George Waters of Illinois State University on the economic crisis and the state of macroeconomics: Equilibrium and Meltdown, by George A. Waters: Equilibrium in economics is such a ubiquitous concept some might be surprised to hear that it is also controversial. It is hard to imagine doing much econ...

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Yesterday, Dave Roberts at Grist posted his strong (extreme?) views on economists' influence on public policy--environmental policy in particular.  Rather than resort to my usual sarcastic responses, I'm going to try to put together a cohesive substance-filled argument as to why this g...

From Environmental Capital: ... The whole debate over the clean-energy economy and job creation is just getting started—and is keeping environmental economists busy. Proponents see a virtue in the labor-intensive nature of many clean-energy projects, from retrofitting buildings to installing solar...

This is very good: Why Can't We All Just Get Along? The Great Multiplier Debate, by Menzie Chinn: I've been thinking about why the numbers that are typically bandied about in policy circles (at least that I'm familiar with) have so little impact on the overall general and blogosphere deb...

Paul Krugman: Fiscal policy formalities (wonkish), by Paul Krugman: There seems to be an amazing amount of misunderstanding of the basics of fiscal policy, even among people who should know better. Leave on one side the remarkable parade of economists who think that the savings-investment identity p...

Quoting an email [from Paul Krugman], economists who "have spent their entire careers on equilibrium business cycle theory are now discovering that, in effect, they invested their savings with Bernie Madoff." I think that's right, and as they come to this realization, we can expect the...

Last Thursday, Michael Roberts wrote: There’s an ongoing spat between Joe Romm’s Climate Progress and Tim Habb’s and John Whitehead’s excellent and well-visited Env-Econ blog. The link here connects the spit balls.... But in this case, I wonder: macro and micro are different animals. So diff...

Robert Skidelsky: The business cycle myth, by Robert Skidelsky, Project Syndicate: ...Capitalism advanced the human condition, said Schumpeter, through a "perennial gale of creative destruction", which he likened to a Darwinian process of natural selection to secure the "survival of t...