Merijn T. Knibbe

Economists calculate use different methods to calculate 'real' economic growth. One of these methods is double deflation. It is shown that this method sometimes yields totally implausible results while the conceptual idea behind it is not clear.

Con la inflación en auge en los últimos anos, se ha generado un importante debate sobre el aumento de precios y su impacto en los distintos ámbitos de la economía, la política y la sociedad. Este artículo hace un análisis sobre distintos métodos de medición estadística del ascenso de los precios en las diferentes etapas de producción y consumo, y l...

From 1957 on, based on new methods to estimate protein content on milk and new knowledge on the hereditary nature of protein content of milk, Frisian cooperative dairy factories tried to entice farmers to breed 'protein cows' by gathering per cow information on the protein content of milk and putting a price on protein. Farmers, however, did not re...

The Theil inequality index, when based on micro measurements of individual households or persons, enables one to estimate within group inequality (class, gender, income type or combined income types) as well as between group inequality which together add up to total Theil inequality. Contrary to the Gini estimate, this enables estimates which are c...

Ideally, scientific theory and scientific measurement should develop in tandem, but in recent years this has not been the case in economics. There used to be a time when leading economists, or their students, established or led statistical offices and took care that the measurements were consistent with the theory (and vice versa). Not anymore. Mac...

This article explores the outlines of an ‘agrarian-industrial knowledge society’ that developed from about 1895. Farmers, breeders, experts and leaders of dairy companies worked in close cooperation to increase the fat percentages in milk. The challenge was to measure these percentages on the farm, and process the information in a systematic way. F...

The national accounts estimate nominal variables. Price indices are used to convert these nominal estimates into volume or 'real' estimates of production and expenditure. There is as price indices ar enot just influenced by the level of prices but also by the change of relative prices of services and goods not one perfect or even preferred way to d...

The fertile coastal plains of Friesland were, around 1500, thoroughly monetized. Product and land markets were vibrant - but a labor market had not yet developed. As in all monetized economies, there was a capital market - but without banks. There were middlemen who brookered contracts between suppliers of capital and people wanting to borrow but i...

The article compares statistical concepts of consumption with neoclassical macro concepts. Large differences exist, neoclassical macro models for instance ignore public goods and services

Fixed capital in neoclassical models tend to be produced capital and excludes unproduced capital like land and natural resources. It is mainly seen as a factor of production. In the national accounts a large part of total fixed capital consists of unproduced capital like land. Looking at the definition of capital, it is mainly defined as a factor o...

Macro economic models, macro economic measurement, conceptual differences

Before the 2008 crisis unemployment around the North Atlantic had become strucutrally higher than during the fifties, sixties and early seventies. After 2008 it rose to almost unprecedented levels. Almost, as unemployment in Finland after the 1991 banking crisis and unemployment in Spain already gave a taste of things to come. When we look at broad...

This was quite an exciting article to write. It took me from the lead mines in southern Spain and the silver mines of Laurium, Greece, in the days of the Romans to the the deserts of Egypt in the time of the pharaos as well as to the Cerro Ricco in Peru in the sixteenth and seventeenth century as well as to the gold mines of South Africa in the twe...

By Merijn Knibbe 1. Introduction Economists routinely estimate ‘public seigniorage income’, or the amount of money the government earns from its monopoly on issuing bank notes. However they do not estimate ‘private seigniorage’, or the amount of money banks make by issuing deposit money. This is remarkable as, in the Eurozone, banks create about 94...

Inflation targeting is currently the policy of choice for central banks. This policy invariably targets consumer price inflation, which is only one of many available price level indices (such as prices of new investments and house prices). As there is no stable relationship between these price levels, and as differences in developments between the...

Unit Labour Costs are a seriously flawed macro-indicator of competitiveness, much better indicators are available, such as the composite one proposed the ECB. ULC cannot be used without a very thorough investigation of the actual situation and background statistics. This has not happened when they were used, post 2008, to 'prove' the lack of compep...

Contributors: Dean Baker, Víctor A. Beker, David Colander, Edward Fullbrook, James Galbraith, Jayati Ghosh, Claude Hillinger, Merijn Knibbe, Richard Parker, Heikki Patomäki, Ann Pettifor, Alicia Puyana, Lars Pålsson Syll, Geoff Tily, Yannis Varoufakis, Robert Wade

Except for the USA, long run series of the rate of investment of western countries (1750 (if available)-2010) are characterized by a wave like pattern: a slow increase starting somewhere between 1850 and 1890 gathers momentum after 1920, shows a severe decline after 1929 but reaches a top somewhere between 1968 and 2000, to decline afterwards. Rema...

After 1511, land rents of church lands in Friesland first deteriorated, due to a civil war. After the war (1525) , rents recoverd quite fast. Rents however continued to increase at a rate which can't be explained by either a 'peace dvidend' , the price revolution or a combination of both. Probably, the 'Groote Arbitrarement' of the new Habsburg gov...

Between 1537 and 1555 a lively capital market existed in Hennaarderadeel, Friesland, the Netherlands a lively capital market existed. This was rural area not an exception. It has been shown that before this period a comparable market existed in Flanders while after this period capital markets existed in among other area's the Black Forest, Holland,...

Friesland was a largely agricultural province of the Republic of the Netherlands. It knew a wide variety of agricultural systems: clay soil arable/mixed farms producing and exporting mainly grain, highly specialized clay soil dairy farms producing butter, low fat cheese, animals but, in dire times, also scaling back dairy production and exporting h...

Around 1800, digging peat was a mayor industry in the the somewhat remote county of Schoterland, (Friesland, the Netherlands). Part of this industry were workers who, a year in advance of the actual peat diggers, had to dig drainage canals in the peat bogs. This group of workers was highly stable while two-weekly records of their earnings exist for...

An overview of factors which, between 1796 and 1850, caused some Dutch cities to wither away and others to grow. Cities along the large rivers (except those close to Rotterdam and small agricultural market towns did well. The Hague was in a league of its own, provincial capitals did well. Cities in Holland except for Rotterdam and The Hague did bad...

In the beginning of the nineteenth century the population of the Netherlands was reasonable well fed. Per capita availability of food, measured in calories, was quite high. Over 40 per cent of calories originated from animal sources, especially dairy. Up to about 1870, the amount of food as well as the share originating from animal sources deterior...

An overview of production and productivity in Dutch agriculture

Between 1890 and 1930 the production of eggs in the Netherlands, at the time a female dominated sector, developed from a side activity into one of the cornerstones of the production of small farms. Breeding machines and selection enabled 'improvement' and better control of the breeds, economic circumstances and prices were favourable. Effective org...

Not many long term series on agricultural rents in the Netherlands are available, even when source material is abundant. This article adds two long term series for Friesland, one of the northern provinces of the Netherlands. The series cover rents of the lands owned by the Sint Anthony gasthuis and one for the lands owned by the Popta gasthuis (bot...