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Economics

Japanese Deflation

Reading the WSJ article on deflation linked below, I had to wonder: But Japan's experience has looked nothing like this. Rather than being deep, destructive and concentrated in a few years, deflation has been a surprisingly mild, drawn-out affair. Consumer prices have been falling in Japan for 15

Deflation: So What?

Jerry Pournelle has a good bit on deflationary spirals today. Deflation The new fear is deflation. There's also the plea that we don't really understand deflation. Roosevelt didn't understand it either, although the New Deal took a number of measures to combat it, including

Modern Moral Reasoning

A whole series of things I read recently got me thinking of the subject of moral reasoning. Moral philosophy is not a course I have yet taken in my M.A. studies, but I am already solidly in the broadly Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics that constitutes one of the

More on the consensus of Economists

I was randomly browsing this morning, and I came across Castles of Sand by Mansized Target. Literally random, I clicked the link by picking up the laptop and hitting the touchpad. I am comforted that others have suspicions too. Consider the view of economists on something like free trade, for

Andy Grove on Manufacturing

Andy Grove of Intel wrote a piece on American jobs and offshore manufacturing that was pretty interesting. I have been hearing this kind of thing from Jerry Pournelle for years, and I think he is on to something. However, Grove received a pretty brutal rebuttal from economist Tyler Cowen. Economics

The Consensus of Economists

Something that made the rounds a couple weeks ago was a survey of the views of professional economists. I thought the survey was interesting. It reminded me of the introduction to Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, one of my favorite economics books. Sowell started off with what every economist

North Korean Economic Data

North Korean Economic Data

A nice little bit on the relative economic fates of South and North Korea from Super-Economy. The best part is this graph: The North Koreans were doing just fine up til 1974, when their economy stopped growing. Something went really wrong 20 years later, in 1994. I don't