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Thursday Sticky 7/16 (self.badeconomics)

wumbotarianI want to be the Walrasian Auctioneer when I grow up[M] が 投稿 - stickied post

You people need to stop commenting as much.

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トップ新着論争中古い順Q&A

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 6ポイント7ポイント  (1子コメント)

Everyone needs more homework.

Discussion point:

In your subfield of economics, what is a simple naive model of behavior, and how does your subfield's fancypants model beat it?

In macro, here are two examples:

  1. Consumption. Naive view: people consume their income, C=Y. Fancy model: the Permanent Income Hypothesis, that people make consumption and saving decisions based on lifetime expected wealth. A good paper on the extent to which people actually follow the PIH is Hseih (2003 AER). People are more likely to follow the PIH when income streams are well anticipated and any shocks are large; people tend to react more naively to small income shocks.

  2. Forecasting. The naive model for any stationary macro variable (GDP growth, inflation, unemployment) is "almost a random walk." My naive forecast of unemployment next month is unemployment this month, plus or minus a small factor based on whether unemployment is currently high or low by historical standards.

    More sophisticated view: vector autoregressions. These tend to beat the naive forecast.

    Even more sophisticated view: full-blown DSGE forecasts. These tend to beat the naive forecast, um, not as much.

[–]tayaravaknin 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Sometimes I wish I knew economics well enough to have conversations with you. I imagine it would feel like when I have a fun conversation with someone really well-versed in political science and campaigns/international affairs.

I just wish I had the time to go through your reading list :(.

[–]wumbotarianI want to be the Walrasian Auctioneer when I grow up[S] 4ポイント5ポイント  (4子コメント)

So I've given a bit more thought to the ABCT and what we would expect to see happen in the economy if the ABCT were true.1

Roger Garrison wrote that money and inflation/deflation don't have anything to do with the Hayekian ABCT. Okay.

But, what about when everything goes south? I'm trying to make heads or tails of what I wrote previously about the ABCT of whether or not we can generalize the ABCT as a "supply-side" or "demand-side" recession.

When firms start to realize that people are consuming on the short-end of the Hayekian Triangle and the investment spending they did will no longer be profitable, all the firms stop investing for the future. So investment falls. But, in broad terms, the ABCT is about an "overaccumulation of capital." If that were the case, then investment into capital falls and Y falls. We can see this in the Solow Growth model.

So I think we can classify the ABCT as a negative-supply shock. Why is this important? Well prices are sticky in the short run (even Roger Garrison agrees). So then we ought to see an increase in inflation during a recession that can be explained by the ABCT. Why? Because negative supply shocks are inflationary.2

What does that mean? That means we could probably take a look at recessions and if there's an increase in inflation that should at least exclude the Keynesian/Monetarist negative demand shock argument.

Here's a graph of inflation with grey areas representing recessions (data is quarterly). What do you see? Most recessions are associated with drops in inflation. Two exceptions pop out: the six month long recession in 1957-1958 and Stagflation. Not sure what '57-'58 was. But we know that the 70s was a huge oil price shock, so it can't be the Fed.

So really, we don't have any evidence that recessions are huge supply shocks and thus inflationary. This doesn't disprove the ABCT but it does show that the ABCT is not able to explain post-War business cycle fluctuations in the US. Just another nail in the coffin.

  1. I was going to actually post this to /r/PraxAcceptance but someone asked for a new sticky so I thought I'd put it here.
  2. This realization came to me today while eating a sandwich at Jimmy John's.

[–]Meta-Cognition"Neoclassical Bernankean shill" 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

it does show that the ABCT is not able to explain post-War business cycle fluctuations

I know a bunch of Austrians on a couple of forums I use. I've always been kind of libertarian when it comes to the economy, except I pretty much went straight from being a fucking anarcho-communist to a Milton Friedman disciple.

Never seen the appeal of the Austrian School, really. At this point, I just link them to the Romer & Romer paper on post-war business cycles.

[–]tayaravaknin 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

The appeal to laymen is that it's really simple, sounds right, doesn't have really complicated maths we can't connect to reality, etc..

So it draws you in, and then once you build up a feeling that it's right, confirmation bias begins to set in. It's what happens to laymen like me. Though not me in particular, thankfully. I found this place just soon enough.

[–]say_wot_againI guess I mod /r/goodeconomics now? 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Plus, it adds a moralistic component. Recessions happen because we don't plan for the future and save enough. It's time for a switch from the hair of the dog. Friend, the party is over. The long run is here, it's time to get sober. And as Krugman puts it, everyone wants to believe that the economy is a morality play.

[–]tayaravaknin 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

That's fair, definitely. Hadn't considered that aspect, but that's because I live without morals. I'm a wildcard. A dog with no leash. Woof woof.

[–]commentsrusBring maymayday back! 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

If anyone's interested, a brief overview of the literature on the economics of prostitution in regard to the question of whether illegalization is bad economics.

Going back and reading my old thesis (which this post didn't borrow from, actually) and my old papers written on prostitution (yeah, there were many; I was rather edgy in college; my post borrowed mostly from a lit review paper I did) has made me want to study it all again. The models were very simple and I'd squeal audibly whenever I found a dank new novel data set on brothel or Craigslist prices. It also fit in rather well with my main interests: urban and development economics. I might make it my super secret sub-field in grad school.

Anyway, back to meming!

