The shocking onslaught of the Russian military into the Ukraine, and Kiev (or Kyiv) in particular, prompts thoughts of what relationship has obtained, over the long run of history, between Russia and Ukraine. Some of the topics associated with this historical matter can be difficult...
Robert A. Mundell, the 1999 Nobel Prizewinner in economics and in an easy argument the greatest economist of the last several generations, died April 4 in his beloved Italy at the age of 88....
It’s a fact: economists know that monetary policy caused the Great Depression. The economy of the late 1920s was overheated with a bloated stock market—caused by excessive tax cuts for the rich, unsupervised banks and overleveraged credit. The inevitable reckoning came at the hands of...
In today’s world of political economics, the topic of international trade is only large enough to accommodate two points of view: one that believes in free trade and one that believes in protectionist policies. You’re either in one group or the other. Both pure trade...
The voluble discussion over the prospective nomination of Stephen Moore to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System was undisciplined in many ways, not least in its characterization of the monetary history during the crucial decade of the 1980s. Bloggers and reporters, especially at the...
Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker all but advocated a price rule for monetary policy beginning in the latter half of 1982. He despaired of the major options to a price-rule, namely quantity and interest-rate targeting, and urged that instead, the exchange value of the dollar...
Currency boards have attracted increasing interest in recent years—and months—because signs of another international monetary crisis are beginning to gather. The prevailing monetary system does not comport with the actual monetary order of the world. Currency boards can, on all important criteria, close the currently...
The story of how the Laffer Curve got its name isn’t one of the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. It began with a 1978 article published by Jude Wanniski in The Public Interest entitled, “Taxes, Revenues, and the ‘Laffer Curve.’” As recounted by Wanniski...
