Economics
Economies by region  Africa · North America South America · Asia Europe · Oceania
General categories
Microeconomics · Macroeconomics History of economic thought Methodology · Heterodox approaches
Technical methods
Mathematical · Econometrics Experimental · National accounting
Fields and subfields
Behavioral · Cultural · Evolutionary Growth · Development · History International · Economic systems Monetary and Financial economics Public and Welfare economics Health · Education · Welfare Population · Labour · Personnel Managerial · Computational Business · Information · Game theory Industrial organization · Law Agricultural · Natural resource Environmental · Ecological Urban · Rural · Regional · Geography
Lists
Journals · Publications Categories · Topics · Economists
The economy: concept and history
Business and Economics Portal
This box: view talk edit

In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.^[1] When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a loss of real value in the internal medium of exchange and unit of account in the economy.^[2][3] A chief measure of price inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in a general price index (normally the Consumer Price Index) over time.^[4]

Inflation's effects on an economy are various and can be simultaneously positive and negative. Negative effects of inflation include a decrease in the real value of money and other monetary items over time, uncertainty over future inflation which may discourage investment and savings, and if inflation is rapid enough, shortages of goods as consumers begin hoarding out of concern that prices will increase in the future. Positive effects include ensuring central banks can adjust nominal interest rates (intended to mitigate recessions),^[5] and encouraging investment in non-monetary capital projects.

Economists generally agree that high rates of inflation and hyperinflation are caused by an excessive growth of the money supply.^[6] Views on which factors determine low to moderate rates of inflation are more varied. Low or moderate inflation may be attributed to fluctuations in real demand for goods and services, or changes in available supplies such as during scarcities, as well as to growth in the money supply. However, the consensus view is that a long sustained period of inflation is caused by money supply growing faster than the rate of economic growth.^[7][8]

Today, most economists favor a low, steady rate of inflation.^[9] Low (as opposed to zero or negative) inflation reduces the severity of economic recessions by enabling the labor market to adjust more quickly in a downturn, and reduces the risk that a liquidity trap prevents monetary policy from stabilizing the economy.^[10] The task of keeping the rate of inflation low and stable is usually given to monetary authorities. Generally, these monetary authorities are the central banks that control monetary policy through the setting of interest rates, through open market operations, and through the setting of banking reserve requirements.^[11]

History[link]

Annual inflation rates in the United States from 1666 to 2004.

Increases in the quantity of money or in the overall money supply (or debasement of the means of exchange) have occurred in many different societies throughout history, changing with different forms of money used.^[12][13] For instance, when gold was used as currency, the government could collect gold coins, melt them down, mix them with other metals such a silver, copper or lead, and reissue them at the same nominal value. By diluting the gold with other metals, the government could issue more coins without also needing to increase the amount of gold used to make them. When the cost of each coin is lowered in this way, the government profits from an increase in seigniorage.^[14] This practice would increase the money supply but at the same time the relative value of each coin would be lowered. As the relative value of the coins becomes lower, consumers would need to give more coins in exchange for the same goods and services as before. These goods and services would experience a price increase as the value of each coin is reduced.^[15]

Historically, infusions of gold or silver into an economy also led to inflation. From the second half of the 15th century to the first half of the 17th, Western Europe experienced a major inflationary cycle referred to as the "price revolution",^[16][17] with prices on average rising perhaps sixfold over 150 years. This was largely caused by the sudden influx of gold and silver from the New World into Habsburg Spain.^[18] The silver spread throughout a previously cash-starved Europe and caused widespread inflation.^[19][20] Demographic factors also contributed to upward pressure on prices, with European population growth after depopulation caused by the Black Death pandemic.

By the nineteenth century, economists categorized three separate factors that cause a rise or fall in the price of goods: a change in the value or production costs of the good, a change in the price of money which then was usually a fluctuation in the commodity price of the metallic content in the currency, and currency depreciation resulting from an increased supply of currency relative to the quantity of redeemable metal backing the currency. Following the proliferation of private banknote currency printed during the American Civil War, the term "inflation" started to appear as a direct reference to the currency depreciation that occurred as the quantity of redeemable banknotes outstripped the quantity of metal available for their redemption. At that time, the term inflation referred to the devaluation of the currency, and not to a rise in the price of goods.^[21]

This relationship between the over-supply of banknotes and a resulting depreciation in their value was noted by earlier classical economists such as David Hume and David Ricardo, who would go on to examine and debate what effect a currency devaluation (later termed monetary inflation) has on the price of goods (later termed price inflation, and eventually just inflation).^[22]

The adoption of fiat currency (paper money) by many countries, from the 18th century onwards, made much larger variations in the supply of money possible. Since then, huge increases in the supply of paper money have taken place in a number of countries, producing hyperinflations – episodes of extreme inflation rates much higher than those observed in earlier periods of commodity money. The hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic of Germany is a notable example.

Related definitions[link]

The term "inflation" originally referred to increases in the amount of money in circulation, and some economists still use the word in this way. However, most economists today use the term "inflation" to refer to a rise in the price level. An increase in the money supply may be called monetary inflation, to distinguish it from rising prices, which may also for clarity be called 'price inflation'.^[23] Economists generally agree that in the long run, inflation is caused by increases in the money supply.^[24]

Other economic concepts related to inflation include: deflation – a fall in the general price level; disinflation – a decrease in the rate of inflation; hyperinflation – an out-of-control inflationary spiral; stagflation – a combination of inflation, slow economic growth and high unemployment; and reflation – an attempt to raise the general level of prices to counteract deflationary pressures.

Since there are many possible measures of the price level, there are many possible measures of price inflation. Most frequently, the term "inflation" refers to a rise in a broad price index representing the overall price level for goods and services in the economy. The Consumer Price Index (CPI), the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCEPI) and the GDP deflator are some examples of broad price indices. However, "inflation" may also be used to describe a rising price level within a narrower set of assets, goods or services within the economy, such as commodities (including food, fuel, metals), financial assets (such as stocks, bonds and real estate), services (such as entertainment and health care), or labor. The Reuters-CRB Index (CCI), the Producer Price Index, and Employment Cost Index (ECI) are examples of narrow price indices used to measure price inflation in particular sectors of the economy. Core inflation is a measure of inflation for a subset of consumer prices that excludes food and energy prices, which rise and fall more than other prices in the short term. The Federal Reserve Board pays particular attention to the core inflation rate to get a better estimate of long-term future inflation trends overall.^[25]

Measures[link]

CPI inflation (year-on-year) in the United States from 1914 to 2010.

Inflation is usually estimated by calculating the inflation rate of a price index, usually the Consumer Price Index.^[26] The Consumer Price Index measures prices of a selection of goods and services purchased by a "typical consumer".^[4] The inflation rate is the percentage rate of change of a price index over time.

For instance, in January 2007, the U.S. Consumer Price Index was 202.416, and in January 2008 it was 211.080. The formula for calculating the annual percentage rate inflation in the CPI over the course of 2007 is

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \left(\frac{211.080-202.416}{202.416}\right)\times100=4.28%

The resulting inflation rate for the CPI in this one year period is 4.28%, meaning the general level of prices for typical U.S. consumers rose by approximately four percent in 2007.^[27]

Other widely used price indices for calculating price inflation include the following:

• Producer price indices (PPIs) which measures average changes in prices received by domestic producers for their output. This differs from the CPI in that price subsidization, profits, and taxes may cause the amount received by the producer to differ from what the consumer paid. There is also typically a delay between an increase in the PPI and any eventual increase in the CPI. Producer price index measures the pressure being put on producers by the costs of their raw materials. This could be "passed on" to consumers, or it could be absorbed by profits, or offset by increasing productivity. In India and the United States, an earlier version of the PPI was called the Wholesale Price Index.
• Commodity price indices, which measure the price of a selection of commodities. In the present commodity price indices are weighted by the relative importance of the components to the "all in" cost of an employee.
• Core price indices: because food and oil prices can change quickly due to changes in supply and demand conditions in the food and oil markets, it can be difficult to detect the long run trend in price levels when those prices are included. Therefore most statistical agencies also report a measure of 'core inflation', which removes the most volatile components (such as food and oil) from a broad price index like the CPI. Because core inflation is less affected by short run supply and demand conditions in specific markets, central banks rely on it to better measure the inflationary impact of current monetary policy.

Other common measures of inflation are:

• GDP deflator is a measure of the price of all the goods and services included in gross domestic product (GDP). The US Commerce Department publishes a deflator series for US GDP, defined as its nominal GDP measure divided by its real GDP measure.
• Regional inflation The Bureau of Labor Statistics breaks down CPI-U calculations down to different regions of the US.
• Historical inflation Before collecting consistent econometric data became standard for governments, and for the purpose of comparing absolute, rather than relative standards of living, various economists have calculated imputed inflation figures. Most inflation data before the early 20th century is imputed based on the known costs of goods, rather than compiled at the time. It is also used to adjust for the differences in real standard of living for the presence of technology.
• Asset price inflation is an undue increase in the prices of real or financial assets, such as stock (equity) and real estate. While there is no widely accepted index of this type, some central bankers have suggested that it would be better to aim at stabilizing a wider general price level inflation measure that includes some asset prices, instead of stabilizing CPI or core inflation only. The reason is that by raising interest rates when stock prices or real estate prices rise, and lowering them when these asset prices fall, central banks might be more successful in avoiding bubbles and crashes in asset prices.^{[dubious – discuss]}

Issues in measuring[link]

Measuring inflation in an economy requires objective means of differentiating changes in nominal prices on a common set of goods and services, and distinguishing them from those price shifts resulting from changes in value such as volume, quality, or performance. For example, if the price of a 10 oz. can of corn changes from $0.90 to $1.00 over the course of a year, with no change in quality, then this price difference represents inflation. This single price change would not, however, represent general inflation in an overall economy. To measure overall inflation, the price change of a large "basket" of representative goods and services is measured. This is the purpose of a price index, which is the combined price of a "basket" of many goods and services. The combined price is the sum of the weighted average prices of items in the "basket". A weighted price is calculated by multiplying the unit price of an item to the number of those items the average consumer purchases. Weighted pricing is a necessary means to measuring the impact of individual unit price changes on the economy's overall inflation. The Consumer Price Index, for example, uses data collected by surveying households to determine what proportion of the typical consumer's overall spending is spent on specific goods and services, and weights the average prices of those items accordingly. Those weighted average prices are combined to calculate the overall price. To better relate price changes over time, indexes typically choose a "base year" price and assign it a value of 100. Index prices in subsequent years are then expressed in relation to the base year price.^[11] While comparing inflation measures for various periods one has to take into consideration the base effect as well.

