Blogs&Reviews

  • What does it mean to have rational expectations?

    Roger Farmer, 21 June 2018

    In this follow up to his post on ergodicity, Roger Farmer discusses chaos theory, 'spin glasses', and what it means to have rational expectations.

  • How the broadcast media created mediamacro

    Simon Wren-Lewis, 20 June 2018

    The Brexit debate was not the first time that the broadcast media in the UK reinforced rather than countered the claims of the right-wing press – the same happened with austerity. In this post, Simon Wren-Lewis asks why the BBC and other broadcasters largely ignored standard textbook macroeconomics, and instead promoted ‘mediamacro’.

  • Trump, China, and tariffs: From soybeans to semiconductors

    Chad Bown, Euijin Jung, Zhiyao (Lucy) Lu, 19 June 2018

    On 15 June, the Trump administration produced the list of specific Chinese products on which it soon plans to impose tariffs. In this post, Chad Bown, Euijin Jung and Zhiyao Lu examine this list and China's proposed retaliation, and argue that even companies that are not suffering yet from China’s mistreatment will soon be hurting because of tariff-induced higher costs.

  • Child poverty forecasts: My bet with Christopher Snowdon

    Jonathan Portes, 19 June 2018

    A 2018 Equality and Human Rights Commission report predicts a dramatic rise in child poverty. Jonathan Portes, a co-authorof the report, challenges Christopher Snowdon, a scepticof such gloomy predictions, to a bet to see who is right.

Other Recent Blogs&Reviews:

  • Protectionism: Historical perspectives
    Nikolaus Wolf, 11 June 2018

    With protectionism back on the political agenda, the European Review of Economic History has published a selection of papers demonstrating how trade and welfare policies have always been related. As Nikolaus Wolf discusses in this post, the papers also show that while the wider economic benefits from protectionism are uncertain at best, 100 years ago domestic policy considerations were already often trumping international cooperation.

  • Misunderestimating migration
    Jonathan Portes, 09 June 2018

    There are discrepancies between population and migrations statistics for the UK, for both EU and non-EU nationals. As Jonathan Portes outlines in this post, it seems reasonably clear that in the recent past EU migration has been significantly higher, and non-EU migration significantly lower, than previously thought, and that, perhaps as a consequence of the government’s determination to reduce non-EU migration, the UK may have become even more dependent on EU migration.  

  • German social democrats have alienated their base and fractured Europe
    Ashoka Mody, 08 June 2018

    Social democracy bears a dual promise: domestic social justice and European unity. Reviewing Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) and its post-WWII struggles, Ashoka Mody illustrates the difficulty in translating social democratic values into political practice. Unable to generate a domestic consensus and powerless to counter the priorities dictated by the euro, social democracy will continue to fail at home while divisions among EU nations deepen.

  • Why have employment rates in the US lagged other countries?
    Jason Furman, Wilson Powell, 08 June 2018

    The fraction of Americans employed fell between 2007 and 2017, during which time employment rates rose in many other advanced economies despite these countries also facing a similar headwind of an ageing population. In this post, Jason Furman and Wilson Powell show how the biggest driver of this was employment among women, which stagnated in the US while increasing in most of the other advanced economies.

  • Idée fixe: Theresa May's disastrous Brexit strategy
    Simon Wren-Lewis, 07 June 2018

    Brexiters have come up with various reasons for not staying in the Customs Union. In this post, Simon Wren-Lewis argues that none of these reasons stands up to scrutiny. He also argues that Prime Minister Theresa May should have realised right away that the Brexit people voted for – taking back control and being at least no worse off in economic terms at the same time – was an impossible project, and that this realisation should have governed how she approached Brexit from the start. 

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