The Curious Engineer

mainly macro

2011–2013

353 posts

2014–2026 →

2013 158

December 2013

  1. Werning on Liquidity Trap Policy
  2. UK Flooding: another austerity Christmas present
  3. Some notes on the UK recovery
  4. The Conservatives and the ghost of Christmas past
  5. More on the illusion of superiority
  6. Osborne’s Plan B
  7. Microfoundations - the illusion of necessary superiority
  8. Inequality and the Left
  9. The UK recovery and the pessimists’ refrain
  10. New versus traditional Phillips curves and the Great Recession
  11. The UK’s macroeconomic battleground to come
  12. Two observations on the Autumn Statement
  13. Could aggregate fiscal decisions ever be delegated?
  14. Here we go again

November 2013

  1. UK banks and the productivity puzzle: it may not just be about limited lending
  2. Bertrand Russell’s chicken (and why it was not an economist)
  3. Attacks on mainstream economics and reforming economics teaching
  4. Stages of Economic Recovery in the UK
  5. Is zero the new normal?
  6. Why no public fury over austerity?
  7. Should fears of financial instability raise interest rates?
  8. How to be a New Keynesian and an Old Keynesian at the same time
  9. Eurozone Morality Plays
  10. The view from Germany
  11. Medium term exchange rates and current accounts
  12. Defending rational expectations
  13. The real problem with German macroeconomic policy
  14. Something we can all agree on?

October 2013

  1. Politicians are (not) all the same
  2. The ‘official’ cost of austerity
  3. Rational expectations, the media and politics
  4. In defence of forward guidance
  5. What is wrong with the USA?
  6. Is a currency crisis bad for you at the ZLB?
  7. The decline of evidence based policy
  8. How not to run fiscal policy: more lessons from the Eurozone
  9. Microfoundations and Macro Wars
  10. Nominal wage rigidity in macro: an example of methodological failure
  11. Why I am obsessed by austerity
  12. Bank deleveraging and productivity
  13. Ken Rogoff on UK austerity
  14. Japan’s consumption tax: a test of modern macro?

September 2013

  1. Tim Harford’s new book on macroeconomics
  2. Austerity, growth and being economical with the truth
  3. The king who disliked the letter G: a cautionary tale
  4. Will the UK Conservatives become like the Republican Party?
  5. What shall we tell our students (Financial Times Edition)?
  6. Sound bite economics
  7. Labour’s OBR Proposal
  8. The scandal of the austerity deception
  9. Austerity and Living Standards
  10. France and the Commission

August 2013

  1. The New Keynesian model in grad school macro teaching
  2. Macro workers and macro wars
  3. Banks, economists and politicians: just follow the money
  4. Missing the point at the IMF
  5. New Keynesian models and the labour market
  6. Left, Right and Centre: some recent observations
  7. Measuring the cost of austerity
  8. The wrong sort of recovery
  9. Why the Pigou Effect does not get you out of a liquidity trap
  10. The Centre Cannot Hold?
  11. Expectations driven liquidity traps
  12. Cameron, austerity and what other people did not say
  13. Bringing economics back into fiscal policymaking
  14. The MPC’s Forward Guidance
  15. Is it possible to raise the inflation target?
  16. Confusing levels and rates of growth
  17. Playing catch-up at the Bank of England
  18. ZLB Models?

July 2013

  1. Japan and the consumption tax
  2. Advertising, Paternalism, Information and Plain Packaging of Cigarettes
  3. Crossing the line at the ECB
  4. Getting unhinged by ‘unhinged’: macroeconomic trade-offs and taboos
  5. How much has austerity cost (so far)?
  6. Unemployment, the output gap and wage flexibility
  7. The Eurozone’s Founding Mistake
  8. What Recession?
  9. Fiscal backing
  10. Behaving like Luddites
  11. The two arguments why the Zero Lower Bound matters
  12. An argument for forward guidance in the UK
  13. Economic History and Krugman’s Crib Sheet
  14. How knowledge transmission should work
  15. Government debt, Inflation and Money
  16. The knowledge transmission mechanism
  17. Annoying Anti-Fiscal Stimulus Arguments Nos. 3 and 4