Inflation measures are often modified over time, either for the relative weight of goods in the basket, or in the way in which goods and services from the present are compared with goods and services from the past. Over time, adjustments are made to the type of goods and services selected in order to reflect changes in the sorts of goods and services purchased by 'typical consumers'. New products may be introduced, older products disappear, the quality of existing products may change, and consumer preferences can shift. Both the sorts of goods and services which are included in the "basket" and the weighted price used in inflation measures will be changed over time in order to keep pace with the changing marketplace.^{[citation needed]}

Inflation numbers are often seasonally adjusted in order to differentiate expected cyclical cost shifts. For example, home heating costs are expected to rise in colder months, and seasonal adjustments are often used when measuring for inflation to compensate for cyclical spikes in energy or fuel demand. Inflation numbers may be averaged or otherwise subjected to statistical techniques in order to remove statistical noise and volatility of individual prices.^{[citation needed]}

When looking at inflation, economic institutions may focus only on certain kinds of prices, or special indices, such as the core inflation index which is used by central banks to formulate monetary policy.^{[citation needed]}

Most inflation indices are calculated from weighted averages of selected price changes. This necessarily introduces distortion, and can lead to legitimate disputes about what the true inflation rate is. This problem can be overcome by including all available price changes in the calculation, and then choosing the median value.^[28]

Effects[link]

General[link]

An increase in the general level of prices implies a decrease in the purchasing power of the currency. That is, when the general level of prices rises, each monetary unit buys fewer goods and services. The effect of inflation is not distributed evenly in the economy, and as a consequence there are hidden costs to some and benefits to others from this decrease in the purchasing power of money. For example, with inflation, lenders or depositors who are paid a fixed rate of interest on loans or deposits will lose purchasing power from their interest earnings, while their borrowers benefit. Individuals or institutions with cash assets will experience a decline in the purchasing power of their holdings. Increases in payments to workers and pensioners often lag behind inflation, especially for those with fixed payments. Increases in the price level (inflation) erode the real value of money (the functional currency) and other items with an underlying monetary nature.

Debtors who have debts with a fixed nominal rate of interest will see a reduction in the "real" interest rate as the inflation rate rises. The real interest on a loan is the nominal rate minus the inflation rate.The formula R = N-I approximates the correct answer as long as both the nominal interest rate and the inflation rate are small. The correct equation is r = n/i where r, n and i are expressed as ratios (e.g. 1.2 for +20%, 0.8 for −20%). As an example, when the inflation rate is 3%, a loan with a nominal interest rate of 5% would have a real interest rate of approximately 2%. Any unexpected increase in the inflation rate would decrease the real interest rate. Banks and other lenders adjust for this inflation risk either by including an inflation risk premium to fixed interest rate loans, or lending at an adjustable rate.

Negative[link]

High or unpredictable inflation rates are regarded as harmful to an overall economy. They add inefficiencies in the market, and make it difficult for companies to budget or plan long-term. Inflation can act as a drag on productivity as companies are forced to shift resources away from products and services in order to focus on profit and losses from currency inflation.^[11] Uncertainty about the future purchasing power of money discourages investment and saving.^[29] And inflation can impose hidden tax increases, as inflated earnings push taxpayers into higher income tax rates unless the tax brackets are indexed to inflation.

With high inflation, purchasing power is redistributed from those on fixed nominal incomes, such as some pensioners whose pensions are not indexed to the price level, towards those with variable incomes whose earnings may better keep pace with the inflation.^[11] This redistribution of purchasing power will also occur between international trading partners. Where fixed exchange rates are imposed, higher inflation in one economy than another will cause the first economy's exports to become more expensive and affect the balance of trade. There can also be negative impacts to trade from an increased instability in currency exchange prices caused by unpredictable inflation.

Cost-push inflation

High inflation can prompt employees to demand rapid wage increases, to keep up with consumer prices. In the cost-push theory of inflation, rising wages in turn can help fuel inflation. In the case of collective bargaining, wage growth will be set as a function of inflationary expectations, which will be higher when inflation is high. This can cause a wage spiral.^[30] In a sense, inflation begets further inflationary expectations, which beget further inflation.

Hoarding

People buy durable and/or non-perishable commodities and other goods as stores of wealth, to avoid the losses expected from the declining purchasing power of money, creating shortages of the hoarded goods.

Social unrest and revolts

Inflation can lead to massive demonstrations and revolutions. For example, inflation and in particular food inflation is considered as one of the main reasons that caused the 2010–2011 Tunisian revolution^[31] and the 2011 Egyptian revolution,^[32] according to many observators including Robert Zoellick,^[33] president of the World Bank. Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was also ousted after only 18 days of demonstrations, and protests soon spread in many countries of North Africa and Middle East.

Hyperinflation

If inflation gets totally out of control (in the upward direction), it can grossly interfere with the normal workings of the economy, hurting its ability to supply goods. Hyperinflation can lead to the abandonment of the use of the country's currency, leading to the inefficiencies of barter.

Allocative efficiency

A change in the supply or demand for a good will normally cause its relative price to change, signaling to buyers and sellers that they should re-allocate resources in response to the new market conditions. But when prices are constantly changing due to inflation, price changes due to genuine relative price signals are difficult to distinguish from price changes due to general inflation, so agents are slow to respond to them. The result is a loss of allocative efficiency.

Shoe leather cost

High inflation increases the opportunity cost of holding cash balances and can induce people to hold a greater portion of their assets in interest paying accounts. However, since cash is still needed in order to carry out transactions this means that more "trips to the bank" are necessary in order to make withdrawals, proverbially wearing out the "shoe leather" with each trip.

Menu costs

With high inflation, firms must change their prices often in order to keep up with economy-wide changes. But often changing prices is itself a costly activity whether explicitly, as with the need to print new menus, or implicitly.

Business cycles

According to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory, inflation sets off the business cycle. Austrian economists hold this to be the most damaging effect of inflation. According to Austrian theory, artificially low interest rates and the associated increase in the money supply lead to reckless, speculative borrowing, resulting in clusters of malinvestments, which eventually have to be liquidated as they become unsustainable.^[34]

Positive[link]

Labor-market adjustments

Nominal wages are slow to adjust downwards. This can lead to prolonged disequilibrium and high unemployment in the labor market. Since inflation allows real wages to fall even if nominal wages are kept constant, moderate inflation enables labor markets to reach equilibrium faster.^[35]

Room to maneuver

The primary tools for controlling the money supply are the ability to set the discount rate, the rate at which banks can borrow from the central bank, and open market operations, which are the central bank's interventions into the bonds market with the aim of affecting the nominal interest rate. If an economy finds itself in a recession with already low, or even zero, nominal interest rates, then the bank cannot cut these rates further (since negative nominal interest rates are impossible) in order to stimulate the economy – this situation is known as a liquidity trap. A moderate level of inflation tends to ensure that nominal interest rates stay sufficiently above zero so that if the need arises the bank can cut the nominal interest rate.^{[citation needed]}

Mundell–Tobin effect

The Nobel laureate Robert Mundell noted that moderate inflation would induce savers to substitute lending for some money holding as a means to finance future spending. That substitution would cause market clearing real interest rates to fall.^[36] The lower real rate of interest would induce more borrowing to finance investment. In a similar vein, Nobel laureate James Tobin noted that such inflation would cause businesses to substitute investment in physical capital (plant, equipment, and inventories) for money balances in their asset portfolios. That substitution would mean choosing the making of investments with lower rates of real return. (The rates of return are lower because the investments with higher rates of return were already being made before.)^[37] The two related effects are known as the Mundell–Tobin effect. Unless the economy is already overinvesting according to models of economic growth theory, that extra investment resulting from the effect would be seen as positive.

Instability with Deflation

Economist S.C. Tsaing noted that once substantial deflation is expected, two important effects will appear; both a result of money holding substituting for lending as a vehicle for saving.^[38] The first was that continually falling prices and the resulting incentive to hoard money will cause instability resulting from the likely increasing fear, while money hoards grow in value, that the value of those hoards are at risk, as people realize that a movement to trade those money hoards for real goods and assets will quickly drive those prices up. Any movement to spend those hoards "once started would become a tremendous avalanche, which could rampage for a long time before it would spend itself."^[39] Thus, a regime of long-term deflation is likely to be interrupted by periodic spikes of rapid inflation and consequent real economic disruptions. Moderate and stable inflation would avoid such a seesawing of price movements.

Financial Market Inefficiency with Deflation

The second effect noted by Tsaing is that when savers have substituted money holding for lending on financial markets, the role of those markets in channeling savings into investment is undermined. With nominal interest rates driven to zero, or near zero, from the competition with a high return money asset, there would be no price mechanism in whatever is left of those markets. With financial markets effectively euthanized, the remaining goods and physical asset prices would move in perverse directions. For example, an increased desire to save could not push interest rates further down (and thereby stimulate investment) but would instead cause additional money hoarding, driving consumer prices further down and making investment in consumer goods production thereby less attractive. Moderate inflation, once its expectation is incorporated into nominal interest rates, would give those interest rates room to go both up and down in response to shifting investment opportunities, or savers' preferences, and thus allow financial markets to function in a more normal fashion.

Causes[link]

The Bank of England, central bank of the United Kingdom, monitors causes and attempts to control inflation.

Historically, a great deal of economic literature was concerned with the question of what causes inflation and what effect it has. There were different schools of thought as to the causes of inflation. Most can be divided into two broad areas: quality theories of inflation and quantity theories of inflation. The quality theory of inflation rests on the expectation of a seller accepting currency to be able to exchange that currency at a later time for goods that are desirable as a buyer. The quantity theory of inflation rests on the quantity equation of money, that relates the money supply, its velocity, and the nominal value of exchanges. Adam Smith and David Hume proposed a quantity theory of inflation for money, and a quality theory of inflation for production.^{[citation needed]}

Currently, the quantity theory of money is widely accepted as an accurate model of inflation in the long run. Consequently, there is now broad agreement among economists that in the long run, the inflation rate is essentially dependent on the growth rate of money supply. However, in the short and medium term inflation may be affected by supply and demand pressures in the economy, and influenced by the relative elasticity of wages, prices and interest rates.^[24] The question of whether the short-term effects last long enough to be important is the central topic of debate between monetarist and Keynesian economists. In monetarism prices and wages adjust quickly enough to make other factors merely marginal behavior on a general trend-line. In the Keynesian view, prices and wages adjust at different rates, and these differences have enough effects on real output to be "long term" in the view of people in an economy.

