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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Martin Beddeleem (Aarhus University [Aarhus]); Nathanael Colin-Jaeger (TRIANGLE - Triangle : action, discours, pensée politique et économique - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - IEP Lyon - Sciences Po Lyon - Institut d'études politiques de Lyon - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | The 1930s and 1940s marked a period of crisis for liberalism. Authors as diverse as Hayek, Röpke, Lippmann, Polanyi and Rougier came together at two founding events, the Walter Lippmann Colloquium in 1938 and the creation of the Mont-Pèlerin Society in 1947, to rethink liberalism. This rethinking of the liberal project led them to establish a diagnosis of the crisis of liberalism, which, for the authors mentioned, goes back to the French Revolution. This article proposes to show the coherence of the neoliberal project from their historical diagnosis in this period of crisis. Indeed, by criticizing the French Revolution and its effects as part of a harmful rationalism, which gave rise to both laissez-faire and various collectivisms, neoliberals explicitly take up concepts from critics of the revolution, especially Edmund Burke. The concept of tradition, understood as covering social and legal rules that have slowly evolved to constitute coordination mechanisms that allow our actions, is thus very largely taken up and valued by neoliberals. We thus interpret neoliberal theory on the basis of this recategorization of the concept of tradition, and point out the affinities of neoliberal positions with philosophical conservatism. This rapprochement reveals several conceptual tensions between cultural evolutionism on the one hand and the defence of substantial Western values on the other. |
| Abstract: | Les années 1930 et 1940 marquent une période de crise pour le libéralisme. Des auteurs aussi divers que Hayek, Röpke, Lippmann ou encore Polanyi et Rougier se réunissent, lors de deux événements fondateurs, le Colloque Walter Lippmann en 1938 et la création de la Société du Mont Pèlerin en 1947, pour repenser le libéralisme. Cette refonte du projet libéral les pousse à établir un diagnostic relatif à la crise du libéralisme, remontant, pour les auteurs mentionnés, à la Révolution Française. Cet article se propose de montrer la cohérence du projet néolibéral à partir de leur diagnostic historique dans cette période de crise. En effet en critiquant la Révolution Française et ses effets comme participant d'un rationalisme néfaste, ayant donné naissance aussi bien au laissez-faire qu'aux divers collectivismes, les néolibéraux reprennent explicitement des concepts des critiques de la révolution, au premier rang desquels Edmund Burke. Le concept de tradition, compris comme recouvrant des règles sociales et juridiques ayant lentement évoluées de façon à constituer des dispositifs de coordination permettant nos actions, est ainsi très largement repris et valorisé par les néolibéraux. Nous interprétons ainsi la théorie néolibérale à partir de cette recatégorisation du concept de tradition, et pointons les affinités des positions néolibérales avec le conservatisme philosophique. Ce rapprochement fait apparaître plusieurs tensions conceptuelles entre d'une part un évolutionnisme culturel et d'autre part la défense de valeurs occidentales substantielles. |
| Keywords: | Néoliberalisme,Conservatisme,tradition,Hayek,Röpke |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02488697&r=all |
| By: | Simplice A. Asongu (Yaounde, Cameroon); Paul N. Acha-Anyi (Walter Sisulu University, South Africa) |
| Abstract: | Reconciling the two dominant development models of the Washington Consensus (WC) and Beijing Model (BM) remains a critical challenge in the literature. The challenge is even more demanding when emerging development paradigms like the Liberal Institutional Pluralism (LIP) and New Structural Economics (NSE) schools have to be integrated. While the latter has recognized both State and market failures but failed to provide a unified theory, the former has left the challenging concern of how institutional diversity matter in the development process. We synthesize perspectives from recently published papers on development and Sino-African relations in order to present the relevance of both the WC and BM in the long-term and short-run respectively. While the paper postulates for a unified theory by reconciling the WC and the BM to complement the NSE, it at the same time presents a case for economic rights and political rights as short-run and long-run development priorities respectively. By attempting to reconcile the WC with the BM, the study contributes at the same to macroeconomic NSE literature of unifying a development theory and to the LIP literature on institutional preferences with stages of development. Hence, the proposed reconciliation takes into account the structural and institutional realities of nations at different stages of the process of development. |
| Keywords: | Economic thought; Development; Beijing model; Washington Consensus; Africa |
| JEL: | B10 O11 O19 O55 |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:abh:wpaper:19/050&r=all |
| By: | Daniel Levy (RCEA - Rimini Center for Economic Analysis, Emory University [Atlanta, GA], Bar-Ilan University [Israël]); Tamir Mayer (Bar-Ilan University [Israël]); Alon Raviv (Bar-Ilan University [Israël]) |
