|
on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Jon D. Wisman |
| Abstract: | John Maynard Keynes rejected the strict assumption of rational behavior embraced by neoclassical economists, providing causal importance to instincts, habits, and intuition. However, he mostly failed, as did they, to incorporate in his analysis that human decisions are frequently, if not most often, dependent upon the decisions of others. Further, and more particularly, he failed to grant importance to the fact that humans struggle for the recognition and social status necessary for social and self-respect. Thorstein Veblen also rejected the neoclassical expression of rational behavior, and 37 years before Keynes's The General Theory, focused upon interdependence in decision making and status competition by drawing upon Charles Darwin's theory of evolutionary biology to ground in science his theory of human behavior. Had Keynes read Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), he may have recognized the need in his own theory to account for interpersonal decision making and especially of incorporating the struggle for social recognition and status. This article examines how drawing upon aspects of Veblen's work would have enriched the explanatory power of Keynes's economics as well as that of those engaged in furthering Keynes's project. It concludes with reflections on the necessity that economic analysis, and social science generally, be constructed upon a scientifically-grounded conception of human behavior. |
| Keywords: | Marginal propensity to consume, Conspicuous consumption, Darwinism, Instinct, Status, Emulation |
| JEL: | B22 B41 E12 E71 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:amu:wpaper:2022-05&r= |
| By: | Pietro Biroli; Titus Galama; Stephanie von Hinke; Hans van Kippersluis; Kevin Thom |
| Abstract: | Economists and social scientists have debated the relative importance of nature (one’s genes) and nurture (one’s environment) for decades, if not centuries. This debate can now be informed by the ready availability of genetic data in a growing number of social science datasets. This paper explores the potential uses of genetic data in economics, with a focus on estimating the interplay between nature (genes) and nurture (environment). We discuss how economists can benefit from incorporating genetic data into their analyses even when they do not have a direct interest in estimating genetic effects. We argue that gene–environment (G×E) studies can be instrumental for (i) testing economic theory, (ii) uncovering economic or behavioral mechanisms, and (iii) analyzing treatment effect heterogeneity, thereby improving the understanding of how (policy) interventions affect population subgroups. We introduce the reader to essential genetic terminology, develop a conceptual economic model to interpret gene–environment interplay, and provide practical guidance to empirical researchers. |
| Date: | 2022–02–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:uobdis:22/759&r= |
| By: | Michael D. Bordo; Edward Simpson Prescott |
| Abstract: | This essay was written in memory of Marvin Goodfriend for a Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond book called Essays in Honor of Marvin Goodfriend: Economist and Central Banker. We discuss his Carnegie-Rochester conference paper titled "The Role of a Regional Bank in a System of Central Banks." In that paper, Marvin argued that the Federal Reserve's decentralized structure allowed for competing ideas about monetary and banking policy to develop with the central bank. In our essay, we describe how Marvin demonstrated this argument during his long career at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. We also describe the institutional developments that led to this competition, including reforms that Chairman William McChesney Martin made to the operation of the Federal Open Market Committee in the 1950s and the introduction of monetary policy ideas such as monetarism and rational expectations by the Reserve Banks. |
| Keywords: | Federal Reserve structure; monetary policy; governance; Marvin Goodfriend |
| JEL: | B0 E58 G28 H1 |
| Date: | 2022–01–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:93876&r= |
| By: | Rafael Muñoz de Bustillo Llorente (Universidad de Salamanca); Fernando Esteve Mora |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this working paper, the first of a series of three aiming at studying social classes from an economic perspective, is to review the role played by social classes in economic analysis. With that aim, we will first discuss the use of the concept of social classes in the analysis of classical economists. Then we will present the reasons behind the abandonment of the concept of social classes as an analytical tool by the marginalist school who triumphed in the final quarter of the 19th century, changing the economic paradigm, and by mainstream economists in the 20th Century. Nevertheless, it can be argued that the classical idea of social class (based on the source of income: wages versus profits) has somehow remained alive in modern macroeconomic analysis, if in disguise, behind the concept of functional (or factorial) distribution of income. The last part of the paper reviews the role played by the functional distribution of income in current macroeconomic analysis, and studies how the evolution of the economy and labour relations in the last few decades has made the interpretation of the functional distribution of income in terms of social classes less relevant than in the past. |
