Economist Channel

Tim Kroencke at the University of Basel wrote a nice follow up on non-voting shares (previous posts here and here) , which I share with permission. Some of the controversy was whether companies would issue shares and whether investors would by them. It turns out, yes, and he sends...

Ed Glaeser has a thoughtful essay at City Journal, "The War on Work -- and How to End It.''It is interesting that our political class says it wants more Americans to work. Yet there are few activities as hit by disincentives and regulatory barriers than the simple act of paying another person to do something for you.With wide range and long historical...

Todd Henderson and Dorothy Shapiro wrote me a thoughtful response to my post on non-voting shares. Todd and Dorothy:Response to CochraneWe are grateful for Cochrane’s thoughtful response to our op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Space limitations prevent us from giving the necessary...

Todd Henderson and Dorothy Shapiro Lund have an interesting OpEd in the Wall Street Journal, "Index funds are great for investors, risky for corporate governance." In brief, index funds don't participate heavily in monitoring companies, finding information about companies, or corporate control contests.This point echoes larger complaints that with...

Anthony Diercks has a very useful review of the the academic literature on the question, what is the optimal inflation rate? He includes 150 papers, ordered from low to high inflation.Broadly speaking, we start with the Friedman result that the optimal nominal interest rate...

Ricardo Reis has an excellent essay on the state of macroeconomics. "Is something really wrong with macroeconomics?"In substantive debates about actual economic policies, it is frustrating to have good economic thinking on macro topics being dismissed with a four-letter insult: it is a DSGE. It is worrying to see the practice of rigorously stating...

As part of the development of our new group in Dublin, we will be updating the blog over the next few months and I hope to post a lot more. We will launch our new research cluster on September 8th with Professor Peter John as keynote (Details here). Currently, we are in the process of recruiting postdocs and PhD students, and we are starting a new...

Charlie Plosser makes the case that the Federal Reserve should hold only Treasuries in its asset portfolio, at Hoover's "Defining Ideas"Background: The Fed is essentially a giant money-market fund. Its liabilities are cash and bank reserves. Its assets are .. well, they used to be entirely short term Treasury securities, but now include mortgage-backed...

Research Assistant Needed for Behavioural Science ResearchApplications are invited for an hourly paid role as a Research Assistant located within the UCD Geary Institute. The successful candidate will be offered a part-time role on an hourly basis for 6-8 weeks at 35 hours a week to commence with immediate effect.The researcher will be based at the...

One of the core problems of financial reform is how to "resolve," AKA bankrupt, a big bank -- how can equity holders be wiped out, and debt holders carve up the remaining assets. Big banks are supposed to craft “living wills,” really living vivisection guides, but that effort is...

My little foray here into the blogosphere sometimes leaves me in slack-jawed amazement at the leaps of illogic in the commentariat.Such was the case last week, when Noah Smith writing at Bloomberg.com, took on a recent post of mine about food stamps. My post was about food stamps, and about the language that people use...

A revised draft of "Michelson-Morley, Fisher, and Occam" is now on my webpage (Yes, new title.)This paper argues that the long quiet zero bound is an important experiment. The zero bound or an interest rate peg can be stable, and determinate. Longstanding contrary doctrines...