Activity

[...] Prices and wages do not adjust instantaneously to clear markets whenever demand and supply are out of balance. Firms change price only irregularly in response to changes in demand; wages adjust only slowly as labour market conditions alter; and expectations are updated only slowly as new info…

Eighteenth-century thinkers, such as David Hume and Adam Smith, understood the relationship between the amount of money in circulation and the prices at which goods and services were bought and sold: 'if we consider any kingdom by itself, it is evident, that the greater or less plenty of money is o…

Everyone on the island felt let down. The cult of finance had led to the contraction of a successful fishing industry. Too many talented people had been sucked into trading which, with the benefit of hindsight, was little more than a zero-sum activity generating little or not output. How could so m…

What does it mean to be rational in a world of radical uncertainty? Once we are liberated from the view that there is a single optimising solution, rules of thumb--technically known as heuristics--are better seen as rational ways to cope with an unknowable future. A heuristic is a decision rule tha…