Thursday, January 8, 2015

Top 5 posts of 2014

2014 was the first complete year for the blog and had 232 posts (averaging more than one every other day). Here are the top 5 viewed posts:

1. How money transfers information

This is the post I like to use to introduce this blog to people so it gets a lot of traffic.

2. If physics blogs were like economics blogs

An attempt at humor poking fun at the comments on economics blogs.

3. Krugman, Keynes and the liquidity trap

A follow-on to the #4 on this list that shows the evolution of the IS curve from the upward-sloping monetarist view to the downward-sloping Keynesian view to the vertical liquidity trap over the post-war economic history of the US. Also it shows how deflationary monetary expansion is associated with the zero lower bound (and shows how the zero lower bound works).

4. Models matter

Interpreting macroeconomic data always requires a model. If anyone says "data X shows I am right" you can always attach an "given my model" to the end of it. This post generated the most lively and enjoyable (and at times heated) discussion on this blog so far.

5. A challenge to macroeconomists

There is a definite paucity of macroeconomic theory results that compare themselves to empirical data and this post calls that out. (However the NY Fed has stepped up.)

PS 

More evidence that currency affects inflation, not the broader monetary base, this time from J.P. Koning and New Zealand.
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2 comments:

  1. Tom BrownJanuary 9, 2015 at 11:33 AM

    Congratulations on a great year Jason!... I've gotten way behind, but I do stop by on occasion to see what's new (though I haven't left a comment in a while. How was your vacation?

    On another topic, I thought of you when I read this non-econ article. Have you seen it?:

    https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jason SmithJanuary 9, 2015 at 1:58 PM

      Thanks. And the vacation was fun -- spent some time in London did a road trip around the entire UK (except for Northern Ireland).

      I had seen the article via Tyler Cowen -- I left some comments at the link below, including a link to a paper that had a more explicit mechanism talking about the same thing that came out a few years before:

      http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/12/friday-assorted-links-4.html

      Delete

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