| Abstract: | Textual analysis of 14,270 NBER Working Papers published during 1999–2016 is done to assess the effects of the 2008 crisis on the economics literature. The volume of crisis-related WPs is counter-cyclical, lagging the financial-instability-index. WPs by the Monetary-Economics, Asset-Pricing, and Corporate-Finance program members, hardly refer to "crisis/crises" in the pre-crisis period. As the crisis develops, however, their study-efforts of crisis-related issues increase rapidly. In contrast, WPs in macroeconomics-related programs refer quite extensively in the pre-crisis period to "crisis/crises" and to crises-related topics. Overall, our findings are consistent with the claim that economists were not engaged sufficiently in crises studies before the 2008 crisis. However, counter to the popular image, as soon as the crisis began to unravel, the NBER affiliated economists responded dramatically by switching their focus and efforts to studying and understanding the crisis, its causes and its consequences. |
| Keywords: | 2008 Financial Crisis,Financial Crises,Textual Analysis,LDA Topic Modeling,Repo,Securitization,Sudden Stop |
| Date: | 2020–02–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02488796&r=all |
| By: | Erin Hengel; Eunyoung Moon |
| Keywords: | Solution |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:liv:livedp:202001&r=all |
| By: | Takeshi Murooka (Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University); Takuro Yamashita (Toulouse School of Economics, University of Toulouse) |
| Abstract: | There is accumulating evidence that some consumers are behavioral in the sense that they may make suboptimal decisions. This paper investigates adverse selection with general types of such behavioral biases. In our model, some buyers (i.e., consumers) may take actions that do not necessary optimize own payoffs, which encompass virtually any type of biases including subjective probability,framing, model misspecification, random errors, and inferential naivety. We focus on a situation in which there exists severe adverse selection where only no-trade outcome is possible under rational agents. We show that the no-trade theorem remains to hold without imposing any additional assumption on buyers' behavior. That is, if there is any trade under a mechanism which is incentive compatible for sellers, then the expected payoff from the trade is negative (i.e., ex ante individual rationality constraint is violated) for some type of buyers. Our result sheds light on a new trade-off between social surplus and payoff losses of boundedly-rational buyers. |
| Keywords: | adverse selection, bounded rationality, mechanism design, no-trade theorem |
| JEL: | D82 D83 D86 D90 D91 |
| Date: | 2020–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osp:wpaper:20e002&r=all |
| By: | Andrea Brandolini (Banca d'Italia); John Micklewright (University College London) |
| Abstract: | A new book on measuring global poverty by the late Tony Atkinson was published in 2019 by Princeton University Press. We describe how we edited the incomplete manuscript that Atkinson left at his death, the additions we made (which include afterwords by Francois Bourguignon and Nick Stern), and the content and structure of the book. We then discuss what we believe Atkinson was trying to achieve, emphasising both the important insights of the book and where the gaps remain. We also review parallel developments in the World Bank's measurement of global poverty that were stimulated by the report of the Commission on Global Poverty, written by Atkinson, from which this book was developed. The new book is more than four hundred published pages. It remains unfinished yet it is a masterly guide to the nuances of poverty measurement and an invaluable source for future research. |
| Keywords: | global poverty, income, consumption, multidimensional poverty, cosmopolitanism. |
| JEL: | C80 I32 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2020-518&r=all |
| By: | Philippe Batifoulier (CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord - USPC - Université Sorbonne Paris Cité - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Université Sorbonne Paris Nord); Nicolas da Silva (CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord - USPC - Université Sorbonne Paris Cité - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Université Sorbonne Paris Nord); Mehrdad Vahabi (CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord - USPC - Université Sorbonne Paris Cité - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Université Sorbonne Paris Nord) |
| Abstract: | Ce travail a pour objet de relire l'histoire de l'Etat providence français à la lumière de la théorie d'un Etat prédateur. On oppose une approche de la protection sociale portée par l'Etat où la protection est un instrument de la prédation à une approche qualifiée de « La sociale » dominée par un « citizen welfare » et axée sur un auto gouvernement des individus. L'Etat providence est l'aboutissement de la guerre de masse moderne et la politique sociale (notamment la politique de population) est orientée vers les besoins de la guerre. Cependant bien qu'elle soit en partie le résultat de la guerre, la protection sociale trouve aussi ses racines en France dans l'affirmation d'un bien être porté par les citoyens eux-mêmes et non par l'Etat. Les origines de cette exception française remontent à la commune de 1871 et se poursuivent par la création du régime général de sécurité sociale en 1945/1946. On montrera que toute l'histoire de l'Etat-providence français consiste à se réapproprier le bien-être citoyen autogéré par un processus de réformes engagées à partir de 1947. Ce mouvement d'étatisation du "citizen welfare", en plus de constituer une dépossession du pouvoir politique d'auto-gouvernement des citoyens, s'est accompagné de la marchandisation des politiques sociales. |
