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Category Archives: Economic Theory
Palley’s Critique of MMT: Post Keynesian or neo-Keynesian?
So, Tom Palley has a new criticism out of MMT. Frankly, I’m not hugely concerned with the critique itself. The criticisms are old and I don’t think that Palley will convince anyone of the ills of MMT that are not … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory
9 Comments
Joan Robinson’s Critique of Marginal Utility Theory
In her excellent book Economic Philosophy (available as a PDF here) Joan Robinson undertakes an extensive discussion of marginal utility theory. Here I will be more so interested in her technical criticisms. But before going into these it should be noted … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy, Psychology
23 Comments
Ergodicity Versus History: A Critical Commentary on the Work of Ole Peters
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
What is the Monetarist Position on Fiscal Deficits and is it Similar to Krugman’s?
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
Abstraction, Language and Modelling in Economics
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
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
A Tangential But Rather Interesting Interview With…
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
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Behavioral Economics as Victorian Moralising
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
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
Libertarian Paternalism is Clearly an Oxymoron
Blackwhite…this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Policy, Economic Theory
7 Comments
Fixing the Economists 