The Grumpy Economist

I was researching the European Stability Mechanism this morning for a paper on the evolution of the euro, and I ran across this gem of econo...

I was for Fixit, not Brexit. The EU is a great idea. They put together articles of confederation, empowering an out of control bureaucracy. ...

I have been emphasizing the Fed's dilemma: If it raises interest rates, that raises the U.S. debt-service costs. 100% debt to GDP means ...

  All pre-covid. European GDP per capita fell in the decade following the financial crisis. US growth was nothing to write home about, but ...

    Source  Stephan Schubert Source: Chad Jones "straight out of the Penn World Tables, and I first learned about it from Lee Ohanian a...

Here are two unsettling slides I made for a talk. Here is GDP per capita in US, UK, France and Italy and China (2020 dollars, source world b...

This is a talk I gave for IGIER at Bocconi (zoom, sadly) Jan 11 2021. Olivier Blanchard also gave a talk and a good discussion followed. Y...

I wrote an oped for Il Sole 24 Ore on central bank digital currency, as part of a series they are doing. It's here in their premium ed...

On October 20, I was graciously invited to give a talk at the   ECB Conference on Monetary Policy : bridging science and practice.  I survey...

Here are links to this week's grumpy economist podcast , and Goodfellows discussio n with Niall Ferguson and H.R.  McMaster. Grumpy on t...

When, last week, the Treasury issued its currency manipulation report , I thought it was a joke. Treasury put Germany and Italy on its ...

My visit to Europe resulted in many interesting conversations. There was a stark contrast between the complex regulatory vision of formal pr...

Argentina should dollarize, says Mary Anastasia O'Grady in the Wall Street Journal  -- not a peg, not a currency board, not an IMF plan,...

Day 2 of the Nobel Symposium on Money and Banking focused on monetary policy. (My last post covered Day 1 on banking.) Bernanke Sadl...

Continuing in the Il Sole series on Italy and the Euro, Alberto Bagnai writes that the euro is a "big defeat for the economics profess...

In case you missed it, this Sunday featured a creditable effort by the NY Times to look out of the groundhog hole. You have likely followed ...

Luigi Zingales inaugurated a series of essays in Il Sole 24 Ore , an Italian newspaper, on whether Italy should stay in or get out of the E...

Have negative interest rates boosted inflation? Here is a nice graph (source macro-man blog , HT FT alphaville) Source: Macro-man blog ...

Many commenters compare Brexit to the American revolution. I think the constitutional convention is a better analogy for the moment and chal...

An interview for the Greek Reporter , in English, perhaps cheering the like-minded and sure to infuriate some conventional wisdom. I agree...