Keynesian view[link]

Keynesian economic theory proposes that changes in money supply do not directly affect prices, and that visible inflation is the result of pressures in the economy expressing themselves in prices.

There are three major types of inflation, as part of what Robert J. Gordon calls the "triangle model":^[40]

• Demand-pull inflation is caused by increases in aggregate demand due to increased private and government spending, etc. Demand inflation is constructive to a faster rate of economic growth since the excess demand and favourable market conditions will stimulate investment and expansion.
• Cost-push inflation, also called "supply shock inflation," is caused by a drop in aggregate supply (potential output). This may be due to natural disasters, or increased prices of inputs. For example, a sudden decrease in the supply of oil, leading to increased oil prices, can cause cost-push inflation. Producers for whom oil is a part of their costs could then pass this on to consumers in the form of increased prices. Another example stems from unexpectedly high Insured Losses, either legitimate (catastrophes) or fraudulent (which might be particularly prevalent in times of recession).^{[citation needed]}
• Built-in inflation is induced by adaptive expectations, and is often linked to the "price/wage spiral". It involves workers trying to keep their wages up with prices (above the rate of inflation), and firms passing these higher labor costs on to their customers as higher prices, leading to a 'vicious circle'. Built-in inflation reflects events in the past, and so might be seen as hangover inflation.

Demand-pull theory states that the rate of inflation accelerates whenever aggregate demand is increased beyond the ability of the economy to produce (its potential output). Hence, any factor that increases aggregate demand can cause inflation.^[41] However, in the long run, aggregate demand can be held above productive capacity only by increasing the quantity of money in circulation faster than the real growth rate of the economy. Another (although much less common) cause can be a rapid decline in the demand for money, as happened in Europe during the Black Death, or in the Japanese occupied territories just before the defeat of Japan in 1945.

The effect of money on inflation is most obvious when governments finance spending in a crisis, such as a civil war, by printing money excessively. This sometimes leads to hyperinflation, a condition where prices can double in a month or less. Money supply is also thought to play a major role in determining moderate levels of inflation, although there are differences of opinion on how important it is. For example, Monetarist economists believe that the link is very strong; Keynesian economists, by contrast, typically emphasize the role of aggregate demand in the economy rather than the money supply in determining inflation. That is, for Keynesians, the money supply is only one determinant of aggregate demand.

Some Keynesian economists also disagree with the notion that central banks fully control the money supply, arguing that central banks have little control, since the money supply adapts to the demand for bank credit issued by commercial banks. This is known as the theory of endogenous money, and has been advocated strongly by post-Keynesians as far back as the 1960s. It has today become a central focus of Taylor rule advocates. This position is not universally accepted – banks create money by making loans, but the aggregate volume of these loans diminishes as real interest rates increase. Thus, central banks can influence the money supply by making money cheaper or more expensive, thus increasing or decreasing its production.

A fundamental concept in inflation analysis is the relationship between inflation and unemployment, called the Phillips curve. This model suggests that there is a trade-off between price stability and employment. Therefore, some level of inflation could be considered desirable in order to minimize unemployment. The Phillips curve model described the U.S. experience well in the 1960s but failed to describe the combination of rising inflation and economic stagnation (sometimes referred to as stagflation) experienced in the 1970s.

Thus, modern macroeconomics describes inflation using a Phillips curve that shifts (so the trade-off between inflation and unemployment changes) because of such matters as supply shocks and inflation becoming built into the normal workings of the economy. The former refers to such events as the oil shocks of the 1970s, while the latter refers to the price/wage spiral and inflationary expectations implying that the economy "normally" suffers from inflation. Thus, the Phillips curve represents only the demand-pull component of the triangle model.

Another concept of note is the potential output (sometimes called the "natural gross domestic product"), a level of GDP, where the economy is at its optimal level of production given institutional and natural constraints. (This level of output corresponds to the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment, NAIRU, or the "natural" rate of unemployment or the full-employment unemployment rate.) If GDP exceeds its potential (and unemployment is below the NAIRU), the theory says that inflation will accelerate as suppliers increase their prices and built-in inflation worsens. If GDP falls below its potential level (and unemployment is above the NAIRU), inflation will decelerate as suppliers attempt to fill excess capacity, cutting prices and undermining built-in inflation.^[42]

However, one problem with this theory for policy-making purposes is that the exact level of potential output (and of the NAIRU) is generally unknown and tends to change over time. Inflation also seems to act in an asymmetric way, rising more quickly than it falls. Worse, it can change because of policy: for example, high unemployment under British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher might have led to a rise in the NAIRU (and a fall in potential) because many of the unemployed found themselves as structurally unemployed (also see unemployment), unable to find jobs that fit their skills. A rise in structural unemployment implies that a smaller percentage of the labor force can find jobs at the NAIRU, where the economy avoids crossing the threshold into the realm of accelerating inflation.

Monetarist view[link]

Inflation is closely related to growth in money supply (using the M2 definition) over the long-run.

Monetarists believe the most significant factor influencing inflation or deflation is how fast the money supply grows or shrinks. They consider fiscal policy, or government spending and taxation, as ineffective in controlling inflation.^[43] According to the famous monetarist economist Milton Friedman, "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon."^[44] Some monetarists, however, will qualify this by making an exception for very short-term circumstances.

Monetarists assert that the empirical study of monetary history shows that inflation has always been a monetary phenomenon. The quantity theory of money, simply stated, says that any change in the amount of money in a system will change the price level. This theory begins with the equation of exchange:

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): MV = PQ

where

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): M

is the nominal quantity of money.

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): V

is the velocity of money in final expenditures;

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): P

is the general price level;

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): Q

is an index of the real value of final expenditures;

In this formula, the general price level is related to the level of real economic activity (Q), the quantity of money (M) and the velocity of money (V). The formula is an identity because the velocity of money (V) is defined to be the ratio of final nominal expenditure (Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): PQ ) to the quantity of money (M).

Monetarists assume that the velocity of money is unaffected by monetary policy (at least in the long run), and the real value of output is determined in the long run by the productive capacity of the economy. Under these assumptions, the primary driver of the change in the general price level is changes in the quantity of money. With exogenous velocity (that is, velocity being determined externally and not being influenced by monetary policy), the money supply determines the value of nominal output (which equals final expenditure) in the short run. In practice, velocity is not exogenous in the short run, and so the formula does not necessarily imply a stable short-run relationship between the money supply and nominal output. However, in the long run, changes in velocity are assumed to be determined by the evolution of the payments mechanism. If velocity is relatively unaffected by monetary policy, the long-run rate of increase in prices (the inflation rate) is equal to the long run growth rate of the money supply plus the exogenous long-run rate of velocity growth minus the long run growth rate of real output.^[7]

Unemployment[link]

A connection between inflation and unemployment has been drawn since the emergence of large scale unemployment in the 19th century, and connections continue to be drawn today. In Marxian economics, the unemployed serve as a reserve army of labour, which restrain wage inflation. In the 20th century, similar concepts in Keynesian economics include the NAIRU (Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment) and the Phillips curve.

Rational expectations theory[link]

Rational expectations theory holds that economic actors look rationally into the future when trying to maximize their well-being, and do not respond solely to immediate opportunity costs and pressures. In this view, while generally grounded in monetarism, future expectations and strategies are important for inflation as well.

A core assertion of rational expectations theory is that actors will seek to "head off" central-bank decisions by acting in ways that fulfill predictions of higher inflation. This means that central banks must establish their credibility in fighting inflation, or economic actors will make bets that the central bank will expand the money supply rapidly enough to prevent recession, even at the expense of exacerbating inflation. Thus, if a central bank has a reputation as being "soft" on inflation, when it announces a new policy of fighting inflation with restrictive monetary growth economic agents will not believe that the policy will persist; their inflationary expectations will remain high, and so will inflation. On the other hand, if the central bank has a reputation of being "tough" on inflation, then such a policy announcement will be believed and inflationary expectations will come down rapidly, thus allowing inflation itself to come down rapidly with minimal economic disruption.

Austrian view[link]

For more details on this topic, see The Austrian view of inflation and monetary inflation

The Austrian School asserts that inflation is an increase in the money supply, rising prices are merely consequences and this semantic difference is important in defining inflation.^[45] Austrians stress that inflation affects prices in various degree, i.e. that prices rise more sharply in some sectors than in other sectors of the economy. The reason for the disparity is that excess money will be concentrated to certain sectors, such as housing, stocks or health care. Because of this disparity, Austrians argue that the aggregate price level can be very misleading when observing the effects of inflation. Austrian economists measure inflation by calculating the growth of new units of money that are available for immediate use in exchange, that have been created over time.^[46][47][48]

Real bills doctrine[link]

Within the context of a fixed specie basis for money, one important controversy was between the quantity theory of money and the real bills doctrine (RBD). Within this context, quantity theory applies to the level of fractional reserve accounting allowed against specie, generally gold, held by a bank. Currency and banking schools of economics argue the RBD, that banks should also be able to issue currency against bills of trading, which is "real bills" that they buy from merchants. This theory was important in the 19th century in debates between "Banking" and "Currency" schools of monetary soundness, and in the formation of the Federal Reserve. In the wake of the collapse of the international gold standard post 1913, and the move towards deficit financing of government, RBD has remained a minor topic, primarily of interest in limited contexts, such as currency boards. It is generally held in ill repute today, with Frederic Mishkin, a governor of the Federal Reserve going so far as to say it had been "completely discredited."

The debate between currency, or quantity theory, and banking schools in Britain during the 19th century prefigures current questions about the credibility of money in the present. In the 19th century the banking school had greater influence in policy in the United States and Great Britain, while the currency school had more influence "on the continent", that is in non-British countries, particularly in the Latin Monetary Union and the earlier Scandinavia monetary union.

Anti-classical or backing theory[link]

Another issue associated with classical political economy is the anti-classical hypothesis of money, or "backing theory". The backing theory argues that the value of money is determined by the assets and liabilities of the issuing agency.^[49] Unlike the Quantity Theory of classical political economy, the backing theory argues that issuing authorities can issue money without causing inflation so long as the money issuer has sufficient assets to cover redemptions. There are very few backing theorists, making quantity theory the dominant theory explaining inflation.^{[citation needed]}

Controlling inflation[link]

A variety of policies have been used to control inflation.

