Tyler Cowen’s new eBooklet, The Great Stagnation, is a sober, moderate take on our current economic troubles. Except that it’s not. Straight out of Persecution and the Art of Writing, it is a book designed to appeal to the “sane, honest middle” of American politics, but for the careful, enlightened reader, there is a hidden [...]
Tags: anarchism, Cowen, humor, revolution, straussian, The Great Stagnation, Thiel
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In a post about the externalities of time travel, Tyler Cowen writes, I believe no one understands the underlying science much at all. But there is some chance that the old science fiction movies are correct and that by time-traveling you alter the course of history, thereby obliterating the universe we used to have. I’ll count that as a [...]
Tags: Caplan, Cowen, Crichton, intertemporal paradox, time travel, time's arrow
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Tyler Cowen’s essay on the inequality generated by the political economy of finance has received deserved attention. I think Tyler is exactly right that financiers are going short on volatility, that this is hard to detect and therefore regulate, that politicians have incentives to bail out the banks following increases in volatility, and that it [...]
Tags: banking, Cowen, dynamic inconsistency, finance, globalization, inequality, moral hazard, naked puts hypothesis, Too Big to Fail
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Macro is hard; here is an attempt to make it easier. I will try to explain as much of macroeconomics as possible with a single graph. Dynamic AS/AD is pretty good, but I think we can do some interesting things by turning to portfolio theory. Macro is and always has been about investment. Keynes noted [...]
Tags: animal spirits, Cowen, fiscal stimulus, irrational exuberance, liquidity trap, macro, monetary stimulus, regime uncertainty, Risk and Business Cycles
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Everyone is interested in monetary policy and the Fed all of a sudden, so, what the hell, I’ll chime in too. Here is my ranking of monetary regimes: Depoliticization and denationalization of money. Free banking. The market selects a currency and banking is “regulated” in court under the common law of contract. The Fed is [...]
Tags: Cowen, Euro, Federal Reserve, Free Competition in Currency Act, monetary policy, optimal currency area, Paul, quantitative easing, Sumner, Tabarrok, Watts
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Tyler Cowen offers his non-Keynesian take on the recession, applying the theory he lays out in Risk and Business Cycles (recommended for all economics graduate students, but master Snowdon and Vane first). I agree with his arguments, but I want to add what I think is a missing ingredient in his theory: fat tails. David [...]
Tags: Cauchy distribution, Cowen, fat tails, Levy, macro, Modern Macroeconomics, Risk and Business Cycles, Snowdon, Vane
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Back in March, Tyler Cowen encouraged bloggers to list the books that most influenced them. I didn’t think I could come up with a list that was a) plausible and b) would make me look cool, so I did not participate. But I enjoyed reading other people’s lists, and I noted, along with Steve Landsburg, [...]
Tags: abortion, Cowen, Landsburg, Parfit, philosophy, Reasons and Persons, Repugnant Conclusion, utilitarianism, utility monster
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One of the great joys (or frustrations, depending on your personality) of being a libertarian is the opportunity to participate in the infighting. Tyler Cowen’s recent post, in which he muses about a VAT in an uncommitted fashion, has generated some of it, e.g. from Fred Sautet and Dan Mitchell. Tyler responds here. My favorite [...]
Tags: Cowen, Mitchell, negative liberty, positive liberty, Rizzo, Sautet, sovereign debt crisis, VAT
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In a post on moral hazard in the banking system, Megan McArdle writes, Nor do I find the central story of how the FDIC induced this moral hazard very compelling. Supposedly, ordinary depositors don’t bother to check the soundness of their banks because they don’t actually have skin in the game. Anyone making this argument [...]
Tags: banking, Cowen, deposit insurance, FDIC, Kroszner, McArdle, moral hazard, mutual fund banking, Sumner
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