Those of us who write about economics can only nod knowingly at a comment from John Maynard Keynes in 1934, in a a fragment of writing that was probably part of a draft of the preface for the General Theory. He wrote:
Renee Haltom interviews Jesse Shapiro on the topic of media bias and political bias in Econ Focus, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (2nd Quarter 2017, pp. 24-29). The entire interview is worth reading, but here are a few points that caught my eye. The headings are my words, and the explanations are Shapiro.
Douglas Clement has a characteristically excellent "Interview with Lawrence Katz" in The Region, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, published September 25, 2017. The subheading reads: "Harvard economist on the gender pay gap, fissuring workplaces and the importance of moving to a good neighborhood early in a child’s life." The interview offers lots to chew on. Here, I'll just pass along some of Katz's thoughts on a couple of points.
Joan Robinson, in her book Economic Philosophy (1962, pp. 26-28), offers a meditation on how Adam Smith perceived poets and mathematicians-- and then on how economist fall in-between. Her argument is that mathematicians have an agreed-upon method for evaluating errors. Poets do not. And economists fall in between--which introduces a personal element into all economic controversies. In the passage that follows, I'm especially fond of two of her comments:
The phrase "child labor" conjures up such ugly images for me that it's hard to discuss it dispassionately. But the International Labour Organization has a recent report, "Global Estimates of Child Labour: Results and Trends 2012-2016" that offers some useful facts and distinctions.
Demographic shifts are about more than economics. Think about an array of social institutions: schools, parks, libraries, building and housing codes, public transportation, health care, the size of the volunteer sector. All of these, and many others, take on differing importance and shape when an economy has a relatively high number of children, or working-age people, or retirees. Deloitte has published the third edition of Voice of Asia (September 2017), with a focus on "Demographics fuelling Asia’s shifting balance of power." Here are some thoughts from the report.
The main reason why the ECB quantitative easing program has failed is that it started from a wrong diagnosis of the eurozone’s problem. That the European problem was a demand and liquidity issue, not due to years of excess.