Monetary policy[link]

The U.S. effective federal funds rate charted over fifty years.

Today the primary tool for controlling inflation is monetary policy. Most central banks are tasked with keeping their inter-bank lending rates at low levels, normally to a target rate around 2% to 3% per annum, and within a targeted low inflation range, somewhere from about 2% to 6% per annum. A low positive inflation is usually targeted, as deflationary conditions are seen as dangerous for the health of the economy.

There are a number of methods that have been suggested to control inflation. Central banks such as the U.S. Federal Reserve can affect inflation to a significant extent through setting interest rates and through other operations. High interest rates and slow growth of the money supply are the traditional ways through which central banks fight or prevent inflation, though they have different approaches. For instance, some follow a symmetrical inflation target while others only control inflation when it rises above a target, whether express or implied.

Monetarists emphasize keeping the growth rate of money steady, and using monetary policy to control inflation (increasing interest rates, slowing the rise in the money supply). Keynesians emphasize reducing aggregate demand during economic expansions and increasing demand during recessions to keep inflation stable. Control of aggregate demand can be achieved using both monetary policy and fiscal policy (increased taxation or reduced government spending to reduce demand).

Fixed exchange rates[link]

Under a fixed exchange rate currency regime, a country's currency is tied in value to another single currency or to a basket of other currencies (or sometimes to another measure of value, such as gold). A fixed exchange rate is usually used to stabilize the value of a currency, vis-a-vis the currency it is pegged to. It can also be used as a means to control inflation. However, as the value of the reference currency rises and falls, so does the currency pegged to it. This essentially means that the inflation rate in the fixed exchange rate country is determined by the inflation rate of the country the currency is pegged to. In addition, a fixed exchange rate prevents a government from using domestic monetary policy in order to achieve macroeconomic stability.

Under the Bretton Woods agreement, most countries around the world had currencies that were fixed to the US dollar. This limited inflation in those countries, but also exposed them to the danger of speculative attacks. After the Bretton Woods agreement broke down in the early 1970s, countries gradually turned to floating exchange rates. However, in the later part of the 20th century, some countries reverted to a fixed exchange rate as part of an attempt to control inflation. This policy of using a fixed exchange rate to control inflation was used in many countries in South America in the later part of the 20th century (e.g. Argentina (1991–2002), Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile).

Gold standard[link]

Under a gold standard, paper notes are convertible into pre-set, fixed quantities of gold.

The gold standard is a monetary system in which a region's common media of exchange are paper notes that are normally freely convertible into pre-set, fixed quantities of gold. The standard specifies how the gold backing would be implemented, including the amount of specie per currency unit. The currency itself has no innate value, but is accepted by traders because it can be redeemed for the equivalent specie. A U.S. silver certificate, for example, could be redeemed for an actual piece of silver.

The gold standard was partially abandoned via the international adoption of the Bretton Woods System. Under this system all other major currencies were tied at fixed rates to the dollar, which itself was tied to gold at the rate of $35 per ounce. The Bretton Woods system broke down in 1971, causing most countries to switch to fiat money – money backed only by the laws of the country.

According to Lawrence H. White, an F. A. Hayek Professor of Economic History “who values the Austrian tradition”^[50], economies based on the gold standard rarely experience inflation above 2 percent annually.^[51] However, historically, the U.S. saw inflation over 2% several times and a higher peak of inflation under the gold standard when compared to inflation after the gold standard.^[52] Under a gold standard, the long term rate of inflation (or deflation) would be determined by the growth rate of the supply of gold relative to total output.^[53] Critics argue that this will cause arbitrary fluctuations in the inflation rate, and that monetary policy would essentially be determined by gold mining.^[54][55]

Wage and price controls[link]

Another method attempted in the past have been wage and price controls ("incomes policies"). Wage and price controls have been successful in wartime environments in combination with rationing. However, their use in other contexts is far more mixed. Notable failures of their use include the 1972 imposition of wage and price controls by Richard Nixon. More successful examples include the Prices and Incomes Accord in Australia and the Wassenaar Agreement in the Netherlands.

In general wage and price controls are regarded as a temporary and exceptional measure, only effective when coupled with policies designed to reduce the underlying causes of inflation during the wage and price control regime, for example, winning the war being fought. They often have perverse effects, due to the distorted signals they send to the market. Artificially low prices often cause rationing and shortages and discourage future investment, resulting in yet further shortages. The usual economic analysis is that any product or service that is under-priced is overconsumed. For example, if the official price of bread is too low, there will be too little bread at official prices, and too little investment in bread making by the market to satisfy future needs, thereby exacerbating the problem in the long term.

Temporary controls may complement a recession as a way to fight inflation: the controls make the recession more efficient as a way to fight inflation (reducing the need to increase unemployment), while the recession prevents the kinds of distortions that controls cause when demand is high. However, in general the advice of economists is not to impose price controls but to liberalize prices by assuming that the economy will adjust and abandon unprofitable economic activity. The lower activity will place fewer demands on whatever commodities were driving inflation, whether labor or resources, and inflation will fall with total economic output. This often produces a severe recession, as productive capacity is reallocated and is thus often very unpopular with the people whose livelihoods are destroyed (see creative destruction).

Cost-of-living allowance[link]

The real purchasing-power of fixed payments is eroded by inflation unless they are inflation-adjusted to keep their real values constant. In many countries, employment contracts, pension benefits, and government entitlements (such as social security) are tied to a cost-of-living index, typically to the consumer price index.^[56] A cost-of-living allowance (COLA) adjusts salaries based on changes in a cost-of-living index. Salaries are typically adjusted annually in low inflation economies. During hyperinflation they are adjusted more often.^[56] They may also be tied to a cost-of-living index that varies by geographic location if the employee moves.

Annual escalation clauses in employment contracts can specify retroactive or future percentage increases in worker pay which are not tied to any index. These negotiated increases in pay are colloquially referred to as cost-of-living adjustments or cost-of-living increases because of their similarity to increases tied to externally determined indexes. Many economists and compensation analysts consider the idea of predetermined future "cost of living increases" to be misleading for two reasons: (1) For most recent periods in the industrialized world, average wages have increased faster than most calculated cost-of-living indexes, reflecting the influence of rising productivity and worker bargaining power rather than simply living costs, and (2) most cost-of-living indexes are not forward-looking, but instead compare current or historical data.^{citation required}

See also[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Abel, Andrew; Bernanke, Ben (2005). Macroeconomics (5th ed.). Pearson 
• Barro, Robert J. (1997). Macroeconomics. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. p. 895. ISBN 0-262-02436-5 
• Blanchard, Olivier (2000). Macroeconomics (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-013306-X 
• Mankiw, N. Gregory (2002). Macroeconomics (5th ed.). Worth 
• Hall, Robert E.; Taylor, John B. (1993). Macroeconomics. New York: W.W. Norton. p. 637. ISBN 0-393-96307-1 
• Burda, Michael C.; Wyplosz, Charles (1997). Macroeconomics: a European text. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-877468-0 

Further reading[link]

• Auernheimer, Leonardo, "The Honest Government's Guide to the Revenue From the Creation of Money," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 82, No. 3, May/June 1974, pp. 598–606.
• Baumol, William J. and Alan S. Blinder, Macroeconomics: Principles and Policy, Tenth edition. Thomson South-Western, 2006. ISBN 0-324-22114-2
• Friedman, Milton, Nobel lecture: Inflation and unemployment 1977
• Hazlitt, Henry, What You Should Know About Inflation
• Laguerodie, Stephanie and Vergara, Francisco, The Theory of Price Controls (from Review of Political Economy)
• Mishkin, Frederic S., The Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets, New York, Harper Collins, 1995.
• Murphy, Robert P., Is Inflation Harmless or Even Good?, Mises Institute
• Nenovsky. N, (2007). „Exchange Rate and Inflation: France and Bulgaria in the Interwar Period and the Contribution of Albert Aftalion (1874–1956)“.Bulgarian National Bank,(2006)
• Vasudevan, Ramaa, "What is the relation between inflation and unemployment?," in Dollars & Sense, September/October 2006
• Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, "Understanding Inflation and the Implications for Monetary Policy: A Phillips Curve Retrospective", Conference Series 53, June 9–11, 2008, Chatham, Massachusetts. (Also cf. Phillips curve article)

External links[link]

• NASA inflation calculator
• United States Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index homepage
• Inflation 1290–2006 – Based on the historical Consumer Price Index of the Swedish Riksbank
• Inflation Calculator
• Summary of current international inflation figures – CPI and HICP
• Summary of current inflation in Euro Area – CPI and HICP

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. It relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Tagged since July 2010. It is written like an advertisement and needs to be rewritten from a neutral point of view. Tagged since November 2010. It may have been edited by a contributor who has a close connection with its subject. Tagged since October 2010. The notability of this article's subject is in question. If notability cannot be established, it may be listed for deletion or removed. Tagged since July 2010.

Christopher Martenson
Born	(1962-09-15) 15 September 1962 (age 49)
Nationality	USA
Known for	Former Vice President of Pfizer, Inc. and Science Applications International Corporation

Christopher Hamlin Martenson is a former American biochemical scientist and Vice President of Pfizer.^[1] Currently he is an author and trend forecaster interested in macro trends regarding the economy, energy composition and environment.^[2]

Education and career in the pharmaceutical industry[link]

Martenson received his PhD degree in neurotoxicology at Duke University in 1994 with his doctoral thesis Acrylamide neurotoxicity: effect on neuronal growth cones and axonal fast transport, and furthermore completed a post-doctoral programme at the same university in 1995–1997 where he specialised in neuronal signal transduction and transport^{[citation needed]}. He also obtained an MBA degree from Cornell University in 1998 and is a fellow of the Post Carbon Institute.^[3]

He performed research for many years in biochemistry, neurotoxicology, applied pharmacology and in vitro techniques.^{[citation needed]} Martenson was Consultant In Business Development and Strategies at Pfizer, Inc.^{[citation needed]} Later he became the Vice President of the company,^{[citation needed]} and later still – a Vice President of Science Applications International Corporation's Life Sciences Division,^[4] which position he held till July 2005.