| Date: | 2020–02–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cepnwp:hal-02487791&r=all |
| By: | Juan Carlos de Pablo |
| Abstract: | Enseñé la materia en la Universidad de Buenos Aires, entre 1980 y 1983, y la dicto en la Universidad del CEMA (UCEMA), a partir de 1999. Lo primero que trasmito en el curso es la perspectiva con la cual hay que abordar el análisis de una política económica, para lo cual invito a los alumnos a pensar en el jefe de la guardia de un hospital, quien no elige a sus pacientes, tiene que adoptar decisiones muy difíciles, con poca información, el tiempo en contra y rodeado de personas que lo insultan y lo quieren golpear. Luego una breve revisión de la literatura, los alumnos presentan casos de política económica, protagonizados por Perón, Frondizi, Alfonsín y Menem, rematando en el análisis de la política económica actual. Durante el curso visito una fábrica y un sindicato. |
| Keywords: | política económica, enseñanza, casos de estudio, visita a fábrica y a sindicato |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:718&r=all |
| By: | Blanche Segrestin (CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - MINES ParisTech - École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris - PSL - PSL Research University - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSL - PSL Research University); Armand Hatchuel (CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - MINES ParisTech - École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris - PSL - PSL Research University - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Kevin Levillain (CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - MINES ParisTech - École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris - PSL - PSL Research University - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | A recent French reform has revised the legal definition of the corporation. In essence, the law stipulates that the corporation must be run with due regard to the social and environmental impacts of its activity. It also introduces the notion of raison d'être and affords the possibility for any corporation to assign social or environmental purposes to itself, defined in its by-laws. This reform is similar to recent reforms in the UK and the US, but is based on an original and distinctive theoretical argument. The aim of our article is to analyse the fundamental tenets of this reform and their implications for the theory of the corporation. It shows that the new law is based on a new positive definition of the enterprise as not only an economic organization or a productive entity, but more fundamentally a space for innovative collective action. We argue that this view of the enterprise challenges our conceptualization of the corporation in two important ways. First, it shows that the traditional theories overlook the activities of the enterprise and their related impacts, and that the corporation is not necessarily the appropriate legal vehicle for the innovative enterprise. Second, it suggests that the stipulation of the enterprise's purpose or raison d'être in the corporate by-laws can provide new promising legal foundations for corporate responsibility. |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02441287&r=all |
| By: | Rémy Guichardaz (BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | The debate over intellectual property in nineteenth-century France was structured as follows: liberal economists advocated a system of perpetual intellectual property rights, while socialist thinkers called for their total abolition. Between these two extremes, other economists supported a temporary form of intellectual property: in particular, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Léon Walras both converged towards this third solution. This article shows that they in fact provide two different analyses of intellectual property rights, which partly overlap with positions in current debates in innovation studies. |
| Keywords: | copyright,Intellectual property,Walras (Léon),Proudhon (Pierre-Joseph) |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02437832&r=all |
| By: | Don Fullerton |
| Abstract: | How was the birth of “Environmental Economics” related to the first Earth Day fifty years ago (April 22, 1970)? This short note introduces some ideas about an amazing burst of intellectual activity from 1968 to 1974. Environmental economics was not a field of economics before this brief period, but the main field journal was up and running by the end of it. This note on “environmental economics” will be published in the forthcoming “Earth 2020: An Insider’s Guide to a Rapidly Changing Planet” by Philippe D. Tortell (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers), along with a score of other notes about the fifty years of progress on air pollution, water, climate, oceans, fish, land, forest, biodiversity, plastics, contaminants, space junk, geo-engineering, media, law, and politics. |
| Keywords: | environment, policy, climate, Earth Day |
| JEL: | Q20 Q30 Q40 Q50 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8075&r=all |