Topic: Monetary Policy

Will Congress ever reform the Fed?

– May 13, 2010

“This week’s Senate floor votes on the powers of the Federal Reserve caught my attention. Despite Congress’s bipartisan lashing of the Fed for its performance before and after the financial crisis of 2008, the Fed this week defeated two challenges to i …

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“Warning: Inflation May Be Harmful to Your Growth”

– May 13, 2010

“While few doubt that very high inflation is bad for growth, there is less agreement about the effects of moderate inflation. Using panel regressions and allowing for a nonlinear specification, this paper finds a statistically and economically signific …

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“The Relationship Between Inflation and the Budget Deficit in Turkey”

– May 13, 2010

“For Turkey, Metin (1995) analyzed inflation using a general framework of sectoral relationships and found that fiscal expansion was a determining factor for inflation. The excess demand for money affected inflation positively, but only in the short ru …

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“Calculating the Candy Price Index”

– May 13, 2010

“In this classroom experiment, students develop a price index based on candy-purchasing decisions made by members of their class. They use their index to practice calculationg inflation rates and to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the consumer …

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“Economic Calculation and Monetary Stability”

– May 13, 2010

“My thesis will be that monetarists, while their criticism ofthe Fed’sthesis will be that monetarists, while their criticism ofthe Fed’s expansionist history has been most welcome and has been instrumental in the struggle against inflation, do not go f …

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Carmen Reinhart on Debt Crises

– May 12, 2010

University of Maryland economist Carmen Reinhart recently published a book with co-researcher Kennet Rogoff presenting several hundred years of data on financial crises. The title This Time Is Different alludes to the mentality that often develops duri …

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Hayek’s Contribution to Monetary Theory

– May 8, 2010

“Those who wish to preserve freedom should recognize, however, that inflation is probably the most important single factor in that vicious circle wherein one kind of government action makes more and more government control necessary. For this reason, a …

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Spending on Full

– May 7, 2010

On Wednesday, I posted a link to a Freedom Daily article by Jim Powell. It was a very interesting article. I highly recommend it for those who are not aware of the history of Argentina and its fall from prosperity. I also highly recommend it to those w …

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“The euro: love it or leave it?”

– May 6, 2010

“The world economy is continually changing, but one constant is dissatisfaction with the euro. Toward the beginning of the decade, the main complaint was that the euro was too weak for booming economies like Ireland. Now the complaint is that it is too …

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“The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle”

– May 6, 2010

“Nowadays it is usual in economics to talk about the Austrian theory of the trade cycle. This description is extremely flattering for us Austrian economists, and we greatly appreciate the honor thereby given us. Like all other scientific contributions, …

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“How a Rich and Proud Nation Went Broke”

– May 5, 2010

“On Loyalty Day, October 17, 1951, Evita declared, “I ask you today, comrades, only one thing — that we will all swear publicly to defend Perón and fight to the death.” She died in 1952 of cervical cancer, and to this day people leave flowers at her fa …

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Let’s Talk Some Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle

– May 5, 2010

“For the graduate students, my focus is both to communicate the basic idea (and research puzzles) of how to study intertemporal coordination. I have asked them to think about the relationship between Hayek’s 1928 paper on price equilibrium and movement …

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