Career in economic macro trending[link]

In more recent years Martenson stepped away from biological sciences and management to develop an educational video seminar series called The Crash Course (originally published in October 2008) based on neo-malthusian concepts. The course investigates the ways in which the economy, the environment and energy are interlinked and interact.^{[citation needed]}

The Crash Course has since been expanded updated into a book for 2011, also titled "The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future Of Our Economy, Energy, And Environment". http://www.amazon.com/Crash-Course-Unsustainable-Economy-Environment/dp/047092764X

Publications[link]

1. Axonal transport: beyond kinesin and cytoplasmic dynein, Current opinion in neurobiology, 1991–Oct, vol. 1 (issue 3): pp. 393–398
2. Fast axonal transport is required for growth cone advance, Nature, 366, 66–69 (4 November 1993)
3. Acrylamide neurotoxicity: effect on neuronal growth cones and axonal fast transport, a Duke University thesis, Ph.D. M377A 1994 LSC.
4. In Vitro Acrylamide exposure alters growth cone morphology, Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, Volume 131, Issue 1, March 1995, pp. 119–129
5. The effect of acrylamide and other sulfhydryl alkylators on the ability of Dynein and Kinesin to translocate microtubules in Vitro, Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, Volume 133, Issue 1, July 1995, pp. 73–81
6. Calmodulin dynamics within intact hippocampal cells, Duke University, 1F32NS010263-01 (1996)
7. Inhibition of Lyn function in mast cell activation by SH3 domain binding peptides, Biochemistry, 1997, 36 (31), pp. 9388–9394
8. Internal trafficking and surface mobility of a functionally intact beta 2-adrenergic receptor – green fluorescent protein conjugate, Molecular Pharmacology, 51:177–184 (1997)
9. Cornell equity research of ArQule, Inc., Cornell University, 17 November 1997

References[link]

External links[link]

• [1]

This article about an American biochemist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

The Edge
Background information
Birth name	David Howell Evans
Born	(1961-08-08) 8 August 1961 (age 50) Barking, Essex, England, United Kingdom
Origin	County Dublin, Ireland
Genres	Rock, post-punk, alternative rock
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, activist
Instruments	Guitar, vocals, keyboards, piano, bass guitar
Years active	1976–present
Labels	Island, Mercury
Associated acts	U2, Passengers
Website	www.u2.com
Notable instruments
Gibson Explorer Fender Stratocaster Gibson Les Paul Fender Telecaster Gretsch Country Gentleman Gretsch White Falcon Rickenbacker 330/12

David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), more widely known by his stage name The Edge (or just Edge),^[1] is a musician best known as the guitarist, backing vocalist, and keyboardist of the Irish rock band U2. A member of the group since its inception, he has recorded 12 studio albums with the band and has released one solo record. As a guitarist, The Edge has crafted a minimalistic and textural style of playing. His use of a rhythmic delay effect yields a distinctive ambient, chiming sound that has become a signature of U2's music.

The Edge was born in England to a Welsh family, but was raised in Ireland after moving there as an infant. In 1976, at Mount Temple Comprehensive School, he formed U2 with his fellow students and his older brother Dik. Inspired by the ethos of punk rock and its basic arrangements, the group began to write its own material. They eventually became one of the most popular acts in popular music, with successful albums such as 1987's The Joshua Tree and 1991's Achtung Baby. Over the years, The Edge has experimented with various guitar effects and introduced influences from several genres of music into his own style, including American roots music, industrial music, and alternative rock. With U2, The Edge has also played keyboards, co-produced their 1993 record Zooropa, and occasionally contributed lyrics. The Edge met his second and current wife, Morleigh Steinberg, through her collaborations with the band.

As a member of U2 and as an individual, The Edge has campaigned for human rights and philanthropic causes. He co-founded Music Rising, a charity to support musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina. He has collaborated with U2 bandmate Bono on several projects, including songs for Roy Orbison and Tina Turner, and the soundtracks to the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and the Royal Shakespeare Company's London stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine placed him at number 38 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

Personal life[link]

The Edge at a U2 concert in Anaheim (2005)

David Howell Evans was born at the Barking Maternity Hospital,^[2] Essex, England to Welsh parents Garvin and Gwenda Evans.^[1] When he was one, his family moved to County Dublin, Ireland where he attended St Andrew's National School. He received piano and guitar lessons and often performed with his brother Dik Evans before they both answered an advertisement posted by Larry Mullen, Jr. at their school, Mount Temple Comprehensive School, seeking musicians to form a band.^[3] The band accepted both of them. This band went through several incarnations before emerging as U2 in March 1978 (Dik Evans left the band just before the name change).^[3] U2 began performing in various venues in Ireland and eventually began developing a following. Their debut album, Boy, was released in 1980.

In 1981, leading up to the October tour, Evans came very close to leaving U2 for religious reasons, but he decided to stay.^[3] During this period, he became involved with a group called Shalom Tigers, in which bandmates Bono and Larry Mullen Jr. were also involved.^[4] Shortly after deciding to remain with the band, he wrote a piece of music that later became "Sunday Bloody Sunday".^[3] The Edge married his high school girlfriend Aislinn O'Sullivan on 12 July 1983.^[5] The couple had three daughters together: Hollie in 1984, Arran in 1985 and Blue Angel in 1989.^[4] The couple separated in 1990, but were unable to get officially divorced because of Irish laws regarding marriage annulment; divorce was legalised in 1995 and the couple were legally divorced in 1996.^[4]

In 1993, The Edge began dating Morleigh Steinberg, a professional dancer and choreographer employed by the band as a belly dancer during the Zoo TV Tour. They had a daughter, Sian (born 1997), and a son, Levi (born 25 October 1999),^[4] before marrying on 22 June 2002.^[4] He appeared in the 2009 music documentary film It Might Get Loud.^[6] The Edge has been criticized for his efforts to build five luxury mansions on a 156 acre plot of land in Malibu, California.^[7] The California Coastal Commission voted 8-4 against the plans, with the project described by the commission's executive director, Peter Douglas, as "In 38 years...one of the three worst projects that I've seen in terms of environmental devastation...It's a contradiction in terms – you can't be serious about being an environmentalist and pick this location."^[7] The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy agreed to remain neutral on the issue following a $1 million donation from The Edge and a commitment from The Edge to designate 100 acres of the land as open space for public footpaths.^[7]

Music style[link]

Guitar playing[link]

As a guitar player, The Edge has a sound typified by a low-key playing style, a chiming, shimmering sound (thanks in part to the sound of VOX AC-30s) that he achieves with extensive use of delay effects and reverb. The feedback delay is often set to a dotted eighth note (3/16 of a measure), and the feedback gain is adjusted until a note played repeats two or three times.^{[citation needed]}

On 1987's The Joshua Tree, The Edge often contributes just a few simple lead lines given depth and richness by an ever-present delay. For example, the introduction to "Where the Streets Have No Name" is simply a repeated six-note arpeggio, broadened by a modulated delay effect. The Edge has said that he views musical notes as "expensive", in that he prefers to play as few notes as possible. He said in 1982 of his style,

"I like a nice ringing sound on guitar, and most of my chords I find two strings and make them ring the same note, so it's almost like a 12-string sound. So for E I might play a B, E, E and B and make it ring. It works very well with the Gibson Explorer. It's funny because the bass end of the Explorer was so awful that I used to stay away from the low strings, and a lot of the chords I played were very trebly, on the first four, or even three strings. I discovered that through using this one area of the fretboard I was developing a very stylized way of doing something that someone else would play in a normal way."^[9]

Many different influences have shaped The Edge's guitar technique.^{[citation needed]} His first guitar was an old acoustic guitar that his mother bought him at a local flea market for only a few pounds; he was nine at the time. He and his brother Dik Evans both experimented with this instrument.^[9] He said in 1982 of this early experimentation, "I suppose the first link in the chain was a visit to the local jumble sale where I purchased a guitar for a pound. That was my first instrument. It was an acoustic guitar and me and my elder brother Dik both played it, plonking away, all very rudimentary stuff, open chords and all that."^[9] The Edge has stated that many of his guitar parts are based around guitar effects. This is especially true from the Achtung Baby era onwards, although much of the band's 1980s material made heavy use of echos.

Vocals[link]

The Edge in June 2005

The Edge also supplies the backing vocals for U2. U2's 1983 live album and video release, Under a Blood Red Sky and Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky are good reference points for his singing (as are the live DVDs from the Elevation Tour, U2 Go Home: Live from Slane Castle and Elevation 2001: Live from Boston). For example, he sings the chorus to "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (Bono harmonizes on the final 'Sunday'). U2 used this tradeoff technique later in "Bullet the Blue Sky" as well. His backing vocals are sometimes in the form of a repeated cry; examples of songs that use this approach include "Beautiful Day", "New Year's Day" and "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)". Another technique he uses in his backing vocals is the falsetto, in songs such as "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of", "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", "A Man and a Woman", "The Wanderer", live versions of "The Fly", and "Window in the Skies".

The Edge sings the lead vocal on "Van Diemen's Land" and "Numb", the first half of the song "Seconds", dual vocals with Bono in "Discotheque", and the bridge in the song "Miracle Drug".^[4] He also sings the occasional lead vocal in live renditions of other songs (such as "Sunday Bloody Sunday" during the PopMart Tour and "Party Girl" during the Rotterdam Zoo TV show when it was Bono's birthday).^[10] He also plays a solo acoustic version of the song "Love is Blindness" that is featured in the documentary film From the Sky Down.

Other instruments[link]

He has played piano and keyboards on many of the band's songs, including "I Fall Down", "October", "So Cruel", "New Year's Day", "Running to Stand Still", "Miss Sarajevo", "The Hands that Built America", and "Original of the Species" and others. He plays the organ on "Please". In live versions of "New Year's Day", "The Unforgettable Fire", "Your Blue Room", and "Moment of Surrender", he plays both the piano and guitar parts alternately. In most live versions of "Original of the Species," piano is the only instrument played during the song. Although The Edge is the band's lead guitarist, he occasionally plays bass guitar, including the live performances of the song "40" where The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton switch instruments.

Solo recordings[link]

In addition to his regular role within U2, The Edge has also recorded with such artists as Johnny Cash, B. B. King, Tina Turner, Ronnie Wood, Jay-Z, and Rihanna. The Edge connected with Brian Eno and Lanois collaborator Michael Brook (the creator of the infinite guitar, which he regularly uses), working with him on the score to the film Captive (1986). From this soundtrack the song "Heroine", the vocal of which was sung by a young Sinéad O'Connor was released as a single.

