Monthly Archives: January 2016

A quick response to this guest post by Gerard Macdonell on Noah Smith’s blog. There are two main thrusts to the post. One is that the stated claims for the efficacy of QE are false.  I’m not a fan of … Continue reading →

The economic calendar is packed with forecast releases, and each time a new one comes out, social media bursts forth with comments denigrating forecasts. Common themes are:  forecasting and economic modelling are different activities;  forecasting is trash-talk, modelling or analysing … Continue reading →

Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, and Larry Summers have been having a debate about just why they think the Fed might have been premature in raising interest rates.  The conversation surfaced a disagreement between Krugman and Summers over the legitimacy of … Continue reading →

Krugman, Blanchard and others have suggested raising the inflation target as a way to prevent – or at least reduce the severity of – future episodes where the monetary policy interest rate is trapped at zero. This is a position … Continue reading →