I suspect that much of the motivation for John Cochrane to write this latest blast comes from his ongoing personal feud with Paul Krugman, generally acclaimed as the champion of "Keynesianism". Of course, the Wall Street Journal eats it up, since to most WSJ readers, "Keynesian" is a code-word for "commie" (thanks, Friedrich Hayek). The result of these two forces is an article which has a few good

This is the old Noahpinion archive. Noahpinion continues at noahpinion.substack.com How should macroeconomists think about Japan's stagnation? By far the most popular and dominant view of the way macroeconomies work is the monetarist view popularized by Milton Friedman and formalized in DSGE models by Mike Woodford, Greg Mankiw, Guillermo Calvo, Jordi Gali, and other "New Keynesians". This view is

This is the old Noahpinion archive. Noahpinion continues at noahpinion.substack.com Diane Coyle has a blog post called "Classics for economists," and someone on Twitter requested that I do a companion piece called "Science fiction for economists", so here it is. Really, most science fiction is about economics. What makes most future visions interesting is not just the technical particulars of the

This is the old Noahpinion archive. Noahpinion continues at noahpinion.substack.com If you grew up in the 80s you probably remember Voltron. Although the show often had convoluted plotlines, it would somehow always end with Voltron (a super-powerful robot formed from five mechanical lions) facing off against a monster called a "Robeast". Voltron had plenty of weapons, but he would invariably strik

This is the old Noahpinion archive. Noahpinion continues at noahpinion.substack.com New Update: The pessimism in this post has been proven (somewhat) wrong. Bernanke just announced that the Fed will buy $40B of mortgage-backed securities every month until the economy improves. This is notable for two reasons. First, unconventional assets are being purchased rather than U.S. government bonds; this

This is the old Noahpinion archive. Noahpinion continues at noahpinion.substack.com In the increasingly contentious world of pop economics, you - whether an educated layperson, an economist-in-training, or even a professional economist unused to the rough-and-tumble of the mediasphere - may find yourself in an argument with an economist. And when this happens, you should be prepared, because many