He also created the theme song for season one and two of The Batman. He and fellow U2 member, Bono, wrote the lyrics to the theme of the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. The Edge, along with bandmate Bono, recently composed a musical adaptation of Spider-Man. On May 25, 2011, a single titled Rise Above 1: Reeve Carney Featuring Bono and The Edge was released digitally.^[11] The music video was released on July 28, 2011.^[12]

Musical equipment[link]

Edge's 1964 Vox AC30 on stage in Foxborough for the U2 360° Tour.

The Edge plays electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, piano, bass guitar (on "40" and "Race Against Time") and lap steel guitar. Compared to many lead guitarists, The Edge is known for using many more guitars during a show. According to his guitar tech Dallas Schoo, a typical lead guitarist uses four or five different guitars in one night, whereas The Edge takes 45 on the road, and uses 17 to 19 in one 2.5-hour concert. He is estimated to have more than 200 guitars in the studio.^{[citation needed]}

Philanthropy[link]

In 2005, The Edge along with Bob Ezrin and Henry Juszkiewicz co-founded Music Rising, a charity that helped provide replacement instruments for those that were lost in Hurricane Katrina. The instruments were originally only replaced for professional musicians but they soon realized the community churches and schools needed instruments as well. The charity's slogan is "Rebuilding the Gulf Region note by note" and has so far helped over a hundred musicians who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Edge also serves on the board of the Angiogenesis Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving global health by advancing angiogenesis-based medicine, diets, and lifestyle.^[13]

See also[link]

• Timeline of U2
• List of people on stamps of Ireland

References[link]

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (October 2011)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Edge

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Edge

• U2.com, official U2 site
• Music Rising
• The Edge at the Internet Movie Database
• The Edge – Album Credits
• A Study of The Edge's Guitar Delay
• The Edge: 'It's all about the vision'
• Food Bank For New York City public service announcement
• Comment on the mathematical analysis of The Edge's guitar sound

Robert R. Prechter, Jr. (b. 1949) is an American author and stock market analyst, known for his financial forecasts using the Elliott Wave Principle. Prechter is an author and co-author of 14 books, and editor of 2 books ^[1], his book Conquer the Crash is a New York Times bestseller.^[2] He also has published monthly financial commentary in the newsletter The Elliott Wave Theorist since 1979, and is the founder of Elliott Wave International and New Classics Library.^[3][4] Prechter served on the board of the Market Technicians Association for nine years, and as the Association's President in 1990-1991. In recent years Prechter has supported the study of socionomics, a theory about human social behavior.^[5][6]

Biography[link]

Prechter attended Yale University and graduated with a B.A. degree in psychology in 1971. His career as an analyst began when he joined Merrill Lynch as a market technician in 1975, where he learned much about the trade from Merrill's Chief Market Strategist, Robert Farrell (June 1982).^[4][7] There Prechter also learned of Ralph Nelson Elliott and the Elliott wave principle and was deeply intrigued:

So I tracked down R.N. Elliott's original books. They weren't even in the Library of Congress. But I finally dug around in the New York Public Library and found a catalog card listing a copy of them on microfilm and had photocopies made. I was amazed to find that there was a wealth of information that had been lost to Wall Street.^[8]

Prechter has also said, "after I decided to make markets a career, I realized that mass psychology is what they're all about." ^[8]

Prominence[link]

In 1979 Prechter left Merrill Lynch and published the first subscription issue of the Elliott Wave Theorist. The 1970s had been very bullish years in the gold market but mostly bearish for stocks, yet his Elliott wave analysis called for a long-term reversal lower in gold (February 1980)^[4][9] and a long-term "super bull market underway" in stocks (October 1982).^[4][10] Because these forecasts proved mostly correct—especially for the stock indexes—Prechter's following grew.

His visibility increased further after he won the U.S. Trading Championship in 1984, with a then-record 444% return in a monitored options trading account.^[11] He was profiled in many financial and business publications and named "Guru of the Decade" by the Financial News Network (now CNBC) for the 1980s.^[12]

Prechter has been forecasting a large-scale bear market, as explained in his book Conquer the Crash.^[13]

Re-introduces Elliott[link]

Much of Prechter's career as a publisher includes his efforts to re-introduce R.N. Elliott's wave principle to investors.^[7] He compiled and republished all of Elliott's available writings, including the 1938 "Wave Principle," and the "Interpretive" and "Forecast" letters (1938–1946). Prechter also published a brief biography of Elliott and the collected Elliott wave writings of the few technicians who practiced wave analysis in the 1950s and 1960s (Charles Collins, Hamilton Bolton, A.J. Frost, Richard Russell).

Still, not all the popular exposure to Elliott wave analysis was the result of Prechter's deliberate efforts. In the few years before and after 1987, media coverage inflated Prechter's "guru" status to extremes, including the assertion that his forecasts could single-handedly "cause" the stock market to rise or fall^[14] (a proponent of technical analysis, Prechter considered this absurd). In the months after Black Monday in October 1987, subscriptions to Prechter's Elliott Wave Theorist surged to some 20,000. That number declined in the early 1990s (as did the subscription levels of most other financial publishers), though "Prechter has done more to popularize and spread Elliott's philosophy than anyone else."^[15]

Socionomics[link]

In 1979, Prechter postulated that social mood drives financial, macroeconomic and political behavior, in contrast to the conventional notion that such events drive social mood.^[16] His description of social mood as the driver of cultural trends reached a national audience in a 1985 cover article in Barron's.^[17] Prechter coined the term "socionomics" and in 1999 published an exposition of socionomic theory, The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior.^[5] In 2003, he published an anthology of empirical work in the field, Pioneering Studies in Socionomics.

Since then, the counter-intuitive premise of the socionomic hypothesis—that social mood drives the character of social events—has gained attention in academic journals,^[18][19][20] books,^[21][22] the popular press,^[23][24][25] universities,^[26] academic conferences^[27][28] and in research funded by the National Science Foundation.^[29][30]

Criticism[link]

While Prechter has his admirers, he has been criticized by media and pundits for his long term record. For example, The Wall Street Journal ran a page one article in August 1993 with the headline, "Robert Prechter sees his 3600 on the Dow – But 6 years late," in reference to Prechter's 1987 forecast for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.^[31] Technical analyst David Aronson wrote:

The Elliott Wave Principle, as popularly practiced, is not a legitimate theory, but a story, and a compelling one that is eloquently told by Robert Prechter. The account is especially persuasive because EWP has the seemingly remarkable ability to fit any segment of market history down to its most minute fluctuations. I contend this is made possible by the method's loosely defined rules and the ability to postulate a large number of nested waves of varying magnitude. This gives the Elliott analyst the same freedom and flexibility that allowed pre-Copernican astronomers to explain all observed planet movements even though their underlying theory of an Earth-centered universe was wrong.^[32]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Essentials of Technical Analysis for Financial Markets by James Chen. Published by John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-53729-9.
• Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction by Robert Prechter. Published by New Classics Library. ISBN 0-932750-57-5.
• Prechter's Perspective by Robert Prechter. Published by New Classics Library. ISBN 978-0-932750-61-7.
• Evidence-Based Technical Analysis: Applying the Scientific Method and Statistical Inference to Trading Signals by David R. Aronson. Published by John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-00874-4
• Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression (2 ed.) by Robert Prechter. Published by John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-56797-5.
• Behavioral Trading: Methods for Measuring Investor Confidence and Expectations by Woody Dorsey. Published by Texere. ISBN 1-58799-164-0.

External links[link]

• Robert Prechter.com
• Socionomics Institute

Paul Krugman

New Keynesian economics
Krugman at a press conference at the Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, 2008
Born	(1953-02-28) February 28, 1953 (age 59) Albany, New York
Nationality	United States
Institution	Princeton University, London School of Economics
Field	International economics, Macroeconomics
Alma mater	MIT (PhD) Yale University (BA)
Opposed	Freshwater economics[1][2]
Influences	John Maynard Keynes[3] John Hicks[3][4][5] Paul Samuelson
Contributions	International Trade Theory New Trade Theory New Economic Geography
Awards	John Bates Clark Medal (1991) Príncipe de Asturias Prize (2004) Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (2008)
Information at IDEAS/RePEc

Paul Robin Krugman ( /ˈkruːɡmən/;^[6] born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times.^[7][8] In 2008, Krugman won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (informally the Nobel Prize in Economics) for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography. According to the Nobel Prize Committee, the prize was given for Krugman's work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic concentration of wealth, by examining the impact of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services.^[9]

Krugman is known in academia for his work on international economics (including trade theory, economic geography, and international finance),^[10][11] liquidity traps and currency crises. He is the 17th most widely cited economist in the world today^[12] and is ranked among the most influential academic thinkers in the US.^[13]

As of 2008^[update], Krugman has written 20 books and has published over 200 scholarly articles in professional journals and edited volumes.^[14] He has also written more than 750 columns on economic and political issues for The New York Times.

He also writes on topics ranging from income distribution to international economics. Krugman considers himself a liberal, calling one of his books and his New York Times blog "The Conscience of a Liberal".^[15] His commentary has attracted considerable comment and criticism.^{[16][17][18][19][20]}

Personal life[link]

Krugman is the son of David and Anita Krugman and the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Brest-Litovsk.^[21] He was born in Albany, NY, and grew up in Nassau County, New York.^[22] He graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore.^[23]

According to Krugman, his interest in economics began with Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels, in which the social scientists of the future use "psychohistory" to attempt to save civilization. Since "psychohistory" in Asimov's sense of the word does not exist, Krugman turned to economics, which he considered the next best thing.^[24][25]

Krugman's first wife was award-winning designer/artist Robin L. Bergman. He is currently married to Robin Wells, his second wife, an academic economist who has collaborated on textbooks with Krugman.^[26][27][28] Krugman reports that he is a distant relative of conservative journalist David Frum.^[29] He has described himself as a "Loner. Ordinarily shy. Shy with individuals."^[30] He lives with his wife in Princeton, New Jersey.

Academic career[link]

Krugman giving a lecture at the German National Library in Frankfurt in 2008.

Krugman earned his B.A. in economics from Yale University summa cum laude in 1974 and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977. While at MIT he was part of a small group of MIT students sent to work for the Central Bank of Portugal for three months in summer 1976, in the chaotic aftermath of the Carnation Revolution.^[31] From 1982 to 1983, he spent a year working at the Reagan White House as a staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers. He taught at Yale University, MIT, UC Berkeley, the London School of Economics, and Stanford University before joining Princeton University in 2000 as professor of economics and international affairs. He is also currently a centenary professor at the London School of Economics, and a member of the Group of Thirty international economic body. He has been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1979.^[32] Most recently, Krugman was President of the Eastern Economic Association.

