Monday, June 2, 2014

Depreciation

From a post by Brad DeLong on Krusell and Smith's comment on Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century:"
As time passes, it seems to me that a larger and larger fraction of Piketty's critics are making arguments that really make no sense at all--that I really do not understand how people can believe them, or why anybody would think that anybody else would believe them. Today we have Per Krusell and Tony Smith assuming that the economy-wide capital depreciation rate δ is not 0.03 or 0.05 but 0.1--and it does make a huge difference...
From page 43 of Piketty's book:
This depreciation is substantial, today on the order of 10 percent of GDP in most countries...

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Change of Venue

I will shortly be taking up a full-time position in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The Federal Reserve System has always been good to me, in spite of the grief I give the Fed from time to time. I'm looking forward to working with a first-class group of economic researchers, under superb leadership. We all intend to collectively move the institution forward to even bigger and better things.

Readers should not notice much difference in what I do here. I have to be a little more careful, I have to respect blackout periods around FOMC meetings, and sometimes I'll know things that I'm not permitted to tell you. You'll notice a disclaimer at the top of the page. That's essentially what appears (except for the "potshots") in the published work of Fed employees. The idea here is the same. What I write here need have nothing to do with the St. Louis Fed's position, the Federal Reserve System's position, the Board of Governors position, etc., on anything. But I don't intend to shy away from discussing policy issues.