Harford (and Tabarrok) on Macroeconomics

Tim Harford gave an excellent talk at Cato on his new book The Undercover Economist Strikes Back.

You may have heard recently that the richest 85 people in the world have more wealth than the bottom 3.5 billion. Tim began by pointing out that his 2 year old also has more wealth than the bottom 2 billion since his 2-year old has no debt. Later in the talk Tim gave a brilliant explanation for how and why economists began to treat data like an unfaithful spouse. Watch for that!

Tim’s talk begins around the 7:20 mark. I come in around the 34:00 mark and after saying some more nice things about Tim’s book I have some critiques focusing on how long can wages and prices really be sticky and also giving a brief introduction and defense to “Real Business Cycle” theory especially the recent sectoral approaches of Gabaix and also Acemoglu et al.

At the link you can also find links for iTunes and downloadable formats. CSpan also covered the event.