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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Morales Meoqui, Jorge |
| Abstract: | The law of comparative advantage cannot be attributed to David Ricardo, James Mill, Robert Torrens or John Stuart Mill. Their writings, much like those of Adam Smith, strictly adhere to the classical rule for specialization, which asserts that one should acquire commodities abroad whenever offered cheaper than it would cost to produce them locally. They all viewed the cheaper price of foreign commodities as the logical starting point and condicio sine qua non of most exchanges between countries. Furthermore, the popular narrative about Ricardo’s alleged formulation of an alternative rule for specialization – the law or principle of comparative advantage – results from a misinterpretation of the well-known numerical example presented in Chapter 7 of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. John Stuart Mill is largely responsible for this misinterpretation; he obviously deserves no recognition or praise for that. |
| Date: | 2026–04–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:4h5ks_v1 |
| By: | Curran, Michael |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aes026:397907 |
| By: | Richiardi, Matteo; Burdett, Ashley; He, Zhechun; Kolndrekaj, Aleksandra |
| Abstract: | Economic insecurity has become an increasingly prominent topic in economic research, but there remains little agreement on how it should be defined and quantified. This review seeks to consolidate existing research and clarify the current state of knowledge, focussing on individual-based measures of economic insecurity, their determinants, and their effects. Our assessment is that thefield has evolved from single-source indicators to sophisticated, multi-dimensionalmodels, yet a unifying framework remains elusive. This stems from a persistent conceptual trade-off between axiomatic rigour, operational implementation, andthe challenge of integrating the dynamic nature of risk with data availability.Rather than seeking a single †best†indicator, this review categorizes specificmetrics according to distinct research objectives. By clarifying the trade-offs inherent in different measurement strategies, the paper provides a roadmap forfuture research to align empirical tools more effectively with the specific nature of the insecurity under study. |
| Date: | 2026–05–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:cempwp:cempa9-26 |
| By: | Christine Desan (Harvard Law School) |
| Abstract: | The surge of executive power unleashed by the Supreme Court has reached the Federal Reserve, provoking a crisis that the justices seem suddenly anxious to avoid. But the drama is long overdue. The central bank has a constitutional stature that poses a direct challenge to unitary executive theory, the principle animating the Court's recent case law. Congress established the Federal Reserve System to carry out a critical legislative prerogative, making the sovereign money supply. Congress used an institutional form, national banking, innovated precisely to secure sovereign money-making from executive (originally monarchical) interference. Congress in turn assigned a vital responsibility, the capacity to make money out of debt in the people's name, to the Fed. The constitutional conclusion follows: Congress's prerogative over money-making clearly secures the Fed's independence from presidential interference. That conclusion is lost in current scholarship that treats the Fed as fundamentally like other independent agencies. The Court has assumed, similarly, that the unitary executive presides over a relatively homogeneous regulatory field. The case of the Fed exposes the separation of powers as a more complicated project. Legislatures built democratic sovereignty by struggling for prerogatives that, like money-making, protected their lawmaking authority. The prerogatives claimed by Congress inform the work of each agency and official, including within the executive branch. The Court dismantles democratic sovereignty when it denies the reach of those prerogatives. |
| Keywords: | Federal Reserve; central bank independence; money creation; democratic sovereignty; legislative prerogative; Congress; unitary executive theory; separation of powers; constitutional political economy; monetary architecture |
| JEL: | E42 E58 K23 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–03–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:thk:wpaper:inetwp247 |
| By: | Steven N. Durlauf |
| Abstract: | This article proposes a way of understanding meritocracy from retrospective versus prospective points of view. Retrospective meritocracy is static or backwards-looking: Merit is based on an individual’s characteristics or past achievements as representative of excellence or as desert for a position already obtained. Prospective meritocracy is forward-looking: Merit is functionally defined as the comparative contribution that an individual makes to a specified set of social objectives. I use formal models to show that these alternative conceptions have very different implications for meritocratic assignments of students to schools or workers to jobs and that they involve differing information needs for a policymaker. These different approaches to merit demonstrate how alternate versions of meritocracy may or may not be socially efficient. I discuss implications for the use of meritocracy as a desideratum for various public policy contexts. |
| JEL: | D63 D78 I24 I28 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35151 |