by Dirk Ehnts, Econoblog101 In a recent back and forth, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz traded thoughts. Stiglitz went first, saying things like: There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our m… more »

Paul Krugman is on a roll again, this time it’s about US inequality. Much of the discussion comes out of his 2008 paper ‘Trade and Wages, Reconsidered’. Here is the last paragraph: How can we quantify the actual effect of rising trade on wages? The a… more »

[In the essay below, Tom Waldenfels, aka “fallingman,” a regular contributor to the Rick’s Picks forum, explains how an America steeped in the ideals of freedom lost its way. A political perversity of the day, he notes, is that one earns the label “progressive” by arguing for more government control over our lives. Is the system too far gone to save? Read on for Tom’s answer. RA]What constitutes progress for us as a species? Is it defined by advancements in science and technology? Can we point to the rise in living standards these advances have made possible and say that’s what progress is all about? Sure, that’s a big part of it, but I’d like to suggest that this kind of visible and easily measurable progress is actually an artifact of an advancement that’s more fundamental and far less appreciated. I’m alluding to the spotty but impressive progress we’ve made over the centuries in relating to each other on a non-violent, consensual basis. more »

The Internal Evaluation Office of the IMF has reported:Third, there is a widely held perception that IMF research is message driven. About half of the authorities held this view, and more than half of the staff indicated that they felt pressure to align their conclusions with IMF policies and positions. Policy recommendations provided in some research publications did not follow from the research results, and a number of country authorities and researchers noted that IMF research tended to follow a pre-set view with predictable conclusions that did not allow for alternative perspectives. This detracted from the quality and credibility of studies and reduced their utilization.Now, more heretical interesting stuff has been posted by the IMF. Take a look: more »