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Voters, for entirely understandable reasons, dislike both inflation and unemployment. They are not wrong to do so, both are things that economic policymakers generally try to avoid or at least minimize. The problem is that, to a greater or lesser degree, the two macroeconomic failings tend to represent a trade-off. The tighter monetary policy usually […] 

 

This Finance survey examines (a) In general, absent any proprietary information, a retail equity investor cannot consistently make accurate predictions about whether the price of an individual stock will rise or fall on a given day; (b) In general, absent any proprietary information, a retail equity investor can expect to do better by holding a well-diversified, low-fee, passive index fund than by holding a few stocks 

If readers of On Global Markets were hoping not to read the word “election” again, at least for a few months, then your columnist can only apologize and note that he too hoped that this would be the case. But whilst American voters headed to the polls, Germany’s fractious three-way coalition government collapsed and a […] 

This US survey examines (a) The Trustees of the U.S. Social Security system currently estimate that the OASI trust fund will be exhausted in 2033, after which substantial benefit cuts are mandated without a change in the law.  The response to the impending exhaustion of the OASI trust fund is likely to rely more on general government borrowing than on increases in social security taxes or reductions in social security benefits; (b) As in the most recent major change in Social Security finances (adopted in 1983), the most prudent way to address the impending exhaustion of the OASI trust fund would feature a balanced combination of payroll tax increases and reductions in the benefits received for any given retirement age 

Until relatively recently, political risk – the notion that an election’s result might have a meaningful impact on asset market returns – was not really something those investing in American markets were especially concerned with. Few investors really believed that, say, the outcome of 1996’s Clinton-Dole race would have a lasting impact on the value […] 

A rather unpleasant theme of recent columns has been the Clark Center’s various Expert Panels not exactly being overjoyed with much of the policy prospectuses emerging from the ongoing American presidential campaign. This was both predictable and, indeed, predicted by the first On Global Markets column back in February. Working in a subject close to […] 

Last week the Nobel Prize for Economics (or, for the truly pedantic the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel) was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, (a member of the Clark Center US Experts Panel) Simon Johnson, and James Robinson for work on the most important topic on economics – why are some […] 

This Finance survey examines (a) Establishing a domestic sovereign wealth fund to invest in domestic infrastructure, emerging technologies, and/or strategic sectors would bring substantial benefits to the US economy over a ten-year horizon; (b) For the US, establishing a sovereign wealth fund would be substantially better for citizens relative to reducing public debt burdens