Paul Krugman has written extensively on international economics, including international trade, economic geography, and international finance. The Research Papers in Economics project ranked him as the 14th most influential economist in the world as of March 2011 based on his academic contributions.^[12] Krugman's International Economics: Theory and Policy, co-authored with Maurice Obstfeld, is a standard undergraduate textbook on international economics.^[33] He is also co-author, with Robin Wells, of an undergraduate economics text which he says was strongly inspired by the first edition of Paul Samuelson's classic textbook.^[34] Krugman also writes on economic topics for the general public, sometimes on international economic topics but also on income distribution and public policy.

The Nobel Prize Committee stated that Krugman's main contribution is his analysis of the impact of economies of scale, combined with the assumption that consumers appreciate diversity, on international trade and on the location of economic activity.^[9] The importance of spatial issues in economics has been enhanced by Krugman's ability to popularize this complicated theory with the help of easy-to-read books and state-of-the-art syntheses. "Krugman was beyond doubt the key player in 'placing geographical analysis squarely in the economic mainstream' ... and in conferring it the central role it now assumes."^[35]

In 1978, Krugman wrote The Theory of Interstellar Trade, a tongue-in-cheek essay on computing interest rates on goods in transit near the speed of light. He says he wrote it to cheer himself up when he was "an oppressed assistant professor".^[36]

New trade theory[link]

Prior to Krugman's work, trade theory (see David Ricardo and Hecksher-Ohlin model) emphasized trade based on the comparative advantage of countries with very different characteristics, such as a country with a high agricultural productivity trading agricultural products for industrial products from a country with a high industrial productivity. However, in the 20th century, an ever larger share of trade occurred between countries with very similar characteristics, which is difficult to explain by comparative advantage. Krugman's explanation of trade between similar countries was proposed in a 1979 paper in the Journal of International Economics, and involves two key assumptions: that consumers prefer a diverse choice of brands, and that production favors economies of scale.^[37] Consumers' preference for diversity explains the survival of different versions of cars like Volvo and BMW.^[38] But because of economies of scale, it is not profitable to spread the production of Volvos all over the world; instead, it is concentrated in a few factories and therefore in a few countries (or maybe just one). This logic explains how each country may specialize in producing a few brands of any given type of product, instead of specializing in different types of products.

Many models of international trade now follow Krugman's lead, incorporating economies of scale in production and a preference for diversity in consumption.^[9] This way of modeling trade has come to be called New Trade Theory.^[35]

Krugman's theory also took into account transportation costs, a key feature in producing the "home market effect", which would later feature in his work on the new economic geography. The home market effect "states that, ceteris paribus, the country with the larger demand for a good shall, at equilibrium, produce a more than proportionate share of that good and be a net exporter of it."^[35] The home market effect was an unexpected result, and Krugman initially questioned it, but ultimately concluded that the mathematics of the model were correct.^[35]

When there are economies of scale in production, it is possible that countries may become 'locked in' to disadvantageous patterns of trade.^[39] Nonetheless, trade remains beneficial in general, even between similar countries, because it permits firms to save on costs by producing at a larger, more efficient scale, and because it increases the range of brands available and sharpens the competition between firms.^[40] Krugman has usually been supportive of free trade and globalization.^[41][42] He has also been critical of industrial policy, which New Trade Theory suggests might offer nations rent-seeking advantages if "strategic industries" can be identified, saying it's not clear that such identification can be done accurately enough to matter.^[43]

New economic geography[link]

It took an interval of eleven years, but ultimately Krugman's work on New Trade Theory (NTT) converged to what is usually called the "new economic geography" (NEG), which Krugman began to develop in a seminal 1991 paper in the Journal of Political Economy.^[44] In Krugman's own words, the passage from NTT to NEG was "obvious in retrospect; but it certainly took me a while to see it. ... The only good news was that nobody else picked up that $100 bill lying on the sidewalk in the interim."^[45] This would become Krugman's most-cited academic paper: by early 2009, it had 857 citations, more than double his second-ranked paper.^[35] Krugman called the paper "the love of my life in academic work."^[46]

The "home market effect" that Krugman discovered in NTT also features in NEG, which interprets agglomeration "as the outcome of the interaction of increasing returns, trade costs and factor price differences."^[35] If trade is largely shaped by economies of scale, as Krugman's trade theory argues, then those economic regions with most production will be more profitable and will therefore attract even more production. That is, NTT implies that instead of spreading out evenly around the world, production will tend to concentrate in a few countries, regions, or cities, which will become densely populated but will also have higher levels of income.^[9][11]

International finance[link]

Krugman has also been influential in the field of international finance. As a graduate student, Krugman visited the Federal Reserve Board, where Stephen Salant and Dale Henderson were completing their discussion paper on speculative attacks in the gold market. Krugman adapted their model for the foreign exchange market, resulting in a 1979 paper on currency crises in the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, which showed that fixed exchange rate regimes are unlikely to end smoothly: instead, they end in a sudden speculative attack.^[47] Krugman's paper is considered one of the main contributions to the 'first generation' of currency crisis models,^[48][49] and it is his second-most-cited paper (457 citations as of early 2009).^[35]

In response to the global financial crisis of 2008, Krugman proposed, in an informal "mimeo" style of publication,^[50] an "international finance multiplier", to help explain the unexpected speed with which the global crisis had occurred. He argued that when, "highly leveraged financial institutions [HLIs], which do a lot of cross-border investment [....] lose heavily in one market [...] they find themselves undercapitalized, and have to sell off assets across the board. This drives down prices, putting pressure on the balance sheets of other HLIs, and so on." Such a rapid contagion had hitherto been considered unlikely because of "decoupling" in a globalized economy.^[51][52][53] He first announced that he was working on such a model on his blog, on October 5, 2008.^[54] Within days of its appearance, it was being discussed on some popular economics-oriented blogs.^[55][56] The note was soon being cited in papers (draft and published) by other economists,^{[57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64]} even though it had not itself been through ordinary peer review processes.

Macroeconomics and fiscal policy[link]

Krugman has done much to revive discussion of the liquidity trap as a topic in economics.^{[65][66][67][68]} He recommended aggressive fiscal policy to counter Japan's lost decade in the 1990s, arguing that the country was mired in a Keynesian liquidity trap.^[69][70][71] The debate he started at that time over liquidity traps and what policies best address them continues in the economics literature.^[72]

Krugman had argued in The Return of Depression Economics that Japan was in a liquidity trap in the late 1990s, since the central bank could not drop interest rates any lower to escape economic stagnation.^[73] The core of Krugman's policy proposal for addressing Japan's liquidity trap was inflation targeting, which, he argued "most nearly approaches the usual goal of modern stabilization policy, which is to provide adequate demand in a clean, unobtrusive way that does not distort the allocation of resources."^[71] The proposal appeared first in a web posting on his academic site.^[74] This mimeo-draft was soon cited, but was also misread by some as repeating his earlier advice that Japan's best hope was in "turning on the printing presses", as recommended by Milton Friedman, John Makin, and others.^[75][76][77]

Krugman has since drawn parallels between Japan's 'lost decade' and the late 2000s recession, arguing that expansionary fiscal policy is necessary as the major industrialized economies are mired in a liquidity trap.^[78] In response to economists who point out that the Japanese economy recovered despite not pursuing his policy prescriptions, Krugman maintains that it was an export-led boom that pulled Japan out of its economic slump in the late-90s, rather than reforms of the financial system.^[79]

Krugman was one of the most prominent advocates of the 2008–2009 Keynesian resurgence , so much so that economics commentator Noah Smith referred to it as the "Krugman insurgency." ^{[80] [81] [82]}

Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences[link]

Wikinews has related news: American Paul Krugman wins Nobel prize for economics

Krugman was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (informally the Nobel Prize in Economics), the sole recipient for 2008. This prize includes an award of about $1.4 million and was given to Krugman for his work associated with New Trade Theory and the New Economic Geography.^[83] In the words of the prize committee, "By having integrated economies of scale into explicit general equilibrium models, Paul Krugman has deepened our understanding of the determinants of trade and the location of economic activity."^[84]

Awards[link]

• 1991, American Economic Association, John Bates Clark Medal.^[85] Since it was awarded to only one person, once every two years (prior to 2009), The Economist has described the Clark Medal as 'slightly harder to get than a Nobel prize'.^[86]
• 1992, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS).^[32]
• 1995, Adam Smith Award of the National Association for Business Economics^[87]
• 1998, Doctor honoris causa in Economics awarded by Free University of Berlin Freie Universität Berlin in Germany
• 2000, H.C. Recktenwald Prize in Economics, awarded by University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.
• 2002, Editor and Publisher, Columnist of the Year.^[88]
• 2004, Fundación Príncipe de Asturias (Spain), Prince of Asturias Awards in Social Sciences.^[89]
• 2004, Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa, Haverford College^[90]
• 2008, Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (informally the Nobel Prize in Economics) for Krugman's contributions to New Trade Theory.^[91] He became the twelfth John Bates Clark Medal winner to be awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize.
• 2012, Doctor honoris causa from the Universidade de Lisboa, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa and Universidade Nova de Lisboa^[92][93]

Author[link]

Krugman at the 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival.

In the 1990s, besides academic books and textbooks, Krugman increasingly began writing books for a general audience on issues he considered important for public policy. In The Age of Diminished Expectations (1990), he wrote in particular about the increasing US income inequality in the "New Economy" of the 1990s. He attributes the rise in income inequality in part to changes in technology, but principally to a change in political atmosphere which he attributes to Movement Conservatives.

In September 2003, Krugman published a collection of his columns under the title, The Great Unraveling, about the Bush administration's economic and foreign policies and the US economy in the early 2000s. His columns argued that the large deficits during that time were generated by the Bush administration as a result of decreasing taxes on the rich, increasing public spending, and fighting the Iraq war. Krugman wrote that these policies were unsustainable in the long run and would eventually generate a major economic crisis. The book was a best-seller.^[86][94][95]

In 2007, Krugman published The Conscience of a Liberal, whose title refers to Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative.^[96] It details the history of wealth and income gaps in the United States in the 20th century. The book describes how the gap between rich and poor declined greatly in middle of the century, and then widened in the last two decades to levels higher even than in the 1920s. In Conscience, Krugman argues that government policies played a much greater role than commonly thought both in reducing inequality in the 1930s through 1970s and in increasing it in the 1980s through the present, and criticizes the Bush administration for implementing policies that Krugman believes widened the gap between the rich and poor.

