Rumplestatskin

I like Krugman. He takes a common sense approach to economics and writes clearly for a broad audience. But, like others, I have to take issue with his insistence that quantitative easing (QE) and low interest rates punish the wealthy and fulfil some progressive distributional objective.

Paul Egan and Philip Soos [1] have a new book out. It available for free here (pdf), and it’s called Bubble Economics: Australian Land Speculation 1830-2013.

Currently there is worldwide concern about debt.

Leith has covered in detail Uber’s assault on the Australian taxi industry.

NSW is preparing to streamline laws to enable redevelopment of strata-title lots.

I’m constantly surprised at how fundamental concepts in economics are so easily confused as soon as they are applied to real life policy.

As I explained last week, saving by an individual is usually achieved by buying monopoly assets from others, forgoing consumption in order to capture a future flow of income for oneself.

I want to offer here a brief analysis of how I think about saving and investment, and why it is important to be very clear about these concepts in policy discussions.

From the MacroBusiness Vault In an ideal world a selection of price indexes would be easily constructed and highly reflective of economic reality.

I was prompted to write this follow-up on health economics after seeing a recent post by blogger Noah Smith, who weighs in with some reasonable views after some intense criticism of the ‘freakonomic’ Chicago-boy Steven Levitt.