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Liu et al. and the Good and Bad in Economics

By  |  December 1, 2020

By: Ramsi Woodcock (What am I Missing?)

The Good Is the Story

The good is that the paper tells a plausible story about why the current era’s low interest rates might actually be the cause of the low productivity growth and increasing markups we are observing, as well as the increasing market concentration we might also be observing.

The story is that low interest rates encourage investment in innovation, but investment in innovation paradoxically discourages competition against dominant firms, because low rates allow dominant firms to invest more heavily in innovation in order to defend their dominant positions.

The result is fewer challenges to market dominance and therefore less investment in innovation and consequently lower productivity growth, increasing markups, and increasing market concentration…

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