G-7 Central Banks and their relations with governments

ECB economists have a nice paper on the topic. It has a nice title – Dancing together at arm’s length? – The interaction of central banks with governments in the G7.

Bernanke secretly wishing if Fiscal Policy could help…

Alan Blinder as always has a nice article explaining the thinking going on in Bernanke’s mind.

A review of capital inflows in Korea and Thailand

Two speeches. One by Korean Central Bank Governor Chogsoo Kim and other by Bank of Thailand Deputy Governor Dr. Bandid Nijathaworn. Both highlight the risks from capital inflows and managing impossible trinity in their economies.

First Korea. Kim says there are two issues – First capital flows are procyclical and second managing them leads to working against impossible trinity.

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Justin Lin is blogging

I am late on this. Just discovered Justin Lin has started a blog called Let’s talk development.

I hope we get some interesting ideas on development from Lin and it continues. There are many such blogs started but never carried on with the same vigour.

Rankings of Economics Journals and Departments in India

Tilak Mukhopadhyay and Subrata Sarkar of IGIDR have a paper on the topic. It is quite interesting to know the state of economics in the country.

What would Friedman say on QE2?

After hypothesising views of Fisher, Keynes on crisis and policies, the next question is what would Friedman say on the crisis and QE2 in particular?

David Wessel of WSJ has a superb article reviewing asking Friedman disciples and economists on what would the great econ say?

A New Normal for Monetary Policy?

As per John Taylor the new normal for mon pol could be – The End of Monetary Policy as We Know It.

US in Liquidity Trap – What are the Options?

THis is the title of a new paper I have written. In this I summarise the debates going in US over economic outlook and various policy options.

My reading (little bit though) of Japan in 1990s and US now is in a liquidity trap situation (when central bank policy rate is zero/near zero), a central bank has many options. However, there are two issues. One, their effectiveness is limited. Two, some measures are not practice and cannot be adopted. And when one adds numerous economists’ arguments over benefits and negatives of each option, it is all chaos. Then political situation always plays a major role. With a dip in taxes and surge in expenditure the, government is on shaky grounds. They might want to stimulate but concerns of budget deficit/fiscal multiplier always muddles the whole thinking. Hence, it may not be a liquidity trap but surely a policy trap.

Let me know your comments.

Fed could target TIPS yields instead

John Cochrane of Chicago Univ has an option for Fed:

How economic policies in EU and US are diverging post crisis

Peterson Institute for International Economics and Bruegel Thinktank organised a conference titled – The Transatlantic Relationship in an Era of Growing Economic Multipolarity.

In it there was an interesting paper presented by Jean Pisani-Ferry and Adam S. Posen. They say the policies in EU and US converged as the crisis started and have diverged as crisis situation eased. They look at a number of reasons for  the above behaviour and summarise the findings:

What does an economist do if he is called to lecture a Paediatricians’ meeting?

Link pediatrics to economics and make himself sound useful…what else? 🙂

Recently Lorenzo Bini Smaghi was invited to talk to 66th National Pediatrics Congress at Rome. He says:

Australian dollar appreciation to hit Ashes series in Australia

Here is the news release.

The last time England’s ‘Barmy Army’ came to Australia for an Ashes series they mocked the locals by singing: “We’re fat, we’re round, three dollars to the pound.” But that’s unlikely to be the case during this year’s Ashes series as the global financial crisis and the soaring Aussie dollar have  dramatically cut the number of English tourists travelling to Australia to support their team, reports said Sunday.

Around 37,000 British fans travelled to Australia to watch a 5-0 drubbing in the last Ashes series here four years ago.For fans making the journey this time the cost in exchange-rate terms will be more than 50 percent higher. Cricket Australia said that thousands of tickets reserved for tourists might be reallocated to locals as it becomes apparent numbers will be well down on those who visited during the 2006-07 Ashes.

“We will be doing a review in mid-November and it is possible that some of the tickets allocated to inbound tourism that are returned to Cricket Australia are put back onto the market to become available to the Australian public,” CA spokesman Peter Young told the Sun-Herald. “If that happens, there could be a few more tickets available to venues that are currently sold out of general admission tickets.”

How economics affects Cricket…This will be sad though. The upcoming Ashes series is a much anticpated event. Without Barmy Army it would not be as much fun..

Money financed fiscal stimulus – the most powerful policy at zero level bound

I mam trying to read the papers presented at this Boston Fed conference – Revisting Monetary Policy in Low Inflation Environment.

I was reading this Laurence Meyer paper where he looks at Fed policy in this crisis and their impact.

First how much did Fed’s purchases of assets (QE) impact US Treasury? He says a Fed program of USD 400 bn lowered 10 yera treasury by 13 bps. There are 3 more studies in the estimate of 13-14 bps. As all similar, he says they must be true!!

Probability of sustained deflation in US is just 5.3%

Jens Christensen of Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco writes a timely paper on one of the several burning issues.

Kaufman economics bloggers’ survey shows economic outlook steadily declining

Kaufman’s leading economics bloggers survey for Q4 2010 has been released (pdf here).  (Must admit upfront that this blog is part of the survey. So there would be some biases for the survey :-))

The key findings are:

In Venezuela they call market price as capitalist price

I was so tempted to blog after reading this blogpost on Prof Mankiw’s blog. He gets an email from someone in Venezuela:

Liquidate or liquefy?

Is the title of this article by Daniel Gros.

He says Europe has chosen ‘liquefaction’ over liquidation. It has preferred to continue to pump liquidity in its banking systenm helping them survive. However, liquidation or celaning up the system is as important:

Is IMF contributing to downside risks?

Mark Weisbrot and Juan Montecino of CEPR in this paper argue that IMF is contributing to downside risks:

Why didn’t the industrial revolution start in China?

I am trying to read up works of Justin Lin, World Bank’s chief economist. I just pointed to his wonderful analysis on why China grew after 1979?

Now, I just discovered another of his interesting paper (via the references on China after 1979 paper). It talks about the Needham Puzzle. Needham was an economic historian who points China was a strong economy with good institutions in 14th century. Then why did the industrial revolution only happen in UK (& Europe) and not China? This Lin refers to as Needham Puzzle.

Soros on state of economics

I had posted about Soros initiative to improve state of economic research.

In this paper, he sets out his agenda and also reviews the state of economics.