June 2013

  1. Money as Credit
  2. UK Growth has been even worse than we thought
  3. Government default, reserves and QE
  4. The intellectual bankruptcy of the austerians
  5. Fiscal legacies and competence
  6. Mervyn King
  7. More on the myth of Labour Profligacy
  8. Bold macroeconomic policy changes for a new government
  9. Multipliers in a monetary union and at the ZLB
  10. Why Bernanke was right to speak out on fiscal policy
  11. How a Greek drama became a global tragedy
  12. Must we live with a post-truth media?
  13. Does the Dutch central bank employ any macroeconomists?
  14. The last Labour Government: has the influence of economists ever been greater?
  15. Mystified on AS/AD
  16. NGDP targets and UK Monetary Policy: Criticism and Reaction
  17. My verdict on NGDP Targets

May 2013

  1. Data, Theory and Central Bank Models
  2. Debating Helicopter Money (while the lunatics continue to run the asylum)
  3. The Liquidity Trap and Macro Textbooks
  4. Sheedy on NGDP targeting and debt contracts
  5. Is UKIP the UK's Tea Party?
  6. More on Naive Fiscal Cynicism
  7. Blanchard on Fiscal Policy
  8. Microfounded Social Welfare Functions

April 2013

  1. Leading Macroeconomist Leaves Central Bank
  2. Why Inflation is not falling
  3. When NGDP targets are (not) optimal
  4. The UK economy in three charts
  5. Scotland's future exchange rate regime
  6. The Stupid Cruelty of the Creditor
  7. An Understandable Mistake
  8. Reduced form macro
  9. Framing: Taxpayers money and Fiscal Space at the IMF
  10. Why a Dual Mandate is Essential
  11. The ECB as a Lender of Last Resort to Governments
  12. On the economic achievements and failures of Margaret Thatcher
  13. Myths and Realities of the 1970s
  14. Nasty politics in hard times
  15. What does the ECB think it is doing?
  16. Dealing with Increasing UK Poverty

March 2013

  1. The View from Brussels
  2. Reactions to Textbook Mundell Fleming
  3. Why we should stop teaching Mundell Fleming
  4. Taking a bet on house prices (with our money)
  5. The Power of Austerity over Politicians
  6. The 2013 Budget and UK Monetary Policy
  7. The Unlikely Friends of Austerity
  8. Causing recessions
  9. The government and the OBR: why I was very pleased to be wrong
  10. Looking for a Robust Defence of Austerity
  11. Why politicians ignore economists on austerity
  12. Where Austerity Really Rules
  13. Bean on Nominal GDP targets

February 2013

  1. Is a monetary union without fiscal/political union doomed?
  2. The final verdict on George Osborne as Chancellor
  3. Ricardian equivalence and political uncertainty
  4. What is the attraction of helicopter money?
  5. Carney and the Treasury Select Committee: Episode One Preview
  6. Labour productivity in the recession: why are the UK and US so different?
  7. Safe Assets and Sovereign Wealth Funds: Norway, the UK and Oil

January 2013

  1. When formal monetary policy targets are useful
  2. Misinterpreting the history of macroeconomic thought
  3. When National Interest and Party Advantage Conflict
  4. Safe Assets and Government Debt
  5. The long run government debt target
  6. The inflation dragon is just around the corner
  7. Is there a case for inflation targets? The UK versus the US.
  8. Avoiding the B word
  9. Macroeconomic Theory and the Multiplier
  10. Did Ricardian Equivalence kill the Pigou effect?

2012 187

December 2012

  1. Advice for potential academic bloggers
  2. Is academic macroeconomics flourishing?
  3. The New Classical Revolution: Technical or Ideological?
  4. Mistaking models for reality
  5. Delegation and accountability
  6. Monetary Policy Innovations
  7. Some Thoughts on Fiscal Rules
  8. Delegating to the wrong people: the strange case of interviewing undergraduate candidates at Oxford
  9. Some thoughts on the Autumn Statement
  10. How to try and get more inflation quickly

November 2012

  1. Is it a sin for the central bank to help reduce debt?
  2. Teaching graduate macro
  3. Defining countercyclical fiscal policy: a proposal
  4. Inconvenient truths, probably
  5. Offsetting private sector financial balances with fiscal policy
  6. Lines between macroeconomics and politics
  7. Should the Eurozone’s fiscal rules be abolished?
  8. The danger of self-fulfilling output gap pessimism
  9. Greece: continuing the disastrous ‘squeeze and hope’ strategy
  10. Discounting Ethics in Macroeconomics
  11. From measures of inflation to the failure of European governance
  12. Multipliers, inflation and another response to Tyler Cowen on UK austerity
  13. Disengagement at the Bank of England?
  14. Being rude about austerity
  15. In partial defense of Cyclically Adjusted Deficits
  16. The impact of austerity in the UK and Eurozone

