recommendations that we posted a few weeks ago. You can find a paper approximation of the book here and a summary …
With the previous post, Professor Galambos has kicked off this year’s LU Economics Summer Reading Fun, or something like that. Any student (or colleague, or alum) interested in reviewing a book related to economics or LU economics is welcome to submit a book review that we will post right here on the blog. Here are …
Use back of page to answer if necessary. The question for today is what do the recent spill and the financial crash have in common? Kenneth Rogoff has an opinion piece about the difficulty of regulation amid rapid technological advance. The parallels between the oil spill and the recent financial crisis are all too painful: …
This comment follows directly on Professor Gerard’s observations about the difficulties political structures have in reducing governmental debt. Ken Rogoff, fresh off his appropriately well received recent book with Carmen Reinhardt entitled This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, opines in Wednesday’s Financial Times that “Bubbles lurk in government debt.” (Follow the link …
Last year, economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt published what will become (and may be already if that were possible) a classic. The book is entitled, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. It traces the history (both recent and ancient) of a plethora of failed attempts by countries to borrow their way …
