Edward Conard

Top Ten New York Times Bestselling Author

  • “…a very valuable contribution.” - Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and director of the National Economic Council, president emeritus, Harvard University
Upside of Inequality Oxford Unintended Consequences

growth

Economists Krusell & Smith find “Piketty’s second law…misleading, and…not fundamental”

Alex Tabarrok reports on a recent paper by Per Krusell and Tony Smith that articulates the problem with Thomas Piketty’s so-called “Second Law of Capitalism” a problem that Larry Summers claims stems from Piketty “misreading the literature by conflating gross and net returns to capital.” Krusell and Smith conclude: “We find Piketty’s second law quite misleading, and certainly not fundamental.” Krusell and Smith reach this conclusion as follows: “The second ... Read More

Larry Summers & The Causes of Slow Growth

In his December 15th Financial Times blog post, Larry Summers continues warming to the notion that the slow recovery stems from permanent structural problems and not a temporary Keynesian lull in demand. Presumably, then, optimal economic policy would maximize long-term private sector growth, rather than maximizing short-term growth at the expense of the long-term, in order to avoid permanent damage to the economy from a temporary lull in demand. Summers blames a ... Read More

Shamus Khan Declares War on the 1%

Shamus Khan declares war on the 1 percent in The New York Times claiming economics is zero sum and that U.S. growth has not trickled down to the middle class despite the U.S. economy and employment having grown twice as fast the high wage economies of Germany and France and three times faster than Japan over the last two decades and with significantly higher median incomes. The differential growth of the U.S. economy would have been higher still without the contribution ... Read More

Interest-Rate Policy and Economic Growth

Floyd Norris, in The New York Times, reports that construction is primarily responsible for slow employment growth. Meanwhile, Craig Torres and Ilan Kolet report in Bloomberg that “investment in software is up 19 percent since the 2007 business-cycle peak, while…investment in non-residential structures…is down 18 percent since the fourth quarter of 2007. Spending on equipment…is up just 2.2 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Spending on ... Read More

Equity, Not Inflation, Drives Innovation and Growth

Real Clear Politics By Edward Conard | November 27, 2013 It has finally dawned on left-leaning economists like Paul Krugman and Larry Summers that the U.S. economy is not suffering from a temporary lull in demand but rather from a structural problem that yields slower growth from a permanently lower base. If this economic outlook is correct, and there is plenty of evidence that it is, there is little reason for Keynesian stimulus, which sacrifices long-term growth to ... Read More