The Grumpy Economist

A debt crisis does not come slowly and predictably. This year's short term bond holders, a very risk averse lot, are mostly interested i...

On Friday, I went to the NBER EFG (Economic Fluctuations and Growth) meeting at the SF Fed. Program and papers here .  The papers were great...

DB's Torsten Sløk writes in his regular email analysis: Yesterday I participated in the annual US Monetary Policy Forum here in Manhat...

The graph is federal surplus (up) or deficit (down), not counting interest costs, divided by potential GDP. I made it for another purpose...

Is this 1929, the beginning of the end? Or 2007? Is it 1974, annus horribilis in which the stock market drifted down 40% having something ...

Two bits from Marginal Revolution on truck automation are so good they merit passing on here. Dan Hanson writes this amazing comment I won...

From Richard Rubin at WSJ : The new tax law’s treatment of deductions gives people more reasons to concentrate giving in certain years, bo...

China builds a railway station in 9 hours  (HT Marginal Revolution ). Yes, it's basically a propaganda video, but interesting nonethel...

The tariff and the wall were the big news this week, with some lessons for looming infrastructure. The Tariff 30% on solar cells, 20-50%...

Sometimes it is not good to get to the right answer for the wrong reasons. This thought comes to mind reading to recent WSJ articles, Walmar...

Are you a young economist or other professor, and would you like to spend a year at Stanford with no teaching? The Hoover National Fellows p...

Every now again in writing a blog one puts down an idea that is not only wrong, but pretty obviously wrong if one had stopped to think about...

I think most of the debate misses an important point about the state and local tax deduction -- incentives. Suppose you are in the top, (r...

Thank you and happy new year to all my readers and commenters.

Courtesy Greg Mankiw , the Joint Committee on Taxation distributional analysis of the new tax law. Bottom line: No change. Income cate...