| Keywords: | Social Class, Functional Distribution of Income, Labour segmentation |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:dclass:202202&r= |
| By: | Engelbert Stockhammer; Karsten Kohler |
| Abstract: | Since the Global Financial Crisis there has been growing interest in post-Keynesian macroeconomic theory by political economists. In particular the recent growth models approach in Comparative Political Economy (CPE) draws heavily on Kaleckian macroeconomics of demand regimes. This paper, firstly, traces the disintegration of 19th century political economy and highlights that many streams within heterodox economics are a continuation of the political economy project, as are the subfields of CPE and International Political Economy in the social sciences. Secondly, the paper gives an overview of the growth models approach and its relation to post-Keynesian economics (PKE). It clarifies different strategies of identifying growth models empirically, namely GDP growth decomposition versus analysing growth drivers, and it highlights changes in growth models since the Global Financial Crisis. Finally it identifies opportunities and challenges that emerge from a continued engagement of PKE with political economy and with CPE in particular. |
| Keywords: | Post-Keynesian Economics, Comparative Political Economy, growth models, varieties of capitalism |
| JEL: | B20 B50 E12 O43 P51 |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp2210&r= |
| By: | Pietro Biroli (University of Zurich); Titus Galama (University of Southern California); Stephanie von Hinke (University of Bristol); Hans van Kippersluis (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Cornelius Rietveld (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Kevin Thom (University of Wisconsin) |
| Abstract: | Economists and social scientists have debated the relative importance of nature (one’s genes) and nurture (one’s environment) for decades, if not centuries. This debate can now be informed by the ready availability of genetic data in a growing number of social science datasets. This paper explores the potential uses of genetic data in economics, with a focus on estimating the interplay between nature (genes) and nurture (environment). We discuss how economists can benefit from incorporating genetic data into their analyses even when they do not have a direct interest in estimating genetic effects. We argue that gene–environment (G × E) studies can be instrumental for (i) testing economic theory, (ii) uncovering economic or behavioral mechanisms, and (iii) analyzing treatment effect heterogeneity, thereby improving the understanding of how (policy) interventions affect population subgroups. We introduce the reader to essential genetic terminology, develop a conceptual economic model to interpret gene–environment interplay, and provide practical guidance to empirical researchers. |
| Keywords: | Gene-by-Environment Interplay, Polygenic Indices, Social Science Genetics ALSPAC |
| JEL: | D1 D3 I1 I2 J1 |
| Date: | 2022–03–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20220019&r= |
| By: | Pietro Biroli (University of Zurich); Titus Galama (University of Southern California); Stephanie von Hinke (University of Bristol, Erasmus University, and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Hans van Kippersluis (Erasmus University); Cornelius Rietveld (Erasmus University); Kevin Thom (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) |
| Abstract: | Economists and social scientists have debated the relative importance of nature (one's genes) and nurture (one's environment) for decades, if not centuries. This debate can now be informed by the ready availability of genetic data in a growing number of social science datasets. This paper explores the potential uses of genetic data in economics, with a focus on estimating the interplay between nature (genes) and nurture (environment). We discuss how economists can benefit from incorporating genetic data into their analyses even when they do not have a direct interest in estimating genetic effects. We argue that gene-environment (GxE) studies can be instrumental for (i) testing economic theory, (ii) uncovering economic or behavioral mechanisms, and (iii) analyzing treatment effect heterogeneity, thereby improving the understanding of how (policy) interventions affect population subgroups. We introduce the reader to essential genetic terminology, develop a conceptual economic model to interpret gene-environment interplay, and provide practical guidance to empirical researchers. |
| Keywords: | gene-by-environment interplay, polygenic indices, social science genetics, ALSPAC |
| JEL: | D10 D30 I10 I20 J10 |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2022-005&r= |
| By: | Olofsson, Magnus (Department of History, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that the leading radical political movement in Sweden around the year 1870, whose demands included expanding the franchise, female emancipation, religious freedom, universal conscription, and abolishment of land taxes, has been partly misconstrued and misunderstood in earlier scholarship, which has characterized the New Liberals rather vaguely as ‘liberal’, ‘radical’ or ‘democratic’. Through an analysis of the New Liberals’ internal and external communication, this paper instead argues that the New Liberal movement was influenced by the larger European republican tradition. Their democratic project was not liberal, but republican, and this can be seen in their views on political freedom and popular sovereignty, suffrage extension, and on the importance of politically active, virtuous, citizens. In short, the New Liberals wanted to remake the state from the ground up and reform the mores of the Swedish people along republican lines. This strong presence of republican ideas, which in earlier scholarship has been misconstrued as liberalism, it is argued, poses important questions for our understanding of Swedish nineteenth-century political life, not only during their active years but also in the decades that preceded and followed. |
