I am looking for an academic economist (or economists) who: 1. Has a deep understanding of the theory of microeconomics and public (welfare) economics 2. Is comfortable with moving from theory to messy reality, keeping in mind how policy recommendations could be affected by features of reality that are absent…

Private businesses are usually financed by more than one investor, each of which may want to attribute some share of what those businesses achieve to themselves. For example, if two investors equally share the financing of a new factory that employs 500 workers, they may each report 250 jobs created. …

This is a response to a Twitter thread with Eric Lonergan and Max Jerneck about climate policy and the economics of externalities, which I am putting here because I am too lazy to write a Twitter thread in response. I wrote that I couldn’t get my head around Max’s statement…

[link to paper] This paper answers a very interesting question: when would a philanthropist choose to invest in a social enterprise rather than give it a grant? This question is important for “blended finance” practitioners who can, in theory, allocate capital with required returns that range anywhere from -100% (a…

CDC is sometimes accused of practicing trickledown economics, because we talk about the indirect effects of investments and we want to help create economic growth in the expectation this will help eradicate poverty. Sometimes our investments have a direct impact on poverty, by improving the livelihoods or meeting the needs…

Caveats: this is my personal opinion and has nothing to do with my employer. I originally wrote this in the hope someone might pick up the idea and use it at COP. When should African countries make new fossil fuel investments? It would be nice to answer: never. The world…

To steal from the great Cosma Shalzi: Attention Conservation Notice: this is me worrying away at modern monetary theory. Unless that’s your bag, move along. I want to pick nits with two articles of MMT faith. What concerns me is whether any policy prescriptions follow from them. MMTers portray themselves…

MMTers set great store by the idea that the government ushers money into existence when it spends, because if you understand how government finances actually work, you will know that the government can electronically credit accounts at the stroke of a keyboard. Now I may be wrong, but this looks…

Suppose there are 10 banks, who collectively lend £1bn, and each individual bank has some slack so could lend more if it met with new demand, but there is presently no unsatisfied demand in the market. If one bank exited the market, the other 9 would absorb its customers, and…