Weekend reading

This is a weekly post we’ll publish every Friday with links to articles we think anyone interested in equitable growth should read. We won’t be the first to share these articles, but we hope by taking a look back at the whole week we can put them in context.

Macroeconomics

Reacting to Brad DeLong’s post, Simon Wren-Lewis provides a short intellectual history of macroeconomics [mainly macro]

Finance, of the high and household varieties

The Economist looks at research on the rising costs of the finance industry. Is the increasing size of finance just rent seeking? [the economist]

Claudia Sahm looks at new research on households deleveraging in the wake of the Great Recession [FEDS notes]

The minimum wage and local labor markets

Jared Bernstein writes up Arin Dube’s new paper on state and local minimum wages and asks what the best way to set these standards is? Do we adjust based on local wages or local prices? [the upshot]

Is higher inflation coming?

Cardiff Garcia looks at the recent trends in inflation and wonders if Janet Yellen wants the Fed to tolerate higher inflation. [ft alphaville]

Long-term growth prospects

“Today, we wish for the problem of minimizing trends around a satisfactory trend . . . it is increasingly clear that the trend in growth can be adversely affected over the longer term by what happens in the business cycle.” The text of Larry Summers’s February speech on secular stagnation has been released. [larrysummers.com]

“Tech’s focus on deregulation is a sign that the free lunch of the computer boom may be coming to an end.” Noah Smith on Marc Andreessen’s call for a Drone Valley [bloomberg view]