Author Archives: pilkingtonphil

About pilkingtonphil

Philip Pilkington is a macroeconomist and investment professional. Writing about all things macro and investment. Views my own.You can follow him on Twitter at @philippilk.

Proud to Be a Nihilist: Bill Mitchell on Econometrics and Numerical Prediction

Posted on February 12, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

Someone said to me a while back: “Phil, you are always railing against econometrics but some of the MMT guys and quite a few Post-Keynesians maintain that these techniques are useful and valid”. I recognise this fully well actually. It … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Ergodicity Versus History: A Critical Commentary on the Work of Ole Peters

Posted on February 11, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

Lars Syll linked to a fantastic interview with the mathematician Ole Peters the other day that dealt with the topic of ergodicity and how it relates to economic and financial markets. First, a comment on the source. The interview was … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Theory, Market Analysis, Statistics and Probability | 5 Comments

What is the Monetarist Position on Fiscal Deficits and is it Similar to Krugman’s?

Posted on February 7, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

In my previous post I showed that Krugman’s recent piece on Argentina completely glossed over the data in its assertions that the inflation in that country was due to fiscal deficits**. I also, somewhat offhandedly, referred to his argument as … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic History, Economic Policy, Economic Theory | 36 Comments

Paul Krugman Pushes Factually Inaccurate Arguments About Argentina to Support His Discredited Monetarist Ideas

Posted on February 4, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

Well, Paul Krugman is out again waving his true colours in the wind while his die hard followers try desperately to look the other way and pretend that he’s not making stuff up. Basically Krugman is saying, following that pundit … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Policy | 47 Comments

Abstraction, Language and Modelling in Economics

Posted on January 30, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

Alciphron is the title of the book by the philosopher George Berkeley that was most popular in his own time and is probably his least popular in ours. The reason for this is because the book deals with atheism and … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy | 5 Comments

Disturbing Distributions in Economic Statistics

Posted on January 28, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

Lars Syll has recently published an excellent post on the dilemma of probability theory when applied to the social sciences in general and economics in particular. Syll argues that in order to apply probability theory — which is deeply embedded … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Theory, Statistics and Probability | 10 Comments

New Blog Dealing With Devolution/Scottish Independence

Posted on January 27, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

A colleague and I are currently in the process of launching a new think tank called ‘Gradualis’. The think tank will deal with the political and economic aspects of devolution. Our first focus will be on Scotland as they will … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Policy, Politics | Leave a comment

A Tangential But Rather Interesting Interview With…

Posted on January 21, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

Amogh Sahu was kind enough to do an extended interview with me for his podcast. The aim was to try to tie in the work I have been doing on the philosophy of science with economic theory. I think that … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy | Leave a comment

Behavioral Economics as Victorian Moralising

Posted on January 20, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

The other day I wrote a post that was about some awful load of nonsense that was coming from behavioural economics under the self-contradictory name of ‘libertarian paternalism’. Since then I’ve been looking into behavioural economics in some detail and … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Theory, Psychology | 1 Comment

A Revolution in Economic Textbooks

Posted on January 17, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

For the past few months Bill Mitchell has been posting drafts of what should become his and Randy Wray’s Modern Monetary Theory textbook for economics students. From what I have seen so far this looks set to become the perfect … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Theory | 14 Comments