I’m amazed at the breadth of your repertoire of evidence and references. Week in and week out you delve into a different topic, bringing to bear both seminal and cutting-edge papers, and talk about the evidence as if you have it always stored in the back of your mind.
How do you do this? Do you research from scratch each time you decide to write an article, or are you really a human archive? Are you constantly reading random papers? Do you have any tips on habits that aspiring economists can use to achieve this breadth?
Thank you. It’s a mix of both. Obviously I’m doing research each time on the specific topic, but I do have a lot of random papers stored up in my head. I suggest just reading a lot, and following your interests. Tbh, tho, it would likely be better for an economist to know a few things really deeply, than a lot of things shallowly.
I have no desire to defend this policy, but doesn't recent experience suggest that if the Fed really commits to the bit, it can raise nominal incomes as much as, and in fact quite a bit more than, is needed?
Obviously it's probably best not to test that hypothesis until we really need to, but it's not clear to me that a decline of a few percent is beyond the Fed's power to offset. It recently raised nominal incomes ten percent above trend!
“Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers? The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.”
I’m amazed at the breadth of your repertoire of evidence and references. Week in and week out you delve into a different topic, bringing to bear both seminal and cutting-edge papers, and talk about the evidence as if you have it always stored in the back of your mind.
How do you do this? Do you research from scratch each time you decide to write an article, or are you really a human archive? Are you constantly reading random papers? Do you have any tips on habits that aspiring economists can use to achieve this breadth?
Thank you. It’s a mix of both. Obviously I’m doing research each time on the specific topic, but I do have a lot of random papers stored up in my head. I suggest just reading a lot, and following your interests. Tbh, tho, it would likely be better for an economist to know a few things really deeply, than a lot of things shallowly.
For countries with weak institutions (like the US) there might be another dimension of the problem: loan sharks and criminal groups who profit from the government’s “good intentions” https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Events/PDF/Slides/devconfmay2022-santiago-tobon.pdf
I have no desire to defend this policy, but doesn't recent experience suggest that if the Fed really commits to the bit, it can raise nominal incomes as much as, and in fact quite a bit more than, is needed?
Obviously it's probably best not to test that hypothesis until we really need to, but it's not clear to me that a decline of a few percent is beyond the Fed's power to offset. It recently raised nominal incomes ten percent above trend!
“Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers? The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.”
- Federal Reserve Board Governor Ned Gramlich