… Sevi was wearing a tie on the BBC!
Posted by: David Comerford | June 12, 2012
While Spain was being rescued…
Posted in General discussion
Posted by: David Comerford | March 23, 2012
Agglomeration in action
Good news for Edinburgh and the renewables industry in Scotland with the announcement of a wind turbine manufacturing plant in Leith. This comes shortly after other relevant announcements: offshore servicing in Nigg in Easter Ross, green finance with the Green Investment Bank in Edinburgh; and follows on from news of other renewables manufacturing plants in Dundee and Methil, and renewables R&D facilities in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
As well as being fantastic news for jobs in Scotland, it is an example of economic theory in action – the theory in question being the new economic geography developed by Paul Krugman which predicts and explains clusters of related activity.
Posted in General discussion
Posted by: David Comerford | March 4, 2012
Microfoundations in macroeconomics
There’s been a few good posts on microfoundations in macro over the past couple of days:
Microfounded and other useful models
“Microfounded and other useful models”
Modern macroeconomic methodology
Why bother with microfoundations
Economic models and economic predictions
Microfoundations and the speed of model development
Why Macro is hard (Taylor/Krugman edition)
The microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics
Microfoundations, micro payoffs (wonkish)
Microfoundations and central banks
as well as:
New old Keynesians and the paper I linked to before Are macroeconomic methods politically biased
“More Microfoundations Madness!
1a) Simon Wren-Lewis has more thoughts on microfoundations and when they have proven useful in the past.
1b) Angus of Kids Prefer Cheese says that current models basically give you the choice between using crappy microfoundations (RBC) or incomplete microfoundations (New Keynesian models). Peter Dorman I pretty much agree with all of these posts.
1c) Peter Dorman points out that even if you have good microfoundations, aggregation poses a daunting problem for macro models. Richard Serlin makes similar points.
1d) Peter Dorman and Andrew Gelman are even more critical of existing micro models than I am.”
& concludes: Did the Krugman insurgency fail?
Posted in General discussion
Posted by: David Comerford | March 1, 2012
Climate Change Economics
My report of an good discussion last night on the subject of climate change economics. Perhaps especially of interest to those taking ENRE?
Posted in General discussion
Posted by: David Comerford | March 1, 2012
End February Links
Posted by: David Comerford | February 21, 2012
Are macroeconomic methods politically biased?
Posted by: Sean | February 13, 2012
UN Population Statistics
Here‘s (graphical) UN data and projections on the human population from 1950-2100, continent by continent, in less than 10 slides.
Posted in General discussion | Tags: visualisation
Posted by: Sean | February 12, 2012
The Development of Utility Theory
Posted in General discussion | Tags: Micro
Posted by: David Comerford | February 9, 2012
The Economics of Independence
I’m not directly answering Sean’s challenge in scotlands bid for independence explained that “Nationalists are invited to comment or counter-post” in that I am not dealing with the post that Sean linked to. I am however trying to justify my assertion in the comments that the economic impact will be small.
See http://dcomerf.blogspot.com/2012/02/economics-of-independence.html
Posted in General discussion
Posted by: Sean | February 7, 2012
Top Ten Traded Goods
The CIA World Factbook reports that Gross World Product was about $79 trillion in 2011, and that international trade comprised about $18 trillion (23%) of that. There’s obviously a lot packed into that $18 trillion, but the top ten internationally traded goods are:
- Electrical machinery (including computers) 14.8%
- Mineral fuels (including oil, coal and gas) 14.4%
- Nuclear reactors, boilers and parts 14.2%
- Cars, trucks and buses 8.9%
- Scientific and precision instruments 3.5%
- Plastics 3.4%
- Iron and steel 2.7%
- Organic chemicals 2.6%
- Pharmaceutical products 2.6%
- Precious stones 1.9%
Is anyone else puzzed by item #3? The implication is that $2.6 trillion of nuclear reactors are being traded, which is about 3.2% of world output–somewhat larger than the total GDP of the UK. Yet this report from the US Department of Commerce suggests that the current global civil nuclear industry is less than $500 billion. This seems to imply one of the following: (a) most nuclear trade is military (but who sells nuclear weapons?), (b) nuclear parts and reactors are frequently re-exported (but can they be re-exported 5 times on average?), or (c) the facts are wrong.
I am confused.
Posted in General discussion | Tags: Development, Macro, Trade
