Edward Harrison — Baumol’s cost disease, aging societies and inflation expectations

I have been banging on about lowflation, repeatedly suggesting it is here to stay. The Fed, on the other hand begs to differ and is pre-emptively normalizing rates, as a result. No matter how you look at this, there’s a rub though: We all consume different products, so we each experience a different individual inflation rate.

Even as the statistics say inflation is dropping for you and me, it’s not dropping for everybody….

Credit Writedowns
Baumol’s cost disease, aging societies and inflation expectations
Edward Harrison

Diane Coyle — They don’t make economists like they used to

About William Baumol, who recently passed away.

The Enlightened Economist
They don’t make economists like they used to
Diane Coyle | freelance economist and a former advisor to the UK Treasury. She is a member of the UK Competition Commission and is acting Chairman of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation

Michael Roberts — William Baumol and the transformation problem

Roberts explains how Baumol showed that there is no transformation problem in Marx. Marx's critics did not understand Marx's argument correctly and attacked a straw man.

It is no accident that it is the Keynesians and post-Keynesians like Joan Robinson that were (and are) the most vehement against Marxist economic theory – because Marxism is the main opponent of Keynesian influence in the labour movement.

William Baumol may have been as mainstream an economist that you could find – an exponent of the neoclassical equilibrium and marginalism. But he was also a surprisingly acute observer of Marx’s exploitation theory of capitalism. As a result, he could show the Keynesian (and neo-Ricardian) claim that Marx’s value theory was an ‘irrelevant and unnecessary detour’ was wrong. For that, we can thank him.

Michael Roberts Blog
William Baumol and the transformation problem

Michael Roberts

Timothy B. Lee — William Baumol, whose famous economic theory explains the modern world, has died

William Baumol — an economist who just died at the age of 95 — had a famous idea, commonly known as Baumol’s cost disease, that explains a lot about our modern world....

Vox

William Baumol, whose famous economic theory explains the modern world, has died

Timothy B. Lee