October 2012

  1. More on climate change and budget deficits
  2. The UK and Austerity: some facts
  3. A political economy argument for economic policy delegation
  4. A short answer to Tyler Cowen’s question
  5. Austerity, debt burdens and hypocrisy
  6. Different approaches to austerity
  7. Heterogeneity at the IMF
  8. Misusing cyclically adjusted budget deficits
  9. When policy ignores evidence: badgers and austerity
  10. The Burden of Government Debt
  11. What do people mean by helicopter money?
  12. Multipliers: using theory and evidence in macroeconomics.
  13. DSGE critics and future directions for macro
  14. Paternalism and Irrationality
  15. Was the financial crisis the fault of DSGE modelling?

September 2012

  1. Active and Passive at the ECB
  2. Macroeconomists: Scientists or Engineers?
  3. Denial, and Bernanke the Brave
  4. Why not finance fiscal stimulus by printing money?
  5. Democracy in the northern Eurozone: you can choose austerity, or austerity.
  6. Judgement Calls and Microfoundation Tricks
  7. Republican voters and the BBC
  8. Zero Lower Bound Denial
  9. What type of model should central banks use?

August 2012

  1. The pernicious politics of immigration
  2. Arguments for ending the microfoundations hegemony
  3. Costing Incomplete Fiscal Plans: Ryan and the CBO
  4. Multiplier theory: one is the magic number
  5. Hayek versus Keynes and the Eurozone
  6. Facts and Spin about Fiscal Policy under Gordon Brown
  7. The Lucas Critique and Internal Consistency
  8. Why do European Economists write Letters while US Economists Endorse Candidates?
  9. House prices, consumption and aggregation
  10. ECB conditionality exceeds their mandate
  11. Handling complexity within microfoundations macro
  12. Giving Economics a Bad Name
  13. One more time – good policy takes account of risks, and what happens if they materialise
  14. Watching the ECB play chess
  15. Currency Misalignments and Current Accounts

July 2012

  1. Why the National Health Service played a central part in the Olympic Ceremony
  2. Kill the Money Multiplier!
  3. What is New Keynesian Economics really about?
  4. The macroeconomic magic button
  5. Consumption and Complexity – limits to microfoundations?
  6. Can heterodox economists constructively engage the mainstream?
  7. Playing with Fire in the Eurozone
  8. The Zero Lower Bound and Price Flexibility
  9. Sector Financial Balances as a Diagnostic Check
  10. The IMF’s full report on the UK
  11. Tired Old Debates
  12. IMF Blasts EuroZone Policymakers and ECB
  13. Modelling what you can see
  14. The heterodox versus the superhuman representative agent
  15. Getting the timing so wrong
  16. Elevated gadgets?
  17. Private investment, public investment and the private finance of public investment
  18. Crisis, what crisis? Arrogance and self-satisfaction among macroeconomists
  19. Zurich
  20. Heterodox and mainstream macroeconomics: a great divide
  21. The balance of power in the Eurozone, and the independence of the ECB
  22. Fiscal councils: births, and the trials of youth
  23. Ideology and Falsification in Macroeconomics
  24. Prolonging unemployment to demonstrate inflation credibility

June 2012

  1. What microeconomists think about macroeconomics
  2. But which inflation?
  3. Teaching macroeconomics after the crisis
  4. Quantitative Easing and Fiscal dominance
  5. Mansion House Myths and Excuses
  6. Helicopter money, Inflation targets and Quantitative Easing
  7. What is it about Latvia?
  8. Automatic Stabilisers and Discretionary Fiscal Policy
  9. Why cannot other European countries show this courage?
  10. Unfunded pension schemes and intergenerational equity
  11. Is monetary policy taking Euro uncertainty seriously?
  12. The Euro: an alternative moral tale

