Author: John Quiggin

Out of the lockup

John Quiggin59 Comments
.!.

I’m back on deck, sort of, after the Budget lockup in Canberra on Tuesday. The event was quite an experience, though maybe not one I’d choose to do every year. It started with a scrum in one of the big halls in Parliament House where the assembled journos +me gathered to await our chance to look at the Budget paper. Then we were sorted into committee rooms, some equipped with elaborate preinstalled computer networks (AAP for example) and some with one power cord for two computers (Crikey!).

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Benefits of blogging

John Quiggin19 Comments

Brad DeLong links to my post on the obsolescence of New Keynesian macro, and concludes

I have to call this one for Krugman, Clark, Akerlof, Shiller, and Quiggin and against Blanchard’s vision of growing knowledge and analytical convergence

I’ve been reasonably successful as Australian academic economists go, but, based on my journal contributions, I would have rated the likelihood of reading the phrase “Krugman, Clark, Akerlof, Shiller, and Quiggin” only marginally higher than that of being romantically linked with Angelina Jolie. Blogging really does have its rewards.

Lockup

John Quiggin22 Comments

I’ll be incommunicado for much of Tuesday, as I’m going to be representing Crikey at the Budget lockup. This is very different from my usual Budget experience, where I spend a day or so digesting the budget and the immediate reactions, before aiming for a more considered analysis. This time, I’ll be doing the immediate reactions. Quite a challenge for me, and an interesting sign of the way in which media are evolving.

Refuted/obsolete economic doctrines #7: New Keynesian macroeconomics

John Quiggin40 Comments

I’m writing a review article about Akerlof and Shiller’s new book, Animal Spirits. In doing so, it struck me that I had most of a new entry for my list of refuted economic doctrines, except that the target this time has not been refuted so much as rendered obsolete by events. I’m talking about New Keynesianism an approach to macroeconomics, to which Akerlof and Shiller have made some of the biggest contributions, but which they have now, on my interpretation, repudiated.

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Politic religion (crosspost)

John Quiggin47 Comments

[I posted this at Crooked Timber a day or two ago and got quite a lively response].

While the aesthetic defence of religion offered by Terry Eagleton might appeal to a small fraction of the intelligentsia, a far more common belief is that, regardless of truth value, religious belief makes people better citizens, and should therefore be encouraged.

Although this claim has various components, the most obvious social benefits of religious belief, and the biggest source of concern about the adverse consequences of unbelief, is the doctrine of an afterlife in which good actions will be rewarded and bad ones punished. Back in the 19th century, lots of people were really worried about this and, even in the 21st it’s a common theme in US discussions of religion.

But do we really need religion for this?

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