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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Peter N. Ireland (Boston College) |
| Abstract: | From the very start of its fifty-year history, the Shadow Open Market Committee advocated for a monetary policy strategy focused on controlling inflation. With time, the rationale for price stability as the principal focus of monetary policy came to be accepted more widely by academic economists and Federal Reserve officials as well. The SOMC also consistently favored an operational approach involving the use of the monetary base as the policy instrument and a broader monetary aggregate as an intermediate target. These features of SOMC strategy, by contrast, have never gained widespread support among academics or at the Fed. This paper outlines the SOMC’s preferred approach, focusing on how the Committee’s money- based strategy and arguments for it evolved over time. It then shows that these arguments still apply with force today. |
| Keywords: | Inflation, Money Growth, Monetary Policy, Monetarism, Shadow Open Market Committee |
| JEL: | B22 B31 E31 E51 E52 E58 |
| Date: | 2024–07–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:1078&r= |
| By: | Jordi Brandts; Francesc Trillas |
| Abstract: | We study the effects on citizens’ opinions of exposing them to opposing views in relation to the public vs private property nature of companies providing a public service. We focus on the issue of private vs public property of water distribution operators. Whether such operators should be publicly or privately owned is a hotly debated topic all over the world. The view of mainstream economic experts is rather agnostic about property. The crucial issue is considered to be the quality of the regulation of operators. However, there is also a broad citizen movement in favor of the opinion that water supply operators should be public property. In an online experiment we compare the effect on citizens’ opinions in Spain of three different texts: a neutral expository one, one which contains only arguments in favor of public operators and a third one which contains both the pro public property view and that of mainstream economic experts. We find that by itself the message of those in favor of public ownership does affect citizens opinion. However, the arguments of expert economists are effective at more than compensating the influence of the pro public companies arguments. This suggests that economists and expert thinking has a role to play in the public debate, beyond the role played in advising politicians or through the decision-making process in regulatory agencies. |
| Keywords: | opposing views, communication, public ownership, online experiments |
| JEL: | C9 D83 D9 Q25 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1453&r= |
| By: | Alexandre Truc (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France); Muriel Dal Pont Legrand (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France) |
| Abstract: | In the present paper, we investigate the diffusion of agent-based models (ABMs) in economics using a quantitative approach to better understand how the introduction of this tool in economics influenced the structure of the field as well as research programs in recent years. Our analysis shows that the proliferation of ABMs has resulted in the emergence of diverse research subfields rather than one unified research program. Most notably, we highlight how interdisciplinarity plays a pivotal role in understanding the diversity of ways in which agent-based models are integrated into economics. While in some cases ABMs are used by economists as an imported tool to address disciplinary-oriented questions in dedicated subfields journals, in other cases ABMs are a vehicle for more interdisciplinary transfers and interactions (e.g., interdisciplinary co-authorship) that are more challenging to the traditional frontiers of economics. |
| Keywords: | Agent-Based, Interdisciplinarity, Social Network Analysis |
| JEL: | B2 B21 B4 D9 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2024-19&r= |
| By: | Cahuc, Pierre (Sciences Po, Paris) |
| Abstract: | This article provides an overview of the economic literature on short-time work. It presents the main characteristics of short-time work since its emergence in Germany in the 1930s. It analyzes its effectiveness as a job preservation mechanism, drawing on theoretical models and empirical studies. It concludes by highlighting the areas that future research could explore to address the most significant gaps in our understanding of short-time work. |
| Keywords: | short-time work, furlough, employment, working hours |
| JEL: | J23 J41 J63 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17111&r= |
| By: | Maria Laura Victoria Marques; Ronaldo Seroa da Motta; Daniel de Abreu Pereira Uhr; Julia Ziero Uhr |
| Abstract: | The journal Energy Economics, a leading international peer-reviewed outlet for economic theory in the energy sector, celebrates its 45th anniversary in 2024. This article uses a bibliometric approach to present a retrospective of the journal's contributions. The study includes all publications from the journal based on data from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The resulting sample comprises 6, 563 documents covering the period from 1979 to April 2024. The annual publication rate increased by 1.02 percent, with an average of 40.07 citations per document. Institutions from the United States of America and China lead in the number of articles published in the journal. A co-occurrence analysis of keywords was conducted, complemented by a sub-sample analysis, to provide a detailed view of thematic development and evolution over time. Finally, the article highlights future thematic trends of the journal, offering insights for editorial guidelines and interested authors. |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2407.05974&r= |