The FT’s Martin Wolf: getting it wrong about intangibles The Financial Times’ distinguished economics commentator Martin Wolf lauded in a piece published on 29 November a new book about intangible assets by Jonathan Haskel of Imperial College and Stian Westlake…
Tag: FT
Why Russell Brand may be better at economics than economists
British comedian and actor Russell Brand has written a book named Revolution. It was published to general derision by reviewers last week. In the past 12 months, he’s guest-edited the British political weekly The New Statesman, appeared on the BBC’s…
GDP is more than imperfect; it’s wrong for economies where services dominate
An article by David Pilling in last weekend’s FT Magazine reported on expert views that gross domestic product (GDP), the most popular way of measuring output, was misleading. “GDP is a made-up entity,” Pilling quoted economist Diane Coyle as saying.…
More growth or more value-creation? Conventional economics has no answer
A feature in the Financial Times (FT) on 30 June asked whether it was any longer possible for the US economy to increase productivity and, consequently, long-term economic growth per capita. “For the past 120 years, …output per head of…
Piketty challenges FT in data row
Thomas Piketty has delivered a rebuttal to the FT’s claim he improperly manipulated data and drew wrong conclusions about the concentration of wealth in Capital in the 21st Century. In a technical appendix posted on his website on 28 May,…
Storm builds over use of data by Piketty
The controversy about Thomas Piketty’s use of data in Capital in the 21st Century is producing more heat than light. It started on 23 May when the FT reported that figures used by Piketty had been manipulated and didn’t produce…
Top professor says you can’t take ideology out of economics
Any attempt to develop ideology-free economics will fail and pragmatism won’t help the profession, according to professor Allen J Scott of the University of California. “…all forms of economic knowledge, from complex formal models to simple empirical descriptions, are always…
Piketty’s data get a well-deserved mauling from the FT
The Financial Times (FT) has precipitated a long-anticipated storm about the validity of the statistical methodology used by Thomas Piketty to support his argument in Capital in the 21st Century for an increase in taxation on the very wealthy. FT…
If price doesn’t work in service economies, you need a robust theory of value
On Wednesay, a comment by Professor John Kay in the FT about the frustration among students of economics called for the profession to address key issues rather than technical models. But what is the key issue economics should address? Followers…