The 10 Most Important Economic Events of 2016

2016 has been a year of surprises. Who could have predicted the events which happened over the course of the year!

In terms of the economic and financial system, here is my top 10 major events. Many of them are related and some are less serious than others!

1. The election of Donald Trump
2. Brexit
3. The strong US dollar
4. The Italian banking woes
5. The European Commission's Apple tax ruling
6. The Celtic Tiger on Angel Dust - the 26% growth in Ireland's GDP!
7. The Bank of England reducing interest rates to 0.25%
8. Economists being dismissed in a post-truth and anti-expert world
9. 720% inflation in Venezuela
10. Demonetisation of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes in India

No doubt many will disagree with this list, and I possibly have forgotten some other key events, but these 10 grabbed my attention. Anyhow, I wish all my blog readers a merry Christmas and every blessing for 2017! Below is my favourite Christmas economics song - Deck the Halls with Macro Follies.

Bitcoin Bubble?

According to Robert Shiller , speaking at Davos, Bitcoin is a perfect example of a bubble - story here . Shiller sees Bitcoin as a backwards step in the evolution of money. George Selgin , a free banker, takes an opposing view - click here . Although he doesn't believe that Bitcoin is money, he sees its development as a fascinating turn in the evolution of money. In particular, he lauds the fact that Bitcoin production is constrained and cannot be infinite. There is a short video below where Bitcoin explain how it works.

How Valuable Are Connections?

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne...

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles, co-authored with my colleague Will Quinn , is forthcoming in August. It is published by Cambridge University Press and is available for pre-order at Amazon , Barnes and Noble , Waterstones and Cambridge University Press .

Finance: Past, Present and Future

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