by Simon Wren-Lewis
This post is inspired by another, by Jan-Werner Müller. I have talked about Müller’s ideas on populism before. This particular post is a plea to focus less on the voters who elect populist politicians, and more on the politicians themselves. He writes: In 2010, Viktor Orbán did not campaign on a promise to draft a […]
The Three Mistakes Of CentrismPaul Krugman quite rightly often complains about people he calls professional centrists, who always suggest there is a middle road between the ‘extreme’ views of Democrats or Republicans. He noted that such centrists always have to blame both sides, and would typically fail to note that although the Democrats have stayed pretty much in the […]
Do Trump’s Deficits Matter?
Should Democrats complain about the large deficits that Trump and the Republicans are creating? Or is this playing into the Republican narrative that made the stimulus in 2009 inadequate and gave us austerity from then onwards? The answer that mainstream economics gives is straightforward. In a recession when interest rates have hit their lower bound […]
Academic Knowledge About Economic Policy Is Not Just Another Opinion
Does the financial crisis reveal that economists are at the leeches and mercury stage of their subject, and as a result policy makers and the public have every right to ignore what they say? Does the fact that economists working in finance failed to recognise the prospect of a systemic crisis, and that macroeconomists both […]
If We Treat Plutocracy As Democracy, Democracy Dies
The snake-oil salesmen There are many similarities between Brexit and Trump. They are both authoritarian movements, where authority either lies with a single individual or a single vote: the vote that binds them all. This authority expresses the movement’s identity. They are irrational movements, by which I mean that they cast aside expertise where that […]
Links Between Austerity And Immigration, And The Power Of Information
This discussion by Roger Scully about why people in the Welsh Valleys voted Leave is depressing although not surprising. In essence it is immigration, bolstered by local stories of Polish people coming into communities and reducing wages. I doubt if quoting econometric studies about how little immigration influences wages would make much difference to these attitudes (although […]
Economists: Too Much Ideology, Too Little Craft
Paul Krugman argued the other day that the belief in the need for new economic thinking after the financial crisis was incorrect, but led to some crazy but influential ideas that suited big money and the political right. While I agree with a lot of what Paul says, I would want to add something. These […]
Why Has Brexit Led To Falling Real Wages?
This might seem easy. The depreciation immediately after Brexit, plus subsequent declines in the number of Euros you can buy with a £, are pushing up import prices which feed into consumer prices (with a lag) which reduce real wages. But real wages depend on nominal wages as well as prices. So why are nominal […]
Why Has Brexit Led To Falling Real Wages?
This might seem easy. The depreciation immediately after Brexit, plus subsequent declines in the number of Euros you can buy with a £, are pushing up import prices which feed into consumer prices (with a lag) which reduce real wages. But real wages depend on nominal wages as well as prices. So why are nominal […]
Brexit And Democracy
A constant refrain from politicians and others is that we have to leave the EU because we have to respect democracy, where by democracy they mean that 52% voted to do so. Arguments that the vote was based on lies by the Leave side are met with dismissive remarks like both sides were the same, […]
#Lexit Fallacies
I often find that arguments for Lexit have many structural similarities to right wing arguments for Brexit. Take Larry Elliott’s latest piece for example. This includes: Sweeping exaggerations that seem designed to trigger nationalist sentiments. We are told that “under Tony Blair, the feeling was that globalisation had made the nation state redundant.” Confusing the […]
Why German Wages Need To Rise
An interesting disagreement occurred this week between Martin Sandbu and the Economist, which prompted a subsequent letter from Philippe Legrain (see also Martin again here). The key issue is whether the German current account surplus, which has steadily risen from a small deficit in 2000 to a large surplus of over 8% of GDP, is […]
Why Has The US Resisted Trump But The UK Acquiesced To Brexit?
This post is a response to a provocative piece by Anatole Kaletsky. He writes: While the US has taken only 100 days to see through Trump’s “alternative reality” (though perhaps not through Trump himself), almost nobody in Britain is even questioning the alternative reality of Brexit. In other words, although both the US and UK […]
(Simon Wren-Lewis is Professor of Economics at Oxford University.) – Social Europe
