I was recently asked to recommend blogs and other resources on the Chinese economy. In case other people would find it useful, I list the main ones here. Bear in mind that, not reading Chinese, I’m confined to English sources … Continued
It must be puzzling and exasperating to the general public that economists still seem so clueless about perhaps the most important and central topic in economic policy, the money system. Yet a lot of economic news is about the problem … Continued
While the US and UK economies are both recovering quite decisively from their post-crisis recessions, the Eurozone is not. And unemployment is at appalling levels in much of “peripheral” Europe, particularly for young people. Current macroeconomic policy consists of low … Continued
Perhaps a little lost in the Christmas shopping rush was an interesting article in the 2013 Q4 Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin about what might happen when China finally abolishes all controls on its international capital flows, consistent with its … Continued
In Britain we seem to have a love affair with the property market. Home ownership is 69%, not especially high, but average house prices are a constant topic of discussion, mainly because property in the prosperous south east of the … Continued
Externalities and missing markets Microeconomics, which is the economics of individual agents, companies and markets, argues that if certain conditions for well functioning markets are in place then there is little need or justification for government intervention. These conditions sometimes … Continued
The concept of natural capital applies to natural resources and the natural environment the ideas of economics and accounting used in the conventional analysis of capital assets. It provides a rich framework with which to think about how to value … Continued
In a recent IMF working paper I came across the term “North Atlantic financial crisis”. I hadn’t heard this before and it was the first clue of several that the report was written by Indian economists with a well justified … Continued
A long time ago I worked for two years in the Central Bank of Lesotho. The small mountainous Kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa is an unusual country in many ways: it is the only country with all of its … Continued
Long term interest rates, as captured by the yield on long term US Treasury Bonds, have recently swung upwards after falling for three decades. It’s still too soon to say that the long bull market in bonds has ended, because … Continued
Investing in commodities (oil, gas, metals etc.) has gone from being a niche activity to a mainstream portfolio choice in the last fifteen years. This was driven by the long period of fast growth of commodity prices, which made a … Continued
Remember all the commentary on the impending disaster of US federal government deficits? Which would force the cutting or closure of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and anything that helps low income or economically unlucky people? Well the US still has … Continued
I’ve written before about the threat to the major gas exporters, such as Russia, of the sudden increase in prospective world gas supply from unconventional (shale) gas, first in the US but soon in other countries. My argument is from … Continued
A lot of hedge fund managers seem to believe that the Fed and other central banks that have been using unconventional monetary policy, specifically “quantitative easing” (see note 1), are dooming us to much higher inflation in future. Some believe … Continued
I had the impression that wage inflation in China, especially in the manufacturing heartland of the south, had pushed up wages relative to other low cost economies. But I hadn’t realised how big the gap had become. A new blog … Continued