Clint Ballinger

The emerged economy | The built economy Book:

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

There is a pervasive, annoyingly simplistic, & neverending online debate: Libertarian/free market vs socialism/communism, as if these are stark choices 1/

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

Policy instruments possess much lower dimensionality than the models used to justify them

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

Well worth a read -

“A Better Way to Think About International Trade”

https://t.co/0ssPHLFHdR

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

Two questions should make the mainstream much less confident about what it thinks it knows about interest-rate policy.

First, where is the evidence for the long-run characteristics of a stable rate environment?

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

@LMichk What is this from?

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

The profession has accumulated a vast literature on repricing.
It has accumulated much less evidence on the institutional and financial structure that emerges when repricing is absent.

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

Two questions should make the mainstream much less confident about what it thinks it knows about interest-rate policy.

First, where is the evidence for the long-run characteristics of a stable rate environment?

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

A literature organized around rate changes cannot automatically answer questions about the characteristics of a stable rate environment. And why are we so sure the movement itself isn't a major source of cost?

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

@mandylu @GilRGlover

[Vicky C Yang @VickyCYang]

Between 1985--2023, MIT's faculty grew 9%. Administrative staff grew 189%. 📈 Why? In new @PNASNews paper, we use dynamical system model to show administrative bloat can emerge without empire-building--just from well-intentioned problem-solving gone awry https://t.co/MZgGkxilZ2

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

trade and production constraints confused with monetary constraints.

These lead to policy that target the wrong issues

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

A sovereign bond is not one thing.
“The bond market" is an aggregation of distinct institutional, trade, reserve, collateral, and fiscal processes usually bundled together and often treated as a causal actor.

[Clint Ballinger @clintballinger]

There should be a “decomposition-first” methodology aimed at precise mechanisms instead of just more sophisticated labels.

We end up with liquidity stress misdiagnosed as solvency risk, settlement/collateral dynamics mistaken for investor sentiment, and crucially,

[Warren B. Mosler @wbmosler]

@wgoggin The tsy bonds are bought with money that wasn't going to be spent anyway, even if no new tsy bonds were sold.
That's why QE wasn't the least bit inflationary.

[Morten N. Støstad @MortenStostad]

A notable oversight in the U.S.-Europe debate about productivity: failing American institutions. Institutional quality is crucial for long-term growth, but is unlikely to be fully captured by current GDP/c. The GDP/c comparison is thus structurally biased in favor of America

[Victor 🇪🇺 @VeniVidi_Victor]

@joefrancis505 But does it not show that real GDP and it’s measurements are a lot less useful than generally acknowledged?

If we can’t answer clearly which countries are wealthier or have done better over the years, what use does it have?