Conscience Warrior: July 2014

26 July 2014

Links of the Week - 25 July 2014

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

America As A Lousy Exporter
Paul Krugman

The spontaneous combustion theory of inflation
Greg Ip

Chris McDaniel Thinks Winning With Black Votes Is Somehow Illegitimate
Jamelle Bouie

Wall Street is talking about inflation, but betting against it
Matthew Yglesias

How big is the federal government?
FRED Blog

Is it secular or is it stagnation?
Greg Ip

The war dividend
Ryan Avent

The Value of a First Down
Chase Stuart

Why Government Pension Funds Became Addicted to Risk
Josh Barro

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Understanding the New Classical revolution
Simon Wren-Lewis

The Rise and Fall of the New Classical Model
Mark Thoma

Stagflation and the Fall of Macroeconomics
Paul Krugman

Why did the New Classical Revolution happen?
Noah Smith

21 July 2014

Marginal Coffeehouse: Supply and Demand

The following entry is cross-posted from Marginal Coffeehouse, a new economics education blog. This entry, and most of the entries that will appear on Marginal Coffeehouse utilize content from the Wolfram Demonstrations Project. This requires the use of a small, unobtrusive browser plugin.

Supply and Demand

When many people think of 'economics,' the first idea that comes to mind is 'supply and demand.' Consumers of business news are quite used to commentators and analysts, when asked why gas prices have risen, or why wages are low, or why salmon costs more than tuna, explaining that 'It's supply and demand.'

What exactly does that mean? Most people probably have an intuitive sense; 'supply' refers in some way to the amount of something that is for sale, and 'demand' refers in some way to how much people want. This is basically right. But think about it: both of those intuitive definitions are referring only to quantities. So where do prices come in? To answer that question, we've got to think clearly about demanders and suppliers.