In past articles I have commented on the economic growth of the United States and the languishing European economy. Bottom line, in the United States measures have been taken since 2008, while Europe has mostly sat there twiddling its thumbs. Nevertheless, some experts remain skeptical, asking: Is the United States really growing because of its improved […]
Don’t Trust What Economists Tell You
Because we economists tend to view reality through the lens of economic models, but I did enjoy one of John H. Cochrane’s comments in his blog “Macro debates, the oped.” For quite some time now, due to the recent crisis, I have been experiencing a lot of hesitation about these model-filtered visions. Cochrane, a University […]
Is Spanish Government reformism delivering?
Does the current economic policy in Spain help or impede the recovery and medium and long-run growth prospects? Together with a group of eight IESE experts and six of some of the most prominent Spanish economists, we have developed the Reform Monitor, an assessment of the performance of the Spanish economy; the adequacy of the […]
Squaring the Circle: Growth, Employment and Inequality
I need to confess to the reader that I have problems, but not solutions. Specifically, there are three problems. First, the rate of growth is decreasing in several countries: certainly in Europe, but also in Japan (my generation can still recall the years of the Japanese “miracle”), in the U.S. (what today is considered growth […]
Economics should not be mechanistic
We shouldn’t be mechanistic, but sometimes we become a bit like that. Sometimes we talk about “envy” that economists feel toward physics, a science without shocks, without exceptions. We often wish economics were like that. Or at least this is what the public, politicians and the media want from us. What will happen, they ask […]
