Top all-time · #4618
John H. Cochrane
Personal blog · grumpy-economist.comeconomicspolitics
John H. Cochrane writes The Grumpy Economist, a personal blog at grumpy-economist.com about economics and politics. Since 2024, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 33 times, most often “Tariffs, Saving, and Investment”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link John H. Cochrane's Substack for economics commentary on inflation, tariffs, manufacturing, drug prices and fiscal policy. Most comments cite it as a source rather than judging the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
News, views, and commentary from a free market point of view. I moved from Blogger to Substack in December 2023. For previous posts back to 2011 see my Blogger page at https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com. Click to read The Grumpy Economist, by John H. Cochrane, with tens of tho
Most-linked posts?
- Tariffs, Saving, and Investment3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-04-14
- Refine3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-25
- Praise for Price-Gouging2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-08-21
- A Great Nobel2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-10-12
What Hacker News says?
That seems rather focused on one policy that was big in the 50s. The Marshal Plan was great but that isn't something the modern US seems to be capable of - since around Vietnam I think was the change. It has been a good 50 years where the US just breaks stuff and leaves it broken. Modern prosperity is caused by modern policy. I've seen some reasonable theorising that income basically comes from how easy it is to do…
Comment linking /p/the-cost-of-regulation
on “What if we made advertising illegal?”Submitted Tariffs, Saving, and Investment as a story · 91 points
HN discussion> But the important question is - is it worth it? Should we be doing something more valuable instead? It's hard to quantify. E.g. the CHIPS act is a strategic thing in case TSMC is disrupted for some reason. How valuable is insurance? How much useful work (and skill) do you ship overseas in exchange for promissory notes[0]? [0] https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/tariffs-saving-and-invest...
Comment linking /p/tariffs-saving-and-investment
on “America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back”Submitted Praise for Price-Gouging as a story · 7 points
HN discussion> The fact that our relatively small population supports the GDP it does is wild. Yes and no. It is very impressive what humans can do and the US is a remarkable country for managing to achieve what they have. On the other hand, if we're talking GDP it is basically just a trendline [0] of whether you let people better their own lives or not. The main reason for US success on the GDP front is that the median administ…
Comment linking /p/the-cost-of-regulation
on “The past was not that cute”Submitted Expectations and the Neutrality of Interest Rates, Final Version as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI recommend against books; they're expensive and typically the page count is too high for the number of ideas unless you are really interested in the academics of it. I get a lot more out of Wikipedia [0], blogs and YouTube (although the quality of information on YouTube is typically low). That being said, if you want some recommendations I'd suggest Tyler Cowen [1] as a good clearinghouse for topical ideas and John…
Comment linking /p/inflation-and-the-macroeconomy?utm_source=publication-search
on “Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff”Submitted Tech Stock Singularity as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> What's the rationale for legalized sports betting? Some people want to bet on sports. It seems obvious enough. It's like asking what the rationale is for letting people do anything. They don't have to clear it with you to make sure you agree that it is a worthwhile activity (or anyone else for that matter). Even if it is clear folly on a whim. I'll just add that every mistake the US makes is going to have a ration…
Comment linking /p/the-cost-of-regulation
on “An ESPN producer who quit because of sports gambling”Submitted Refine as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/fiscal-narratives-for-us-... https://www.johnhcochrane.com/s/inflation_PPP.pdf
Comment linking /p/fiscal-narratives-for-us-inflation
on “Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time”Submitted Price Control Apologia as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAn even better article - also looking at exchange rates: https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/tariffs-saving-and-invest...
Comment linking /p/tariffs-saving-and-investment
on “EU offered 'zero-for-zero' deal to US weeks before tariff announcement”Submitted Causation Does Not Imply Variation as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDrug companies produce drugs to make money. There is a huge investment. They maximize revenue by price discrimination to recover the cost of the good drug and all the drugs that didn't work. The US is a rich country. People in other countries can't pay as much for the drug. To maximize revenue the drug company sells the drug at a lower price to those people. More generally, price controls lead to less supply. Drug p…
Comment linking /p/praise-for-price-gouging
on “FDA intends to take action against non-FDA-approved GLP-1 drugs”Submitted A note on tariffs from the real world as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://archive.is/cu5yZ Discussed by economist John Cochrane at https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/aid .
Comment linking /p/aid
on “Aid cannot make poor countries rich”Submitted Central Bank Independence as a story · 2 points
HN discussionRegardless of whether people agree with the concept or not, this seems like excessive bureaucracy. This sort of thing should already be legal or illegal based on what is in an employment contract and it seems like just paperwork to have more laws saying that someone's reasonable working hours are indeed their agreed reasonable working hours. It shouldn't and probably doesn't need an act to metaphorically underline a…
Comment linking /p/the-cost-of-regulation
on “Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers”Submitted AI, Society, and Democracy: Just Relax as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThey might? If they don't and it is trivial to identify the beneficial owner, why is it necessary to create a requirement to disclose? The practical experience is that people are quite bad at this sort of requirement, that may well be a source of problems and that on aggregate making it harder to do business has a notable impact [0] on general prosperity. Don't needlessly put barriers in front of people who create w…
Comment linking /p/the-cost-of-regulation
on “EU calls VPNs "a loophole that needs closing" in age verification push”Submitted Central bankers can be too independent as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPerhaps you do not understand the difference between relative prices and nominal price level. So it is natural to extrapolate that way. Try these as background reading. 1. https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/inflation-vs-prices 2. https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/inflation-and-relative-pr... PS Almost all manufacturing is done indoors now. Rain does not affect supply of most manufacturing of iphones, trousers, oven…
Comment linking /p/inflation-and-relative-prices
on “Central bankers can be too independent”Submitted Stagnation and Hope as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHere’s John H Cochrane (the grumpy economist, Substack) praising refine. This is the post that first clued me into the service: https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/refine Here’s the Wikipedia for Cochrane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Cochrane I haven’t tried refine myself, but from second hand reports it seems potentially well designed and useful.
Comment linking /p/refine
on “Refine: AI-Powered Peer Review”Submitted A Great Nobel as a story · 1 points
HN discussionDo you think the submitter intended this as an ad? His post history doesn't seem suspicious. Or do you think article's author wrote this an an ad? He's a reputable academic who seems impressed with an AI tool he used and is honestly sharing his thoughts. For reference he publish the 80 page inflation mini-book 2 weeks ago asking for feedback: https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/inflation
Comment linking /p/inflation
on “I don't know how you get here from "predict the next word."”Submitted A Great Nobel as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted I don't know how you get here from "predict the next word." as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Praise for Price Gouging as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
