It's time to say it again econ textbook present selected *ideas* as if they were obvious, w/o underlying rationale or context Reading past econ work + history tells you context, modeling motives (society's demands, tractability, data availability...), practices, and debates

Robert Solow: “I’m glad there is no Milton Friedman anywhere [...] today. Milton Friedmans are bad for economics and bad for society. Fruitless debates with talented (near-)extremists waste a lot of everyone’s time that could have been spent more constructively.”

Ich freue mich sehr, dass DER SPIEGEL das IMK & mich zum "Prognostiker des Jahres 2023" für die 🇩🇪 Wirtschaft gekürt hat. Niemand sonst habe BIP+Details so genau vorhergesagt wie wir, so Thomas Fricke Danke an mein tolles Team für die gute Arbeit! spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soz…

“Most people think the Federal Reserve is a national forest out West.” ~ Alan Blinder, former Vice Chair Fed. Agree.

The Phillips Curve

54% of French 18- to 24-year-olds would be tempted to move to another country due to the political/economic situation (and 30% of the population overall) Places they fancy emigrating to: Canada, America, Germany.

Now that we have CPI, we have real wages for end-2023; Arin Dube has done the math. Up substantially, both over the year and relative to pre-pandemic, for most workers 1/

There's a long history of people (Andrew Mellon during Great Depression) who thought liquidationism* was the path to dynamism. If anything, the opposite. The GFC, for example, led to a demise in dynamism, which only recovered after running the economy hot following Covid.

Given that everyone knows that BLS shelter indexes lag far behind market rents, surprising that we don't hear more about HICP, which excludes owners' equivalent rent. It's been saying for a while that inflation is under control

Which is greater 1000¹⁰⁰¹ or 1001¹⁰⁰⁰?

Best universities in the world, 2024. 1. 🇺🇸 MIT 2. 🇬🇧 Cambridge 3. 🇬🇧 Oxford 4. 🇺🇸 Harvard 5. 🇺🇸 Stanford 6. 🇬🇧 Imperial College London 7. 🇨🇭 ETH Zurich 8. 🇸🇬 National University of Singapore 9. 🇬🇧 UCL 10. 🇺🇸 University of California, Berkeley (QS World Uni Rankings)

€ area household saving rate down over the quarter, but still up since before Covid-19, especially in 🇫🇷 and 🇩🇪.

True. But if one takes a longer perspective, it becomes perhaps a bit less impressive...

CHART OF THE DAY: The end of the German industrial might. Industrial output fell across the board in Dec, with a sharp drop in the energy-intensive sector (red line). Annual data now shows that German chemical production plunged to a 28-year low. ICYMY: bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

what is the point of these models?x.com/NicolasGoetzma…

This is German industrial production. The reason Germany avoided recession in 2022, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, is luck: supply chains started working again, giving a one-off boost to car production. That's over and now there is contraction with no end in sight...

Germany’s growth outlook is worst of all OECD countries except for Milei’s Argentina. The energy shock has been downplayed by prominent economists. It is now eroding the industrial core. Add fiscal tightening and you have the perfect storm.

Prediction does not imply understanding. But does understanding imply prediction? That seems to be an implication of falsifiable theories.

Europe 🇪🇺 is way behind in tech 💻

There has been a quiet uptick in Russian gas imports since Q3 2023. The Europeans are circumventing their own sanctions.