The case for GDP plus GDD
Richard Parker
Richard Parker is an Oxford-trained economist, teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and is the biographer of John Kenneth Galbraith.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Greece on the Razor’s Edge
Bailing out Greece is politically impossible—it’s also increasingly necessary.
Posted inAmerica and the World
Election 2014: Surge or Theft?
How dark money and voter disenfranchisement combined in a toxic brew that resulted in the lowest voter turnout in more than 70 years, hampering whatever chance Democrats had to win.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
How They Wrecked the Economy
During a break at a recent conference on the future of economics, I was carrying the galleys of Jeff Madrick’s new book, Age of Greed, when I got into a conversation with Paul Volcker. At 83, the former Fed chairman is a bit hunched but still sharp as an old hawk. Glancing at the book’s […]
Posted inDispatches
Ken
“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.” –John Maynard Keynes * * * John Kenneth Galbraith loved words. Above all, he loved words he and others wrote about him. On this, “Galbraith’s First Law” left no confusion: “Modesty is a vastly overrated […]
Posted inSpecial Report
On God and Democrats
Shortly before the 2000 presidential race started, Gertrude Himmelfarb, the aging Athena of neoconservatism, found herself struggling to express what she felt were the core values differences between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. What she came up with was that America had become “one nation, two cultures.” “One is religious, puritanical, family-centered, and somewhat […]
Posted inFeatures
A General Theory of Keynes
John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom, 1937-1946 By Robert Skidelsky, Viking, 580 pages, $34.95. John Maynard Keynes was an economist, a policyadviser tothe British government (and, at times, a coruscating critic), an influentialfigurein the Liberal Party, an intimate member of the Bloomsbury Group, a prolificjournalist of opinion, a patron of the arts, a gentleman farmer, […]
Posted inFeatures
Progressive Politics and, uh, …God
When I tell politically progressive friends that I’ve started teaching a course at Harvard about religion’s impact on American politics and public policy, I usually face one of two responses. The first is an awkward silence–and a quick change of subject. The second is also awkward but comes with an anxiously knowing, usually sotto voce, […]
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Screening a La Carte
Instead of a single TV rating system, why not let the PTA and the Christian Coalition — and anyone else — create their own?
Posted inBooks
Can Economists Save Economics?
Economics is what economists do. –Jacob Viner T he trouble with Professor Viner’s delicate evasion is that economists no longer agree about what they do, or even whether it is all worth doing. Critics outside the profession long faulted economists for a host of sins: their deductive method, their formalism, their over-reliance on arcane algebra, […]