Short History of the Founding of the Federal Reserve

Roger Lowenstein has an article in the New York Times about the founding of the Federal Reserve and the views the founders had about the role the Fed should have in the economy - which is was quite different from how it has turned out.

Tyler Cowen on Causes for Economic Slowdown in Emerging Economies

Tyler Cowen has a good column in the New York Times about the causes of the economic slowdown in the emerging market economies.  This would be a good article to use with economic growth or with international trade.

Krugman on Globalization and Macroeconomics - Good Graph

Paul Krugman has a good post on the effects of globalization and macroeconomics - some interesting points - it has this good graph showing the size of world trade going back to 1900.  Note the breaks for the World Wars and the way trade declined from before World War One until after World War Two.

Price Fixing and the Market for Potatoes

Potatoes seem to be a great example of a purely competitive market - identical product, many producers, ease of entry and so forth.  But maybe not.  The Week has a short article about a court case over price fixing by limiting supply.

Power of Failure and Doubt

Malcolm Gladwell has a good article in the New Yorker on the life of Albert Hirschman, a development economist who wrote about the importance of adversity in economic growth.

Economic Inequality & Rock Stars

Alan Kreuger has a presentation comparing economic inequality to rock stars.

Marketplace - Little Known Economic Indicators

The Radio program Marketplace has an article on its webpage about 10 little known economic indicators and what they show about the economy - it might be interesting to ask students to develop their own indicators.

Issues with Aggregate Supply - Aggregate Demand in Econ Blogs

Mark Thoma, in the blog Economist's View, collects the posts from different blogs about why the Aggregate Supply-Aggregate Demand (AS-AD) is not used by Economics Bloggers - and  confronts the issue of why if economists don't use it in discussions, they why is it taught to students.  Economists use complex Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models in analysis.  But these models are too complex to introduce to students.  So, the debated point is whether it is a useful model to teaching students how to "think like economists" or if it is just a "place holder" until students get to high level courses.

Ending Poverty and Driving Globalization

The forces of globalization have done a lot to reduce poverty around the world.

The Economist has a cover story about the success of bringing global poverty (living on less than $1.25 a day) down to one billion people and speculation of pushing that down even more.  Over the past twenty years, more than a billion people have been lifted out of poverty - largely because of increases in global trade.  However, it notes the last billion will be harder than the previous billion.

The New York Times has an article that follows the same story about the reduction of global poverty.

The Economist has a good article about the development of the shipping container and the economic evidence about how it drove globalization more than free trade agreements.

History Shows Limits of Macroprudential Regulation

One of the hopes for policymakers to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis has been to give the Federal Reserve "macroprudential" supervision powers.  The Economist Free Exchange column takes a look at the history of Fed and these types of powers and why macroprudential powers do not always have the intended results.

Economist Summary of the Austerity Debate

The past few weeks have seen a flurry of attacks back and forth between Paul Krugman and Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart over their statement that a debt to GDP ratio of 90% slows economic growth and the effect that has had on economic policy.  The Economist has an article that sums up the exchange between the two sides and concludes that the two sides are much closer to each other than they would most likely admit, and their exchange has by in large missed the larger issues that policy makers need to be hearing.