Failure to enact health care reform will be costly: The cost of not enacting health care reform, by Linda J. Bilmes and Rosemarie Day, Commentary, Boston Globe: Much of the health care debate is focused on whether the country can...

Daniel Little wonders what accounts for the spontaneous occurrence of cooperation and collective action: Assurance game, by Daniel Little: How does a group of people succeed in coming together to contribute to a collective project over an extended period of...

Nick Rowe says central banks hold assets for three reasons: Why do central banks have assets?, by Nick Rowe: If you look at the balance sheet of a central bank, you will see it has liabilities (mostly currency) and assets...

In Health Care Bills, a Catalyst for Salaried Doctors - Robert Frank - NYTimes.com Trade spat heating up - Free exchange Dogs verus SUVs - Salon.com Towards a Monetarist theory of Neo-Chartalism - Worthwhile Canadian Initiative Decoupling and the future...

[enlarge]Let's see, should I sit in my hotel room and blog to make up for not writing much over the last few days, or go wander around Munich. See ya.

What’s Wrong with Modern Macroeconomics? CESifo Conference Centre, Munich 6 - 7 November 2009 Programme Friday, 6 November 2009 Session I Chair: Gerhard Illing 09:00 – 09:50 The Roles of Ideology, Institutions, Politics and Economic Knowledge in Forecasting Macroeconomic Developments...

Martin Feldstein joins those arguing that China must let the value of the renminbi rise: Why the renminbi has to rise to address imbalances, by Martin Feldstein, Commentary, Financial Times: Global leaders have agreed reducing global imbalances is a priority....

Daniel Little looks at different approaches to "understanding society": Demystifying social knowledge, by Daniel Little: There seem to be a couple of fundamentally different approaches to the problem of "understanding society." I'm not entirely happy with these labels, but perhaps...

Good news for those worried about inflation: A new measure of inflation expectations indicates that "longer-term inflation expectations remain near historic lows, in the neighborhood of 2 percent": A New Approach to Gauging Inflation Expectations, by Joseph G. Haubrich, Economic...

Yet Another Budget Commission? - Forbes.com Why not a WPA? - Paul Krugman Nominally misguided (wonkish) - Paul Krugman 9.5% productivity growth. How unusual? - Antonio Fatas What is systemic risk, anyway? - macroblog

The failure to give the economy the fiscal stimulus it needs may be costly Democrats: Obama Faces His Anzio, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Remember those Republican boasts that they would turn health care into President Obama’s Waterloo? Well,...

Kenneth Rogoff doesn't expect a "sustained sharp" worldwide recovery: The Great Contraction of 2008-2009, by Kenneth Rogoff, Commentary, Project Syndicate: A popular view among economic forecasters and market bulls is that “the deeper the recession, the quicker the recovery.” They...

Globalization from a different perspective: A modern world-system?, by Daniel Little: Immanuel Wallerstein created a huge stir in the 1970s with the publication of The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century...

Has internet search technology achieved its promise of frictionless commerce? Search Technologies and Retail Competition, by Glenn Ellison,* NBER Reporter: When the Internet first came into wide consumer use, one heard a lot about the promise of “frictionless commerce.” New...

How to fill the gaps left by dollar decline - FT.com Time for a debate on immigration - Martin Wolf Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Down in the Recession. So, Then, Is “Green GDP” Up? - Jeff Frankel Winners and Losers...