May 2012

  1. Austerity, Nominal GDP targets and the Zero Lower Bound
  2. What if Ireland voted no to the Treaty
  3. Does Monetary Policy make Austerity Irrelevant?
  4. Government debt and the burden on future generations
  5. On not taking sides, and forecast uncertainty
  6. Why I can still believe the Euro will survive, just
  7. The IMF calls for a more expansionary UK policy
  8. The Costs of Debt Finance: Jonathan versus David
  9. Dangerous Voices and Macroeconomic Spin
  10. The Fruits of European Austerity
  11. Inflation targeting is not working
  12. The Zero Lower Bound and Output Gap Uncertainty
  13. Is it all Gordon Brown’s fault?
  14. Polarising Essays
  15. Budget Madness in the Netherlands
  16. What the ECB needs to do
  17. On Major Macroeconomic Policy Mistakes

April 2012

  1. Microfoundations and Evidence (2): Ideological bias
  2. The EuroZone as One Country
  3. Monetary policy and Financial Stability
  4. More on tax increases versus spending cuts in an austerity programme
  5. Some notes on macro modelling
  6. Microfoundations and Evidence (1): the street light problem
  7. The Financial Market as a Vengeful God
  8. On successful fiscal consolidations
  9. Framing fiscal stimulus arguments
  10. The Falklands War: a simple cost benefit analysis
  11. Happiness and Paternalism

March 2012

  1. Comparing the UK and US recoveries
  2. Is Eurozone Austerity Self Defeating, and is it all Germany's fault?
  3. Information, Money and Politics
  4. Microfoundations and Central Bank models
  5. The strange case of the disappearing productive capacity
  6. The UK Budget and the Political Dangers of Inequality
  7. The optimal speed of debt correction
  8. What should be in the 2012 Budget?
  9. Austerity and not wasting a crisis
  10. Time for Europe to enter the Econ blogosphere
  11. The inflation floodgates
  12. Microfoundations – is there an alternative?
  13. Rational Expectations and Phillips Curves
  14. Anti-Keynesian Germany
  15. What have microfoundations ever done for us?
  16. The Other Eurozone Crisis
  17. Microfoundations and the Speed of Model Development
  18. Fiscal policy heroes
  19. Microfounded and other Useful Models

February 2012

  1. Why introductory macroeconomics should ditch the LM curve
  2. Government debt in Europe: some good and bad news.
  3. Going beyond Quantitative Easing
  4. The Balanced Budget Expansion Debate Begins?
  5. 2010 and Monetary Policy in the UK
  6. Policy errors like 2010 austerity – what can academics do?
  7. On Hidden Motives
  8. Can Nothing Be Done?
  9. The trouble with teaching macroeconomics: minimum wages and immigration
  10. What have Keynesians learnt since Keynes?
  11. Central Bank Interest Rate Forecasts: It’s not about accuracy
  12. More on Schools of Thought
  13. Budget deficits: changes, levels and risks
  14. When growth returns: a prediction
  15. Euro Deja Vu?
  16. Chris Giles on UK Austerity

January 2012

  1. Annoying Anti-Stimulus Arguments: Numbers 1 and 2
  2. It is time the Bank of England started publishing interest rate forecasts
  3. The Anti-Keynesian school
  4. The Return of Schools of Thought Macro
  5. Optimism or Pessimism on the EuroZone Crisis?
  6. UK Growth reveals a major macroeconomic policy error
  7. Comments on Comments
  8. The influence of macroeconomic ideas
  9. Counterfactuals and UK Growth in 2011
  10. Consumption smoothing and the balanced budget multiplier
  11. UK Deja Vu?
  12. Savings Equals Investment?
  13. Downgrading France
  14. Ideology and Demand Denial
  15. Correcting Eurozone Imbalances
  16. Mistakes and Ideology in Macroeconomics
  17. Executive Pay: acknowledging market failure
  18. Conspiracy within conspiracy in Turkey?
  19. Uncivil debate? Harsh words over fiscal policy
  20. Uncertain times in Hungary
  21. Some good news for the New Year! Fed to publish interest rate forecasts.
  22. Keynesian Economics, Price Rigidity and Demand Denial
  23. 2011: The year the OBR came of age

2011 8

December 2011

  1. Is government debt a burden for future generations? or the paradox of the last generation.
  2. There, but for austerity, go us?
  3. How the Internet Can Reduce the Deadweight Loss of Christmas
  4. Countercyclical fiscal policy in the Eurozone
  5. Austerity is not even a sensible precautionary policy when we have Quantitative Easing
  6. Money and inflation
  7. Is there a Competitiveness Problem within the Eurozone?
  8. Starting a blog, and the role of the ECB in the Euro crisis

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