I’ll be talking about fiscal policy during and after the pandemic at a Resolution Foundation/MMF event in a week’s time: https://www.mmf.ac.uk/resolution-foundation/ I have written quite a few posts on the relationship between policy and expertise, and between expertise and the media. The better ones are in my book, but they were all written before the COVID pandemic. How does the relationship between experts on the one hand and politicians and the media on the other that we saw with economists over austerity and Brexit play out with medics and the pandemic? All three cases are different from each other. Although the evidence set out in my book suggests that the majority of academic economists opposed austerity (a majority that got… [Read More...]

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for November 9 – 13 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. With Joe Biden assuming the Presidency on January 20, and an announcement of a successful vaccine by Pfizer that should be available by next spring or summer, the short and long leading indicators […] [Read More...]

You would think, after so many countries were taken by surprise by a pandemic caused by a new virus in the Spring of this year, these countries would resolve to never let it happen again. They would be mad, knowing what they now know, to let cases explode in a similar manner to they did earlier this year. In what we call the West we like to think we have reasonably rational governments that listen to expert advice on matters of life and death. Well at least some of us thought that. I am prepared to make an exception of the UK and US. The UK is run by fantasists who thought we would hold all the cards in any negotiations with the EU and there would… [Read More...]

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for November 2 – 6 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. With the almost certain election of Joe Biden to the Presidency, we can expect a much more organized and effective Federal response to the pandemic beginning on January 20. If the pandemic is […] [Read More...]

One of the myths perpetuated by mediamacro is that management of the public finances is all about controlling our debt by keeping deficits down. As with so much of mediamacro, this is something no academic macroeconomist would say. Econ 101 (first year undergraduate economics) tells you that the deficit should rise and fall with the economic cycle. In particular in major recessions deficits rise rather a lot, and that is exactly what they should do. Econ101 also tells you that in a recession caused by collapsing demand, it makes sense to increase the size of an already large deficit through fiscal stimulus. It becomes absolutely necessary to do so when interest rates can no longer stimulate the economy because they are stuck at their lower bound. Fiscal stimulus… [Read More...]

The distinction between the short run and long run traditional Phillips curve (not the New Keynesian variety) is so ingrained in economists that it seems obvious to us. We sometimes forget that it took many years for policymakers to understand it. I think something similar is happening with the economics/health trade-off in this pandemic. There is undoubtedly a short term trade-off between imposing greater restrictions (in extremis, lockdowns) to improve health outcomes (a good) and the negative effect that has on the economy (a bad). In much the same way as there is generally a short term trade off between expanding the economy to reduce unemployment (a good) and getting higher inflation (a bad). But in both cases that is not the end of … [Read More...]

If anyone still doubts that Brexit was our Trump moment, look at some of the same characters (Tory MPs, newspapers, even voters) who supported Brexit getting behind what has become an anti-lockdown crusade. I use the word crusade deliberately. Rather than religion it is ideology that drives most anti-lockdown proponents. That ideology is libertarian, although to borrow a phrase from Chris Dillowon mask phobia, this libertarianism is just solipsistic narcissism. What the crusade isn’t, for most of the anti-lockdown brigade, is evidence led. That is not to say that some scientists may genuinely believe that lockdowns are never worthwhile. Science shouldn’t be closed to heretical ideas, and there will always be scientists who put forward such ideas. Occasionally the heretical turns out to be… [Read More...]

This post follows on from my posttwo weeks ago, where I argued that there was a degree of inevitability that led us to governments led by Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. To summarise that argument, it is that right wing neoliberal governments in both countries have pursued policies that benefit the few rather than the many, and so to win elections they have pushed socially conservative ideas. But that push has been limited by a knowledge that some socially conservative policies can damage business interests: so in the US immigration control was not on the agenda and in the UK targets were missed. However neoliberalism also encouraged and legitimised wealthy individuals to meddle in politics, and some chose to push for even greater redistribution and less regulations. … [Read More...]