Category Archives: Uncategorized

A while ago I posted this, explaining how I thought that OMTs were an almighty – if so far successful – bluff.  The reasoning being that the promise is to buy whatever quantity it takes to eliminate a gap between … Continue reading →

Simon Wren-Lewis responded to my post on microfoundations in macro, wondering what was wrong with mainly micro-founded macro [is this what his blog name really refers to?] if small ad-hoc interventions helped the model fit the data better. The presumption in … Continue reading →

This post is prompted by a twitter exchange some time ago between Adam Posen, Noah Smith and myself over the ‘merit’ of microfoundations.  [Here’s a storify recap].  And that in turn by the fall-out from the events at the Federal … Continue reading →

Matt O Brien tweeted round an interesting piece by David Beckworth, which estimated a VAR to try to resolve a debate between Steve Williamson on the one hand, and Brad deLong, Paul Krugman, Noah Smith and others about whether QE … Continue reading →

This question was posed in conversation with the Norges Bank’s Oistein Roisland and Gisle Natvik last night. Why indeed?  The task of figuring out optimal fiscal policy is no less important than optimal monetary policy.  And arguably a lot more … Continue reading →

The Economist carried a nice piece on Bitcoin that many may already have read.  They conclude that the explosion in the price of Bitcoins (recently breaking the $1000 barrier) looks bubbly.  I agree. Most people with things to sell don’t … Continue reading →

In a nice post on the New York Fed’s blog, Liberty Street Economics, Marc Giannoni and Hannah Herman write on price level targeting.  In a nutshell, they observe that, whatever the FRB said it was doing ex ante, ex post … Continue reading →

A post-script to my previous post on this, thanks to another friend who can’t be named and tweeting by Monique Ebell and Angus Armstrong at NIESR. 1.  First-off, on the insidious association with the notion of Sterling as an ‘asset’ … Continue reading →

This morning’s interview on UK’s Radio 4 ‘Today’ program with Deputy First Minister for Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, of the Scottish National Party, had me shouting at the receiver.  I don’t know whether she and the SNP leadership understand the monetary … Continue reading →

Well, not quite, but it was worth it for the headline.  In this post, John Taylor cites recent work by Erceg and Levin at the Board of Governors, pointing out that headine unemployment rates are a bad indicator of true … Continue reading →