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on Post Keynesian Economics |
| By: | Murray, Michael/ M J |
| Abstract: | Production and distribution needs a proper place in heterodox economics. It has recently been suggested that the construction of production models needs to be empirically grounded. Also it has been stated that empirically grounded production models must be circular production models. This argument then marginalizes the contributions of important economists in heterodox thought. The paper will argue that heterodox production models need not be perfectly circular to make important contributions for heterodox production theory. Furthermore, it will be argued that models which consist of elements of hierarchial structures of production put emphasis on out of equilibrium traverse processes and historical time. |
| Keywords: | Heterodox Economic Theory; Heterodox Price and Production Modeling |
| JEL: | B21 B50 B16 B53 |
| Date: | 2011–10–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34255&r=pke |
| By: | Cohen, Joseph N |
| Abstract: | A conventional reading of economic history implies that free market reforms rescued the world’s economies from stagnancy during the 1970s and 1980s. I reexamine a well-established econometric literature linking economic freedom to growth, and argue that their positive findings hinge on two problems: conceptual conflation and ahistoricity. When these criticisms are taken seriously, a very different view of the historical record emerges. There does not appear to be enduring relationship between economic liberalism and growth. Much of the observed relationship between these two variables involves a one-shot transition to freer markets around the Cold War’s end. Several concurrent changes took place in this historical context, and it is hasty to conclude that it was market liberalization alone that produced the economic turnaround of the 1990s and early-2000s. I also question market fundamentalists’ view that all forms of liberalization are helpful, arguing that the data show little to no benefit from reforms that did not attract foreign investment. |
| Keywords: | Economic Growth; Economic Freedom; Economic Liberalization; Economic Development; Foreign Investment; Market Fundamentalism; Inflation; Governance |
| JEL: | P11 P17 O21 E61 O4 |
| Date: | 2011–09–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:33757&r=pke |
| By: | Giocoli, Nicola |
| Abstract: | Bayesian rationality is the paradigm of rational behavior in neoclassical economics. A rational agent in an economic model is one who maximizes her subjective expected utility and consistently revises her beliefs according to Bayes’s rule. The paper raises the question of how, when and why this characterization of rationality came to be endorsed by mainstream economists. Though no definitive answer is provided, it is argued that the question is far from trivial and of great historiographic importance. The story begins with Abraham Wald’s behaviorist approach to statistics and culminates with Leonard J. Savage’s elaboration of subjective expected utility theory in his 1954 classic The Foundations of Statistics. It is the latter’s acknowledged fiasco to achieve its planned goal, the reinterpretation of traditional inferential techniques along subjectivist and behaviorist lines, which raises the puzzle of how a failed project in statistics could turn into such a tremendous hit in economics. A couple of tentative answers are also offered, involving the role of the consistency requirement in neoclassical analysis and the impact of the postwar transformation of US business schools. |
| Keywords: | Savage; Wald; rational behavior; Bayesian decision theory; subjective probability; minimax rule; statistical decision functions; neoclassical economics |
| JEL: | B31 B21 D81 |
| Date: | 2011–10–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34117&r=pke |
| By: | Simplice A., Asongu |
| Abstract: | This paper cuts adrift the mainstream approach to the legal-origins debate on the law-growth nexus by integrating both overall economic and human components in our understanding of how regulation quality and the rule of law lie at the heart of economic and inequality adjusted human developments. Findings summarily reveal that legal-origin does not explain economic growth and human development beyond the mechanisms of law channels. As a policy implication results support benefits of the rule of law and quality of regulation as channels to economic growth and human development. |
| Keywords: | Law; economic growth; human development; developing countries |
| JEL: | O1 K2 P5 I0 K4 |
| Date: | 2011–10–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34082&r=pke |
| By: | Fratzscher, Marcel; Mehl, Arnaud; Vansteenkiste, Isabel |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the empirical link between fiscal vulnerabilities and currency crashes in advanced economies over the last 130 years, building on a new dataset of real effective exchange rates and fiscal balances for 21 countries since 1880. We find evidence that crashes depend more on prospective fiscal deficits than on actual ones, and more on the composition of public debt (i.e. rollover/sudden stop risk) than on its level per se. We also uncover significant nonlinear effects at high levels of public debt as well as significantly negative risk premia for major reserve currencies, which enjoy a lower probability of currency crash than other currencies ceteris paribus. Yet, our estimates indicate that such premia remain small in size relative to the conditional probability of a currency crash if prospective fiscal deficits or rollover/sudden stop risk are high. This suggests that a currency’s international status is not necessarily sufficient to shelter it from collapse. |
| Keywords: | advanced economies; banking crises; currency crashes; exchange rates; fiscal vulnerability; foreign debt; reserve currencies; total debt level |
| JEL: | F30 F31 N20 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8612&r=pke |
| By: | John Whalley |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses the role that trade can potentially play in both negotiating and operating a post Kyoto/post 2012 global climate policy regime. As an addition to the bargaining set for a global climate negotiation, trade in principle widens the range of jointly beneficial potential outcomes and can in this sense be a potential facilitator of an agreed global climate regime. The reverse is also true, that in a linked climate-trade-finance global policy coordination structure that goes well beyond what was envisioned at Bretton Woods, climate now added to the global policy bargaining set also offers the prospect of potentially stronger trade disciplines (and even beyond WTO disciplines being negotiated). Trade policy can as well be an instrument for the implementation of a global climate regime, since trade provides a mechanism for achieving an internalization outcome for the global externality that climate change represents, and that provides a potentially more efficient outcome and also helps meet distributional objectives. In short, trade added to the emerging post 2012 climate regime can both expand the bargaining set for both (effectively linked) negotiations, and additionally provide an instrument for the implementation of an agreed outcome. |
| JEL: | F13 F18 Q54 Q56 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17498&r=pke |
| By: | Roger S. Pulwarty |
| Abstract: | A presentation about the basics of climate change - the science, the impacts, and the consequences. The focus is on water and the Caribbean in particular but the information is general. It includes information about climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation. |
| Keywords: | Environment & Natural Resources :: Climate Change, Environment & Natural Resources :: Water Management |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:12758&r=pke |