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Business and Society Economics Money and Banking

Joe Stiglitz in the RBS tent

The 2001 winner of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, was in Edinburgh last week to give two talks as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He is a pioneer of the economics of information, showing how markets can produce unexpected outcomes because information is […]

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Business and Society Economics

Herman Daly – The Opportunity Cost of Growth

Fine article from the father of real-world economics on the New Economics Foundation Blog. He counters the mainstream faith in ‘endless growth’ by using economic analysis, but applied to the eco-system as a whole rather than just the narrowly economic system. The new economic question is: are the extra benefits of physically transforming more of […]

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Business and Society Money and Banking

Investment banking – more shocks!

Well, if I ever doubted the wisdom of my Guardian on-line piece about bankers and their remuneration, here’s a bit more evidence from Prof Randall Wray in Kansas City! When a firm approaches an investment bank to arrange for finance, the modern investment bank immediately puts together two teams. The first team arranges finance on […]

Categories
Economics Money and Banking

The Current Monetary System: Manageable and Reformable?

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have been having some interesting discussions on the Chris Martenson Crash Course website. Chris wasn’t very pleased with me because I (presumably quite effectively) challenged one of his core tenets – that the monetary system is intrinsically doomed. In his post asking me never to darken his […]

Categories
Economics Money and Banking

Which Monetary System? A conversation.

I ruffled a few feathers at www.chrismartenson.com (more info here) – so much so that the eponymous Chris eventually asked me to cease and desist! You can view the ‘naughty thread‘ here! He accused me of not addressing his points. I don’t accept that, but I do intend to respond in detail to his last […]

Categories
Economics Money and Banking

The Role of a Central Bank

This is a revised extract from my PhD thesis. Correction and minor edit 10/8/2012. Introduction In a modern state, the government has a monopoly on physical force and so it is natural that the government should provide the final backing to contracts through the legal system. Moreover, the government can use physical force on its […]

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Economics

Economics – where to start?

A non-economist started a discussion thread on the Heterodox Economics facebook group asking ‘What Economic System Works Best’. He made the observant comment: Politics in the U.S. these days can be summed up in one sentence, “Pick a side, find sources to reinforce your opinion, attack your critics mercilessly, and defend your position to the […]

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Business and Society Economics

Martin Wolf and Land Value Tax

It was a pleasant surprise to find that the Financial Times chief economics commentator Martin Wolf has come out in favour of a Land Value Tax (an annual tax on the value of land owned), following a debate on the FT website. I have previously written a proposal for a Community Land Value Tax for […]

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Philosophy Religion

The Value of Truth

A post of genuine interest (rather than just stimulating of the desire to bash my head against my computer screen) on the Adam Smith Institute blog today. Sara Williams, who normally specialises in extraordinarily one-eyed monetary/macro commentaries, has drawn our attention to a paper by Peter Leeson of George Mason University in Virginia in which […]

Categories
Economics Money and Banking

My PhD Thesis on-line!

Should anyone really be interested – my doctoral thesis ‘Money and Production – A Pluralist Analysis’ is now available from the University of Stirling document repository at https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/dspace/handle/1893/1141 It examines various theories of money’s origin and sustainability, both ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’, and analyses the link between money and real economic outcomes. Most of it is […]