There has been a lot of debate about whether the high inflation of 2021-2022 has been due mainly to supply or demand factors. Joe Stiglitz and Ira Regmi have anew paper from Rooseveltmaking the case for supply disruptions as the decisive factor. It’s the most thorough version of that case that I’ve

The Slack Wire

20.12.2022

Demand, Supply, Both, or Neither? – J. W. Mason

One way current debates over inflation sometimes get framed is whether it’s driven by supply or demand. Critics of the ARPA and other stimulus measurespoint to various lines of evidenceto suggest that rising prices are coming from the demand side, not the supply side; and of course you can find the

The Slack Wire

20.12.2022

At Barron’s: Rate Hikes Are the Wrong Cure for Rising Housing Costs – J. W. Mason

(I write a monthly opinion piece forBarron’s. This is my contribution for November 2022.)How much of our inflation problem is really a housing-cost problem?During the first half of 2021, vehicle prices accounted for almost the whole rise in inflation. For much of this year, it was mostly energy pric

The Slack Wire

20.12.2022

At Barron’s: Americans Owe Less Than They Used To. Will the Fed Change That? – J. W. Mason

(I write a monthly opinion piece forBarron’s. This one waspublished therein September.)Almost everyone, it seems, nowagreesthat higher interest rates mean economic pain. This pain is usually thought of in terms of lost jobs and shuttered businesses. Those costs are very real. But there’s another cos

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Economy

What Does It Mean to Say that Inflation Is Caused by Demand? – J. W. Mason

Demand, Supply, Both, or Neither? – J. W. Mason

At Barron’s: Rate Hikes Are the Wrong Cure for Rising Housing Costs – J. W. Mason

At Barron’s: Americans Owe Less Than They Used To. Will the Fed Change That? – J. W. Mason

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