[–]Meta-Cognition"Neoclassical Bernankean shill" 1ポイント2ポイント  (13子コメント)

In keeping with the theme of the five policies thing we've had going on in the past few stickies, I figured I'd try my hand at one. You have to choose one policy to improve these areas:

  • Healthcare:

  • Science/technology:

  • Taxation:

  • Fiscal/monetary stimulus:

  • Welfare:

However, there is a catch. You can't choose a "paradigm-shifting" policy. So no single-payer/SHI systems, nGDP futures markets or NIT. Go!

[–]say_wot_againI guess I mod /r/goodeconomics now? 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

Welfare is easy. Beef up the EITC and gut... Uhhhhh, what's left at a federal level after EITC, TANF, and CHIP? Gut that.

Monetary policy: NGDPLT. Less of a leap than futures market but still helpful.

Healthcare: /u/HealthcareEconomist3 for HHS Secretary.

Taxation: Cutting loopholes and corporate tax rates. Enough consensus amongst politicians that this could happen.

Fiscal stimulus: No giod.

[–]Meta-Cognition"Neoclassical Bernankean shill" 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Healthcare: /u/HealthcareEconomist3 for HHS Secretary.

Seconded.

Fiscal stimulus: No giod.

I'm not entirely convinced that the ZLB is as irrelevant as people like Sumner and /u/Integralds have claimed in the past; maybe it's just me (and yeah, I know this is kind of an argument from incredulity), but I just can't look at the scale of QE that has been undertaken and say "Yeah, we should've just done more".

I'd rather have a situation whereby the Fed's balance sheet hits a certain % of GDP, and then non-discretionary fiscal stimulus kicks in.

[–]say_wot_againI guess I mod /r/goodeconomics now? 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

I was mostly being cheeky. I have no clue whether fiscal stimulus is necessary at the ZLB. :P Sorry for presenting that as a serious point.

[–]Meta-Cognition"Neoclassical Bernankean shill" 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I was mostly being cheeky

m8

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Garrett 4 Fed Gov. 0ポイント1ポイント  (8子コメント)

Healthcare

Extend public healthcare coverage to dental, legitimate psychiatric care, and prescription drugs. Increase funding for psychiatric care by as much as 1000%. Legalize euthanasia nationwide for any reason, granting a waiting period.

Sorry, that was three.

Science/technology

Reinstate the damned long-form census and refund (with interest) StatsCan. Social science counts, right?

Taxation

Remove corporate taxes entirely, institute nationwide carbon tax.

Fiscal/monetary stimulus

Increase the inflation target a bit? I don't know.

Welfare

I hold steady to my beliefs: kill all the poor. Just dump a cloud of nerve gas on Manitoba.

[–]Meta-Cognition"Neoclassical Bernankean shill" 0ポイント1ポイント  (4子コメント)

Social science counts

You mean pseudoscience. No, I was thinking of the hard sciences.

kill all the poor

Malthus? Is that you?

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Garrett 4 Fed Gov. 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

Malthus? Is that you?

...who's asking?

[–]Meta-Cognition"Neoclassical Bernankean shill" 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Paul Krugman.

[–]lorentz65DEMAND FOR THE DEMAND GOD! 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

^ Meta-Cognition is Paul Krugman confirmed. He even supports fiscal stimulus at the ZLB.

[–]Meta-Cognition"Neoclassical Bernankean shill" 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

And a 100pc capital gains tax.

[–]Meta-Cognition"Neoclassical Bernankean shill" 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

legitimate psychiatric care

Forgot to mention: can't emphasise this enough.

The US and the UK have pretty similar mental health services from what I hear, and my own experience with it in the UK pretty much confirms that it's fucking terrible.

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Garrett 4 Fed Gov. 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I live in Canada. But yeah still unbelievably terrible.

[–]MoneyChurchDickey-Fuller? I hardly know her! 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

kill all the poor.

What do we do about VAT?

[–]0729370220937022 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

What do you guys think of the financial transaction tax Sanders is advocating? What about the USA will make it work here when it didn't work in Sweden?

[–]MoneyChurchDickey-Fuller? I hardly know her! 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

If his goal is to reduce volatility in securities exchanges or stop inefficient investment in network connections to exchanges, frequent batch auctions are a better solution. If his goal is to transfer surplus-value from capitalists back to the working class, capital gains tax is a better way to do it.

[–]lorentz65DEMAND FOR THE DEMAND GOD! 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I don't know that much about the subject, but if it didn't work in Sweden, I don't see why it would work in the US. It's not like the mechanism by which the tax affects the market is essentially different in Sweden than it is in the US.

[–]MoneyChurchDickey-Fuller? I hardly know her! 0ポイント1ポイント  (4子コメント)

Why do we use the letter Y for output?

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

I do not know, but that would be an interesting question to know the answer to. Let's begin with the question, when did it start?

Hicks (1937) uses I for output (mnemonic "income").

Lucas (1969) uses Y for output.

I leave refinements to these upper and lower bounds as an exercise to the reader. A divide-and-conquer algorithm will produce the best results.

My guess would be to look in Samuelson's Foundations?

[–]say_wot_againI guess I mod /r/goodeconomics now? 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Y was a mnemonic for yincome, clearly.

[–]MoneyChurchDickey-Fuller? I hardly know her! 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

So recessions happen when we have too much yangcome?

[–]say_wot_againI guess I mod /r/goodeconomics now? 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I don't know Y.

[–]CatFortune 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hello! I'm the same guy as SoyElGoddamnBatman. I don't know if I made an impression here, but this is my name now, so all your goodwill and/or contempt can be continued toward this account. Thanks!