Krugman also argued that Republicans owed their electoral successes to their ability to exploit the race issue to win political dominance of the South.^[97][98] Krugman argues that Ronald Reagan had used the "Southern Strategy" to signal sympathy for racism without saying anything overtly racist,^[99] citing as an example Reagan's coining of the term "welfare queen".^[100]

In his book, Krugman proposed a "new New Deal", which included placing more emphasis on social and medical programs and less on national defense.^[101] Liberal journalist and author Michael Tomasky argued that in The Conscience of a Liberal Krugman is committed "to accurate history even when some fudging might be in order for the sake of political expediency."^[97] In a review for The New York Times, Pulitzer prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy stated, "Like the rants of Rush Limbaugh or the films of Michael Moore, Krugman's shrill polemic may hearten the faithful, but it will do little to persuade the unconvinced".^[102]

In late 2008, Krugman published a substantial updating of an earlier work, entitled "The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008". In the book, he discusses the failure of the United States regulatory system to keep pace with a financial system increasingly out-of-control, and the causes of and possible ways to contain the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s.

In 2012, Krugman published, End This Depression Now!, a book which argues that looking at the available historical economic data, fiscal cuts and austerity measures only deprive the economy of valuable funds that can circulate and further add to a poor economy - people cannot spend, and markets cannot thrive if there is not enough consumption and there can not be sufficient consumption if there is large unemployment. He argues that while it is necessary to cut debt, it is the worst time to do so in an economy that has just suffered the most severe of financial shocks, and must be done instead when an economy is near full-employment when the private sector can withstand the burden of decreased government spending and austerity. Failure to stimulate the economy either by public or private sectors will only unnecessarily lengthen the current economic depression and make it worse.^[103]

Commentator[link]

Martin Wolf has written that Krugman is both the "most hated and most admired columnist in the US". ^[104] Economist J. Peter Neary has noted that Krugman "has written on a wide range of topics, always combining one of the best prose styles in the profession with an ability to construct elegant, insightful and useful models."^[105] Neary added that "no discussion of his work could fail to mention his transition from Academic Superstar to Public Intellectual. Through his extensive writings, including a regular column for The New York Times, monographs and textbooks at every level, and books on economics and current affairs for the general public ... he has probably done more than any other writer to explain economic principles to a wide audience."^[105] Krugman has been described as the most controversial economist in his generation^[106][107] and according to Michael Tomasky since 1992 he has moved "from being a center-left scholar to being a liberal polemicist."^[97]

From the mid-1990s onwards, Krugman wrote for Fortune (1997–99)^[32] and Slate (1996–99),^[32] and then for The Harvard Business Review, Foreign Policy, The Economist, Harper's, and Washington Monthly. In this period Krugman critiqued various positions commonly taken on economic issues from across the political spectrum, from protectionism and opposition to the World Trade Organization on the left to supply side economics on the right.^[108]

During the 1992 presidential campaign Krugman praised Bill Clinton's economic plan in The New York Times, and Clinton's campaign used some of Krugman's work on income inequality. At the time, it was considered likely that Clinton would offer him a position in the new administration, but allegedly Krugman's volatility and outspokenness caused Clinton to look elsewhere.^[106] Krugman later said that he was "temperamentally unsuited for that kind of role. You have to be very good at people skills, biting your tongue when people say silly things."^[108][109] In a Fresh Dialogues interview, Krugman added, "you have to be reasonably organized...I can move into a pristine office and within three days it will look like a grenade went off."^[110]

In 1999, near the height of the dot com boom, The New York Times approached Krugman to write a bi-weekly column on "the vagaries of business and economics in an age of prosperity."^[108] His first columns in 2000 addressed business and economic issues, but as the 2000 US presidential campaign progressed, Krugman increasingly focused on George W. Bush's policy proposals. According to Krugman, this was partly due to "the silence of the media - those 'liberal media' conservatives complain about...."^[108] Krugman accused Bush of repeatedly misrepresenting his proposals, and criticized the proposals themselves.^[108] After Bush's election, and his perseverance with his proposed tax cut in the midst of the slump (which Krugman argued would do little to help the economy but substantially raise the fiscal deficit), Krugman's columns grew angrier and more focused on the administration. As Alan Blinder put it in 2002, "There's been a kind of missionary quality to his writing since then ... He's trying to stop something now, using the power of the pen."^[108] Partly as a result, Krugman's twice-weekly column on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times has made him, according to Nicholas Confessore, "the most important political columnist in America... he is almost alone in analyzing the most important story in politics in recent years – the seamless melding of corporate, class, and political party interests at which the Bush administration excels."^[108] In an interview in late 2009, Krugman said his missionary zeal had changed in the post-Bush era and he described the Obama administration as "good guys but not as forceful as I'd like...When I argue with them in my column this is a serious discussion. We really are in effect speaking across the transom here."^[111] Krugman says he's more effective at driving change outside the administration than inside it, "now, I'm trying to make this progressive moment in American history a success. So that's where I'm pushing."^[111]

Krugman's columns have drawn criticism as well as praise. A 2003 article in The Economist^[112] questioned Krugman's "growing tendency to attribute all the world's ills to George Bush," citing critics who felt that "his relentless partisanship is getting in the way of his argument" and claiming errors of economic and political reasoning in his columns.^[86] Daniel Okrent, a former The New York Times ombudsman, in his farewell column, criticized Krugman for what he said was "the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults."^[113][114]

Krugman's New York Times blog is "The Conscience of a Liberal," devoted largely to economics and politics.

Five days after 9/11 terrorist attacks Krugman argued in his column that calamity was "partly self-inflicted" due to transfer of responsibility for airport security from government to airlines. His column provoked an angry response and The New York Times was flooded with complaints. According to Larissa MacFarquhar of The New Yorker, while some people^[who?] thought that he was too partisan to be a columnist for The New York Times, he was revered on the left.^[115][116] Similarly, on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 on the United States Krugman again provoked a controversy by accusing on his New York Times blog former U.S. President George W. Bush and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani of rushing "to cash in on the horror" after the attacks and describing the anniversary as "an occasion for shame".^[117][118]

East Asian growth[link]

In a 1994 Foreign Affairs article, Paul Krugman argued that it was a myth that the economic successes of the East Asian 'tigers' constituted an economic miracle. He argued that their rise was fueled by mobilizing resources and that their growth rates would inevitably slow.^[119] His article helped popularize the argument made by Lawrence Lau and Alwyn Young, among others, that the growth of economies in East Asia was not the result of new and original economic models, but rather from high capital investment and increasing labor force participation, and that total factor productivity had not increased. Krugman argued that in the long term, only increasing total factor productivity can lead to sustained economic growth. Krugman's article was highly criticized in many Asian countries when it first appeared, and subsequent studies disputed some of Krugman's conclusions. However, it also stimulated a great deal of research, and may have caused the Singapore government to provide incentives for technological progress.^[120]

During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Krugman advocated currency controls as a way to mitigate the crisis. Writing in a Fortune magazine article, he suggested exchange controls as "a solution so unfashionable, so stigmatized, that hardly anyone has dared suggest it."^[121] Malaysia was the only country that adopted such controls, and although the Malaysian government credited its rapid economic recovery on currency controls, the relationship is disputed.^[122] An empirical study found that the Malaysian policies produced faster economic recovery and smaller declines in employment and real wages.^[123] Krugman later stated that the controls might not have been necessary at the time they were applied, but that nevertheless "Malaysia has proved a point—namely, that controlling capital in a crisis is at least feasible."^[124] Krugman more recently pointed out that emergency capital controls have even been endorsed by the IMF, and are no longer considered radical policy.^[125]

U.S. economic policies[link]

In the early 2000s, Krugman repeatedly criticized the Bush tax cuts, both before and after they were enacted. Krugman argued that the tax cuts enlarged the budget deficit without improving the economy, and that they enriched the wealthy – worsening income distribution in the US.^{[95][126][127][128][129]} Krugman advocated lower interest rates (to promote spending on housing and other durable goods), and increased government spending on infrastructure, military, and unemployment benefits, arguing that these policies would have a larger stimulus effect, and unlike permanent tax cuts, would only temporarily increase the budget deficit.^[129]

In August 2005, after Alan Greenspan expressed concern over housing markets, Krugman criticized Greenspan's earlier reluctance to regulate the mortgage and related financial markets, arguing that "[he's] like a man who suggests leaving the barn door ajar, and then – after the horse is gone – delivers a lecture on the importance of keeping your animals properly locked up."^[130]

Krugman has repeatedly expressed his view that Greenspan and Phil Gramm are the two individuals most responsible for causing the subprime crisis. Krugman points to Greenspan and Gramm for the key roles they played in keeping derivatives, financial markets, and investment banks unregulated, and to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Great Depression era safeguards that prevented commercial banks, investment banks and insurance companies from merging.^{[131][132][133][134]}

Krugman has also been critical of some of the Obama administration's economic policies. He has criticized the Obama stimulus plan as being too small and inadequate given the size of the economy and the banking rescue plan as misdirected; Krugman wrote in The New York Times: "an overwhelming majority [of the American public] believes that the government is spending too much to help large financial institutions. This suggests that the administration's money-for-nothing financial policy will eventually deplete its political capital."^[135] In particular, he considered the Obama administration's actions to prop up the US financial system in 2009 to be impractical and unduly favorable to Wall Street bankers.^[114] In anticipation of President Obama's Job Summit in December 2009, Krugman said in a Fresh Dialogues interview, "This jobs summit can't be an empty exercise…he can't come out with a proposal for $10 or $20 Billion of stuff because people will view that as a joke. There has to be a significant job proposal…I have in mind something like $300 Billion."^[136]

Krugman has recently criticized China's exchange rate policy, which he believes to be a significant drag on global economic recovery from the Late-2000s recession, and he has advocated a "surcharge" on Chinese imports to the US in response.^[137] Jeremy Warner of The Daily Telegraph accused Krugman of advocating a return to self-destructive protectionism.^[138]

In April 2010, as the Senate began considering new financial regulations, Krugman argued that the regulations should not only regulate financial innovation, but also tax financial-industry profits and remuneration. He cited a paper by Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny released the previous week, which concludes that most innovation was in fact about "providing investors with false substitutes for [traditional] assets like bank deposits," and once investors realize the sheer number of securities that are unsafe a "flight to safety" occurs which necessarily leads to "financial fragility."^[139][140]