Economists worth reading
Macroeconomics argued in public, by people who put numbers on claims and revisit them.
- Tyler Cowen Follow
- Noah Smith Follow
- Paul Krugman Follow
- Scott Sumner Follow
- Olivier Blanchard Follow
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- Noah Smith A lot of our discussions about merit, talent, and ability are going to look pretty silly in a decade or two
- Noah Smith The key to defeating a very large country is to realize that to the leaders of that country, domestic control will always be more important than external conquest. noahpinion.blog
- Paul Krugman Why Does Everyone Hate Trump’s Tariffs? The surprising political failure of protectionism
- Noah Smith I used to think the U.S. could gather a coalition of allies and outmatch Chinese power. I no longer think that's going to be possible. But China can still be beaten. noahpinion.blog
- Noah Smith How we can beat China The trick is to let them beat themselves.
- Noah Smith Trying to see if I can bully AI into telling me who would win in a fight between a groundhog and a woodchuck
- Noah Smith Who matters more?
- Noah Smith I believe in ineffective altruism, meaning that I'd nuke all y'all to give my rabbit 10 more minutes of happiness
- Noah Smith OK, DANG! mostly sucked, as expected -- >70% of the jokes didn't land and the characters were bitter unsympathetic parodies of 2010s-era NYC 30-somethings. But the final episode, where they visit their conservative Asian parents in rural Massachusetts, was GREAT! Quoting@NoahpinionOMG my girlfriend likes DANG! and she's making me watch it Help
- Noah Smith America: How dare trans athletes compete in women's sports?!! Japan: Hahahaha hold my beer Quoting@TrungTPhanHighlight package of a 52-year old Ichiro striking out Japan’s top high school girl baseball players wild. He legit does not give AF. Uses every pitch in his arsenal.
- Olivier Blanchard I realize I did not give the link to the full paper on ratings, debt and deficits. Here it is: imf.org
- Olivier Blanchard Reason for specifically citing open weight (and therefore Chinese LLMs, but not only Chinese) is that, even if they have built-in guardrails, somebody with the relevant knowledge can go in and remove them. In principle, harder to do with Anthropic or Open AI LLMs. Quoting@ojblanchard1A worrisome thought during the night: What Ted Kaczynski would have done, if he had had access to open weight chinese LLMs.
- Olivier Blanchard Ratings largely determine spreads. Yet, their construction remains largely a black box. Our paper assesses the relative importance of debt, deficits and country specific effects in the determination of these ratings. The evidence is at odds with a simple model of default: more importance of debt, less importance of forecast deficits, limited role of r-g, surprisingly large role of country effects. We are agnostic. The model may be too simple in some fundamental ways. Or the rating agencies may be using incorrect weights. Or a mix of the two... We hope the paper triggers a useful discussion. Quoting@int_mon_econSuper interesting! "Ratings, Debt, and Deficits: An Exploration" by Olivier J Blanchard, Daniel Leigh, and Prachi Mishra. "We look at the effects of debt and primary fiscal balances on sovereign credit ratings through the lens of a simple model. We find that the ratings differ from the implications…
- Olivier Blanchard A worrisome thought during the night: What Ted Kaczynski would have done, if he had had access to open weight chinese LLMs.
- Paul Krugman The power that comes from the ability to disrupt trade is a wasting asset and cannot be used indefinitely.
- Paul Krugman Neither China nor the United States is large enough to be an economic hegemon.
- Paul Krugman By PPP there are three economic superpowers—the United States, China, and the EU—with China clearly largest and the US and EU roughly co-equal.
- Noah Smith The most recent ANES shows White Americans with zero ingroup bias.
- Scott Sumner Adam Smith’s greatest insight? The Wealth of Nations at 250
- Paul Krugman The most obvious reason nations have stopped fearing Trump is the Iran war debacle.
- Paul Krugman Trump is globally hated but not feared, the opposite of where Machiavelli said a prince should be.
- Paul Krugman Foreign leaders have largely given up trying to placate Trump.
- Noah Smith AI taking over the internet is going to be fun.
- Noah Smith There is rot on the left that regular people should be warned about.
- Noah Smith Hasan Piker and Donald Trump are equally dumb and bad
- Noah Smith Export controls work, and claims that they merely make Chinese companies work harder or catch up are propaganda.
- Noah Smith A competent, empowered civil service that performs crucial government functions with in-house expertise is good.
- Noah Smith Japan is not usefully described as a Confucian society; the label is applied as a lazy racial category.
- Noah Smith AI will be as central to how the world is run and to humanity's future as industrial technology was from 1870 to 1970.
- Paul Krugman Fuels and our Money
- Paul Krugman Watch Me Live (Or probably not) But anyway, live streamed from link below
- Tyler Cowen Annie Lowrey on the Time Tax, Fraud, and Rationing by Paperwork
- Paul Krugman Conferencing, Day 1 Normal service resumes Friday
- Noah Smith The anti-American Right Bo French’s rightist movement is a dead end for our nation. Fortunately, it’s beatable.
- Tyler Cowen Much more research effort is needed on the economics of cyber risk.
- Tyler Cowen AI regulation proposals that do not address China issues specifically and forthrightly should be treated with suspicion.
- Tyler Cowen China declined U.S. nuclear-talk proposals in 2023 and broke off meaningful arms control talks.
- Tyler Cowen AI policy discussions should start with China rather than treating it as an afterthought.
- Tyler Cowen Cybersecurity-related risks warrant more pessimism than current market prices indicate.
- Tyler Cowen Relative to historical norms, the market is not pricing any major change in cybersecurity.