| Keywords: | Republicanism; Democratization; Sweden; Liberalism |
| JEL: | N43 |
| Date: | 2022–01–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:luekhi:0234&r= |
| By: | Ben Fine (Department of Economics, SOAS University of London); Seeraj Mohamed (Parliamentary Budget Office, South Africa) |
| Abstract: | What can we learn from structural change of countries that successfully industrialised in the 20th and 21st century? This paper explains that current attempts at economic transformation of the structure of countries’ economies, including industrial development, have to be analysed and understood within the shift to the new, financialised phase of capitalism and the imposition of neoliberal practices, interests and ideologies within countries and on their international economic and financial relations. Rather than reflecting an ideology of the reduction of the role of the state, neoliberalism has entailed the redirection and transformation of the control and role of the state in the provision of welfare, social security, industrial development and deregulation of trade, labour and finance as well as reorientation of both domestic macroeconomic policies and the global financial architecture. The lessons that can be learned from studying late industrialising countries, such as the Asian Tigers, that had achieved relatively high levels of industrial transformation, have to take into account this context, including the analytical reduction, even implosion, of concepts such as development and industrial policy. Further, one has to understand the limitation of current mainstream economics approaches in the context of the redefined and degraded notions of development and the roles of the state that neoliberalism deployed defensively in response to ideas that developmental states played key roles in economic transformations of the late industrialisers. First, we revisit the nature and role of industrial policy. Second, we situate these in relation to one another and what lessons we have learned from the developmental state paradigm and how we might take these lessons forward. And, third, we turn to the relationship between economic and social development. We are mindful, as already suggested, that neoliberalism, as the current stage of capitalism – now longer lasting than its “Keynesian†predecessor – is underpinned by financialisation, something that is increasingly acknowledged across the literature but which needs to be taken into account other than treating finance as one amongst many other factors. |
| Keywords: | Development; Developmental State; Economic Transformation; Financialisation; Industrial Policy; Neoliberalism |
| JEL: | G00 H11 O1 P10 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:soa:wpaper:247&r= |
| By: | Winkler, Enno A. |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the political, philosophical, societal, legal, educational, biological, psychological and technological reasons why there is an urgent need for basic intercultural and interfaith ethics in the world and whether it is possible to formulate a valid code of such ethics. It is shown that universal ethics could be founded on natural law, which can be understood in both religious and secular ways. Alternatively, universal ethics could be based on a single supreme principle that is independent of worldview and culture: human dignity. In accordance with these concepts, a minimalist and normative code of essential, self-evident universal ethical principles and norms is proposed. The implementation of universal ethics in society is a long-term political task that could be achieved by including universal ethics in the compulsory school curriculum of all countries and in the UNESCO agenda of Global Citizen Education. |
| Date: | 2022–03–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:ws84r&r= |
| By: | Leroch, Martin Alois |
| Abstract: | After having met severe opposition with its introduction, evolutionary ethics is becoming increasingly popular. One adherent is Ken Binmore, who - extremely simplified - argues that evolution has equipped humans with the inclination to reciprocate, and that via reciprocity moral norms have evolved. While Binmore's theory more or less implicitly rests upon several behavioral assumptions, it lacks a clear empirical foundation. In this paper, I provide a summary of key results from various disciplines related to the core assumptions, namely: i) People behave as if they held other-regarding preferences, ii) Such other-regarding behavior is enforced via reciprocity, iii) Norm-violators are punished, and iv) In the absence of norms, people employ a trial-and-error strategy from which an equilibrium will evolve. While most of these assumptions are well-supported, the application of equilibria to real-world states of the world seems problematic. Rather, human behavior is heterogenous and in constant flux. Further, because morality is merely one institution embedded in a wider set of institutions, the evolutionary pressure does not influence moral norms in isolation. If one institution changes, so will the (theoretical) equilibrium of the institution "morality". |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:pfobei:176&r= |