Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash Production of boiler chickens (those raised for their meat, not eggs) in the US...
Economic Naturalist Question #3. Why does a light come on when you open the refrigerator but not when you open the freezer?
Economic Naturalist Question #2: Why do brides often spend thousands of dollars on wedding dresses they will never wear again, while grooms typically rent cheap tuxedos, even though they will have many future occasions that call for one?
Economic Naturalist Question #1. Why do regulators require safety seats for toddlers for even a two-block drive to the grocery store, yet permit them to sit unrestrained on parents’ laps on long flights? Thread on introductory economics courses, which leave little lasting imprint on the millions of students who take them each year.
What Rules Inflation Targeting? A Time for Abandoning Taylor Rule
“No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.” ― Haruki Murakami Following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), most central banks around the world are facing pressing challenges to reach the inflation target. Most recently, for example,…
Central Counterparties: When Monetary Policy is Not Enough
The overall picture of the U.S. economy, though far from stable, is hardly threatening. For instance, U.S. payrolls grew by 128,000 in October. Nevertheless, the Fed cut the interest rate for the third consecutive quarter in late October. The turmoil in the repo market in…
Is Libra Money? Depends on Where in Credit Cycle We Are
“What institutions build, they can destroy.” Anonymous Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress on October 24th, 2019, created anxieties on whether Facebook would circumvent financial regulators as it readies its planned cryptocurrency, Libra. This concern by policymakers was logical, given the magnitude of the 2008-09 global…
Quantitative Easing: No Words to Describe It
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” – Edgar Allan Poe The experience of the global financial crisis (GFC) was a painful reminder that central banks were not equipped to save the modern financial markets from failing.…