- Paul Krugman AI is transforming U.S. politics and has inspired more hate across a wider political spectrum than any other technology
- Paul Krugman Whether AI will transform the economy is still unsettled, with little evidence so far of massive job losses or soaring productivity growth
- Scott Sumner Don't mix fiscal and monetary policy They are very different policy tools
- Olivier Blanchard Let me stay away from personal remarks. As you kindly invited me to do so, I am happy to continue our exchange. Let me start by reproducing and then commenting on three remarks you make in your two recent tweets. “I know full well what justified the use of OATi in 1998, namely a lower interest rate since the investor takes on less risk. Except that today, with the international context and climate disruption making prices more volatile, the cost of these indexed bonds is rising.” My humble view: More volatile inflation makes inflation protected bonds more, not less attractive. “As such, I sta… Quoting@ericcoquerelPas de souci pour échanger des arguments avec vous @ojblanchard1 mais un tout petit peu moins de condescendance dans l’échange ne serait pas de trop 🔽. Le résultat des politiques économiques que vous avez soutenues depuis des années devrait, je pense, vous amener à un peu plus d’humilité. Je sais…
- Paul Krugman The MAGA Plot(s) to Destroy Humanity On AI and climate, it’s the same story of mass destruction
- Noah Smith Two missing pieces in the AI safety discussion We need to make skeptics properly scared. And we need to make CHINA properly scared.
- Tyler Cowen RCTs have the disadvantage of requiring too many things to be held constant and can miss longer-term adjustment benefits.
- Tyler Cowen Over time the allocation of humans to tasks will evolve so that more humans become more productive, not less.
- Olivier Blanchard i was going to write something, but Quentin beat me to it... Let me put it another way, so that Chairman Coquerel @ericcoquerel understands and corrects his statement. When a state issues nominal bonds (bonds that pay in euros), the real value of interest payments varies with inflation, creating risk for investors. So they require a higher interest rate to compensate for the risk. In issuing inflation protected bonds, the state eliminates the risk and thus is able to get a lower rate. This decreases the burden of the debt. This is good. Always happy to help the Chair of the Finance Committee… Quoting@QuentinVandewe2Est-ce que LFI organise un concours Lépine pour la théorie du complot la plus idiote sur la dette ? Après la Banque de France qui revendrait la dette en secret, Mélenchon découvre que l'État « vient de proposer de nouveau des titres indexés sur le capital et des intérêts compensant l'inflation ». U…
- Olivier Blanchard From Nicolas Dufrene's @nico_dufrene answer to Quentin @QuentinVandewe2 and me in Le Monde: "Et qui paie ? Seulement la banque centrale qui rémunère les réserves bancaires. Et encore, si l’on veut éviter de prolonger cette rémunération – la seule objection technique qui subsiste une fois les autres écartées –, une solution existe : la banque centrale peut simplement cesser de les rémunérer et augmenter les réserves obligatoires. Blanchard et Vandeweyer le reconnaissent, mais qualifient cela de « répression financière ». Qu’on en juge : les banques perdraient alors une rémunération injustifiée… And who pays? Only the central bank, which remunerates bank reserves. And even then, if we want to avoid prolonging this remuneration – the only technical objection that remains once the others are dismissed – a solution exists: the central bank can simply stop remunerating them and increase mandatory reserves. Blanchard and Vandeweyer acknowledge this, but call it "financial repression." Make of that what you will: banks would then lose an unjustified remuneration…
- Noah Smith Get the Middle East out of my politics!
- Olivier Blanchard A propos nothing (or maybe not). First, an oped arguing the earth is flat. Journalists, who smell a good fight, set up a debate. They invite the flat earth guy and find a round earth one willing to come and debate. The flat earth guy explains that, if the earth was round, people on the other side would be walking upward down or would fall. This is just common sense. The round earth guy explains that there is something called gravity, and so this is not what happens. The flat earth guy says that this is all high brow academic stuff, and common sense should rule the day. Anyway, he says, there…
- Scott Sumner A cheesehead’s view of the world Am I a regional thinker?
- Tyler Cowen Jared Diamond on Leaders, Luck, and Irreplaceability
- Noah Smith Liberalism needs a new philosophy of immigration We need to make a principled stand instead of a tactical retreat.
- Noah Smith AI keeps stubbornly refusing to take our jobs Happy Labor Day!! Your labor is still valuable.
- Scott Sumner It's the fun Collapsing fertility in four easy steps
- Noah Smith America is still beating China in the AI race The U.S. is staying ahead, though the costs of that lead are still unknown.
- Tyler Cowen Michael Moritz on Origin Stories, Exile, and Obsessive Curiosity
- Scott Sumner What is an undervalued currency? Focus on fundamentals, not gimmicks
- Scott Sumner August 2026 links Plus brief thoughts on Jackson Hole
- Scott Sumner Say’s Law in China Why China needs to produce much more output
- Scott Sumner On the bigness of China How international borders distort our thinking
- Tyler Cowen Luke Burgis on Mimetic Desire, Catholicism, and the Age of Social Contagion
- Noah Smith L&G Recommends
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- Noah Smith Nari Loved
- Noah Smith Horsefeather Liked
- Noah Smith Mini Potstickers Liked
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- Tyler Cowen Daron Acemoglu on Liberalism, Automation, and the Educated Elite
- Tyler Cowen Wireheads: An Unnatural History of Technology in the Brain Loved
- Tyler Cowen From the Front Line, Stalingrad-Treblinka-Berlin 1941-1945 Loved
- Tyler Cowen Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season Recommends
- Tyler Cowen Nadja Mixed on
- Tyler Cowen Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire Loved
- Tyler Cowen Julia Ioffe on Russian Women, Missing Men, and the Roots of Autocracy
- Tyler Cowen Andrew Graham-Dixon on Vermeer, a Forgotten Sect, and Underrated Artists
- Tyler Cowen Chase Koch on Principles, Music, and Overcoming Entropy
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