Fall 2015 Assigned Readings: Blog Posts

By 2d class:

• On Having a Thesis
  
• The Economist on the End of Cars as We Know Them
  
• Jessica Hammer: The World Poverty Situation is Better Than You Think
  
• Joseph Simon: Detroit Continues Its Comeback
  
• Hojoon Kim: Will Mobile Payment Apps Replace Cash in the Near Future?
  
• Dan Miller: Penny Wise and Pound Foolish
  
• There’s One Key Difference Between Kids Who Excel at Math and Those Who Don’t
• Joshua Foer on Deliberate Practice
  
• Daniel Coyle on Deliberate Practice
  
• Shane Parrish on Deliberate Practice
  

By 3d class:

• How Subordinating Paper Currency to Electronic Money Can End Recessions and End Inflation
  
• Radical Banking: The World Needs New Tools to Fight the Next Recession
  
• Japan should be trying out a next-generation monetary policy
  
• An Underappreciated Power of a Central Bank: Determining the Relative Prices between the Various Forms of Money Under Its Jurisdiction
  
• How to Turn Every Child into a “Math Person”
  

By 4th class:

• Larry Summers: The Fed Looks Set to Make a Dangerous Mistake by Raising Rates this Year
  
• The Coming Transformation of Education: Degrees Won’t Matter Anymore, Skills Will
  
• Jonathan Wai: The Case for Starting Statistics Education in Kindergarten
  
• The Logarithmic Harmony of Percent Changes and Growth Rates
  

By 5th class:

• For the First Time, Someone on the US Monetary Policy Committee Is Recommending a Negative Target Rate
  
• Alex Rosenberg Interviews Miles Kimball for CNBC: Could Negative Interest Rates Be Next on the Fed’s Policy Menu?
  
• Bank of England Chief Economist Andrew Haldane Explains How to Break Through the Zero Lower Bound
  

By 6th class:

• International Finance: A Primer
• America’s Big Monetary Policy Mistake: How Negative Interest Rates Could Have Stopped the Great Recession in Its Tracks
  
• Governments Can and Should Beat Bitcoin at Its Own Game
  

By 7th class:

• Balance Sheet Monetary Policy: A Primer
  
• Trillions and Trillions: Getting Used to Balance Sheet Monetary Policy
  
• Is Monetary Policy Thinking in Thrall to Wallace Neutrality?
  
• “Wallace Neutrality” on Wikipedia
  

By 8th class:

• Could the UK Be the First Country to Adopt Electronic Money?
  
• The Swiss National Bank Means Business with Its Negative Rates
  
• Swiss Pioneers! The Swiss as the Vanguard for Negative Interest Rates
  

By 9th class:

• Mike Konczal: What Constrains the Federal Reserve? An Interview with Joseph Gagnon
• The supplysideliberal Review of the FOMC Monetary Policy Statement: June 20th, 2012
• Justin Wolfers on the 6/20/2012 FOMC Statement
• Fed Transparency and Obscurantism
• Joe Gagnon on the Internal Struggles of the Federal Reserve Board
• Let’s Have an End to “End the Fed!”

By 10th class:

• John Taylor is Wrong: The Fed is Not Causing Another Recession
• Contra John Taylor

By 11th class:

• Ann Saphir on How a Fed Inflation Hawk Changed His Mind
• Greg Mankiw on the Economy, Fed
• Read His Lips: Why Ben Bernanke Had to Set Firm Targets for the Economy
• Four More Years! The US Economy Needs a Third Term of Ben Bernanke
• Three Big Questions for Larry Summers, Janet Yellen, and Anyone Else Who Wants to Head the Fed

By the Midterm

• The Costs and Benefits of Repealing the Zero Lower Bound … and Then Lowering the Long-Run Inflation Target
• Janet Yellen is Hardly a Dove—She Knows the US Economy Needs Some Unemployment
• Greg Robb: Fed Officials Seem Ready to Deploy Negative Interest Rates in Next Crisis
  
• Ben Bernanke on Trial
  
• The Economist Endorses Nominal GDP Targeting and Notes that the Zero Lower Bound is a Policy Choice, Not a Law of Nature
  

By 1st Class after Midterm

• Talk Ain’t Cheap: You Should Expect Overreaction When the Fed Makes a Mess of Explaining Its Plans
• Make No Mistake about the Taper—the Fed Wishes It Could Stimulate the Economy More
  
• Ben Bernanke on Why the Fed Has an Inflation Target of 2%
• Ben Bernanke: The Fed Does Less Monetary Stimulus Than It Thinks Is Warranted Because It Is Afraid of the Side Effects of Unconventional Tools
• David Beckworth—Monetary Policy at the Zero Lower Bound: 3 Quasi-Natural Experiments
• Symbol Wanted: Maybe Europe’s Unity Doesn’t Rest on Its Currency. Joint Mission to Mars, Anyone?

By 4th Class after Midterm

• Get Real: Robert Shiller’s Nobel Should Help the World Improve Imperfect Financial Markets
• Robert Shiller: Against the Efficient Markets Theory
  
• Robert Shiller on Eugene Fama
  
• John Cochrane: Gene Fama’s Efficient Markets Theory and Empirical Methods Thread Through All of Empirical Finance
  

By 5th Class after Midterm

• How to Avoid Another Nasdaq Meldown: Slow Down Trading (to Only 20 Times Per Second)
  
• Anat Admati, Martin Hellwig and John Cochrane on Bank Capital Requirements
  
• Why Equity Requirements for Financial Firms Should Be Dramatically Increased
  
• Negative Interest Rates and Financial Stability: Alexander Trentin Interviews Miles Kimball
  

By 6th Class after Midterm

• Why the US Needs Its Own Sovereign Wealth Fund
• How to Stabilize the Financial System and Make Money for US Taxpayers
  
• Miles’s First TV Interview: A US Sovereign Wealth Fund
  

By 7th Class after Midterm

• How Increasing Retirement Saving Could Give America More Balanced Trade
  

By 8th Class after Midterm

• The Costs and Benefits of Repealing the Zero Lower Bound … and Then Lowering the Long-Run Inflation Target
  

By 9th Class after Midterm

• The Arbitrage Pricing Theory as a Noise Trader Model
  

By 10th Class after Midterm

• Paul Krugman: Ricardo’s Difficult Idea
  

By Last Class

• The Wall Street Journal Gets It Right On Negative Interest Rate Policy, Thanks to Tommy Stubbington (including the linked Wall Street Journal Article)
  
• Why My Retirement Savings Accounts are Currently 100% in the Stock Market