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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (The World Bank) |
| Date: | 2024–06–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:629&r= |
| By: | D.M. Nachane (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research) |
| Abstract: | In the inter war years (1919-39) macroeconomics was at the forefront of attention of both thinkers as well as policymakers. This paper focuses on Hawtrey, one of the major economists of that period whose contemporary influence on macroeconomic theory as well as policy was significant, but whose contributions, in the aftermath of World War II, have gone largely into oblivion. We begin with a brief exposition of the main strands of Hawtreyan macroeconomics. We then try to demonstrate the significant influence that Hawtrey's ideas had on Keynes' views, highlighting both the areas in which their ideas differed and where their views reinforced each other's. Before concluding, we draw attention to at least five contributions of Hawtrey, which have a strong claim to be considered original but which have received scant professional credit viz. the multiplier, the accelerator, quantitative easing, crowding out and the announcement effect of monetary policy. |
| Keywords: | instability of credit, credit deadlock, quantitative easing , the multiplier, crowding |
| JEL: | B22 B31 E12 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2024-009&r= |
| By: | Gary D. Libecap |
| Abstract: | The governance and transaction cost insights of Oliver Williamson (1975, 1985, 1996, 2010) and Ronald Coase (1937, 1992) have framed antitrust polices and firm management strategies. Transaction cost economics explain efficient governance adaptation. With a focus on private efficiency gains within firms and markets, however, neither Williamson nor Coase explore political exchange and rent-seeking. Coase (1960) sought to reform Pigouvian externality regulation based on transaction cost efficiencies. He called for assignment of property rights and bargaining, and for institutional comparisons of costs and benefits to reveal relative transaction cost and welfare advantages. His 1960 paper is among the most cited in economics, but his remedies have not been adopted as the primary approach in major US environmental policies. All US environmental and natural resource laws since 1970 are Pigouvian. Limited Coasean bargaining occurs late and around the edges of the laws. The efficiency advantages, welfare gains, and collaborative responses Coase suggested have not been achieved. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Act of 1976, enacted 16 years after Coase, used Pigouvian fishery regulation for 25 years, and upon failure, was replaced by abbreviated property rights and trade. Fishery economic values were lowered relative to what might have been possible. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 rejected previous Coasean legislation authorizing purchase of critical habitat and instead opted for uncompensated Pigouvian controls on private landowners, who held most endangered species. Landowners resisted, and only 3% of listed endangered species have recovered. There is no evidence of a weighing of comparative transaction costs between Coase or Pigou in enacting any legislation. Rent-seeking via political bargaining among interest groups, politicians, and agency officials explains many of the observed patterns in externality regulation. The analysis suggests that transaction cost economics play a lesser role in the political arena. |
| JEL: | K11 K32 N42 N5 N52 N92 Q52 Q53 Q57 Q58 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32603&r= |
| By: | Innes, Abby |
| Abstract: | In After Neoliberalism Michael Jacobs makes a compelling case for the systematic failures of neoliberal economic policies and in the neoclassical theories that justified them. He calls for an economics rooted in ontological institutionalism and for the (re)development of varied institutions charged with diverse social purposes. This response takes Jacobs’ critique further and states that neoliberalism fails because the neoclassical economics that underpins it is fundamentally utopian; and it is doomed to fail for the same ontological and epistemological reasons that condemned Soviet socialism. What these politically opposed doctrines hold in common is closed-system economic reasoning from axiomatic deduction presented as ‘a governing science’. It follows that both must tend to fail on contact with a three-dimensional reality in an always evolving, open-system world, subject to Knightian uncertainty. The dark historical joke is that a machine models of the economy, both Soviet and neoclassical neoliberal economics, converge on the same statecraft of quantification, output-planning, target-setting, forecasting and the presumption of only ‘rational’—socially productive—firms. The result in both systems is state and economic failure and the creation of production regimes that are a grotesque caricature of those promised, only now in the midst of an ecological emergency. It follows that we need an urgent revival of analytical pluralism in government and a non-utopian scientific realism about the true scope of the ecological crisis, so that Jacobs’ rich institutional ecosystem will have resilient foundations. |
| Keywords: | neoclassical economics; neoliberal policy; polycrisis; Soviet economics; utopia; Wiley deal |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2024–05–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:123741&r= |
| By: | Sievertsen, Hans Henrik (University of Bristol); Smith, Sarah (University of Bristol) |
| Abstract: | This paper reports results from a survey experiment comparing the effect of (the same) opinions expressed by male versus female experts. Members of the public were asked for their opinions on topical issues and shown the opinion of either a male or a female economist, all professors at leading US universities. We find, first, that experts can persuade members of the public - the opinions of individual expert economists have an effect on public opinion - and, second, that the opinions expressed by female economists are more persuasive than the same opinions expressed by male economists. |
| Keywords: | economic expertise, persuasion, gender, stereotypes, survey experiments |
| JEL: | A11 D83 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17029&r= |
| By: | Frasser, Cristian; Guzmán, Gabriel |
| Abstract: | The standard strategy involves evaluating whether economic classifications meet criteria derived from a general theory of natural kinds. The first objective of this article is to show the implementation of this strategy by various relevant authors. We argue that the standard strategy has failed due to its lack of a greater sensitivity to the role played by human interests in the design of different types of natural kinds. The second objective is to outline a new strategy for investigating economic classifications. Our departure from the standard strategy can be described as a shift from assessing economic classifications based on general theories of natural kinds to examining specific cases with the aim of theorizing about their design and application. The cases of the cost-of-living index and race are used to succinctly discuss the objectivity of economic classifications and implications for the relationship between science and democracy. |
| Keywords: | natural kinds, economic classifications, essences, objectivity, science and democracy. |
| JEL: | B25 B4 B40 B50 |
| Date: | 2024–05–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:121166&r= |