Today’s Financial Crisis in a Historical Mirror

Economist and blogger extraordinaire Brad DeLong takes a whirlwind tour of economic history in his recent talk, Today’s Financial Crisis in a Historical Mirror (weblink).
First comes the tale of the Panic of 1825. As DeLong tells it, this was the first time a central bank (Bank of England) intervened to avert a financial crisis by [...]

When the modern world began

For much of human history, most people lived in the world of poverty and hard labor described by that most dismal of early economists, Thomas Malthus. In brief, Malthus reasoned that any increase in food supply would be quickly outpaced by increased population, thus forever depressing living standards to bare subsistence.
So when did we [...]

Slouching Towards Utopia? The Economic History of the Twentieth Century

UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong, one of my all-time-favorite lecturers, will be teaching The Economic History of the Twentieth Century (website), beginning tomorrow.
He has already started posting the reading assignments, and pdf’s of the first few lectures. Stay tuned to see if he also posts the audio of the lectures, as he has in the [...]

Arming the donkeys

Dan Ariely, a best-selling author and professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, is always fun to listen to. He has a lilting, mischievous voice with just a hint of a Hebrew accent– rather like an Israeli leprechaun.
He often appears on American Public Media’s daily news show Marketplace, explaining how people are “predictably irrational,” which [...]

Stimulus SmackDown: Can Deficit Spending Save the Economy?

Maybe you too are wondering if those folks in Washington DC who are merrily spending our money really know what they’re doing. If so, the Stimulus SmackDown debate (website, iTunes)) is for you. It pits the UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong (pro-stimulus) against Washington University economist Michele Boldrin (anti-stimulus).
For the short version of the debate, [...]

Wall Street traders high on testosterone?

Cambridge University neuroscientist John Coates has a theory on why Wall Street traders bounce from manic highs to depressive lows and take financial markets with them. It is, he thinks, a matter of hormones: specifically testosterone and cortisol.
Coates is the second speaker on the Cambridge University podcast The credit crunch: history, hormones and trust [...]

You’re invited to free class on global warming

In what may be a first in free open-access education, the University of Pennsylvania is inviting all comers to take part in a course on Sustainable Environmental Policy & Global Politics (website, iTunes, YouTube).
You can download the lectures on iTunes or view them on YouTube and then take part in message boards and blogs at [...]

Learn economics on the web / Part 2

Here is some more fodder to feed your inner economist.
Cool Economics (website), Michael Williams, Prairie View A&M University.
This quirky website has several economics courses taught by Michael Williams, and a number of short videos featuring a nerdy character called Dr. Nigel Cool who sports big glasses, a bow-tie and speaks in an undefinable accent. The [...]

The paradox of thrift and other Keynesian conundrums

Can you stimulate an economy — shock it back into life like a defibrillator acting on an ailing heart? British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) famously said you could. Pour enough new money into the system via spending and tax cuts, he said, and the “animal spirits” of the moribund patient would revive and he [...]

What would John Maynard do?

John Maynard Keynes, who helped design and implement the post World War II global economic system known as Bretton Woods , has cast a long shadow. He devised the ways in economists still think about counteracting recessions through government policy.
And with the world economy now in crisis, many are wondering “what would Keynes do?” [...]