The Grumpy Economist

With President Milei's election in Argentina, dollarization is suddenly on the table. I'm for it. Here's why. 

Cass Sunstein has a lovely  New York Times essay  that tries to give us back the word "Liberal." I hope it works. 

Sunday Nov 19 6-7 PM I will be giving the "Association Lecture" at the Southern Economics Association conference  in New Orleans. ...

Last week I was honored to be moderator for a discussion with Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott on their new book " Canceling the Americ...

Mickey Levy's excellent WSJ oped  leaves some thoughts.  Inflation has fallen, though I still suspect it may get stuck around 3-4%. Bu...

  A lovely plot from the always interesting Torsten Slok. The graph shows the actual federal funds rate, together with the path of "exp...

 David Leonhardt's pean to investment in the Sunday NY Times Magazine starts well: A cross-country trip today typically takes more time ...

A week ago Jay Bhattacharya gave a great talk at the weekly Stanford Classical Liberalism workshop. ( Link in case the embed doesn't w...

This is a draft oped. It didn't make it as events in Israel are now consuming attention. But sooner or later we need to elect a presiden...

Today, I'll add an entry to my occasional reviews of interesting academic papers. The paper: " Price Level and Inflation Dynamics...

This post takes up from two previous posts ( part 1 ;   part 2 ), asking just what do we (we economists) really know about how interest ra...

(This post continues part 1 which just looked at the data. Part 3 on theory is here )  When the Fed raises interest rates, how does inflat...

An a recent WSJ oped (which I will post here when 30 days have passed), I criticized the "supply shock" theory of our current inf...

(This post is an interlude between history and VARs)  Jesper Rangvid has a great blog post today on different inflation measures.  CPI and ...

Today I begin a three part series exploring interest rates and inflation. ( Part 2 empirical work, Part 3 theory)  How does the Fed influen...

(Updated to fix numbers.) Fitch is right to downgrade the US. Read the sober report . But there are a few other reasons, or emphasis they mi...

Project Syndicate asked Mike Boskin, Brigitte Granville,  Ken Rogoff and me whether 2% is the right inflation target. See the link for the o...

If you have not been paying attention, our government has decided that all electric vehicles are the solution to the climate problem. At lea...

From Joseph Epstien's oped in the July 13 WSJ  on Biden v Trump (please, dear Lord, no) Each man has risen to the presidency thanks, mos...

James Freeman's always excellent "best of the web" WSJ column today  covers a Manhattan Institute report by Mark Mills  itself...