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Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions by Irving Fisher
THE DEBT-DEFLATION THEORY OF GREAT DEPRESSIONS BY IRVING FISHER INTRODUCTORY IN Booms and Depressions, I have developed, theoretically and sta- tistically, what may be called a debt-deflation theory of great depres- sions. In the preface, I stated that the results "seem largely new," I spoke thus cautiously because of my unfamiliarity with the vast literature on the subject. Since the book was published its special con- clusions have been widely accepted and, so far as I know, no one has yet found them anticipated by previous writers, though several, in- cluding myself, have zealously sought to find such anticipations. Two of the best-read authorities in this field assure me that those conclu- sions are, in the words of one of them, "both new and important." Partly to specify what some of these special conclusions are which are believed to be new and partly to fit them into the conclusions of other students in this field, I am offering this paper as embodying, in brief, my present "creed" on the whole subject of so-called "cycle theory." My "creed" consists of 49 "articles" some of which are old and some new. I say "creed" because, for brevity, it is purposely ex- pressed dogmatically and without proof. But it is not a creed in the sense that my faith in it does not rest on evidence and that I am not ready to modify it on presentation of new evidence. On the contrary, it is quite tentative. It may serve as a challenge to others and as raw material to help them work out a better product. -
A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960’
JOURNALOF Monetary ECONOMICS ELSEVIER Journal of Monetary Economics 34 (I 994) 5- 16 Review of Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz’s ‘A monetary history of the United States, 1867-1960’ Robert E. Lucas, Jr. Department qf Economics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA (Received October 1993; final version received December 1993) Key words: Monetary history; Monetary policy JEL classijcation: E5; B22 A contribution to monetary economics reviewed again after 30 years - quite an occasion! Keynes’s General Theory has certainly had reappraisals on many anniversaries, and perhaps Patinkin’s Money, Interest and Prices. I cannot think of any others. Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s A Monetary History qf the United States has become a classic. People are even beginning to quote from it out of context in support of views entirely different from any advanced in the book, echoing the compliment - if that is what it is - so often paid to Keynes. Why do people still read and cite A Monetary History? One reason, certainly, is its beautiful time series on the money supply and its components, extended back to 1867, painstakingly documented and conveniently presented. Such a gift to the profession merits a long life, perhaps even immortality. But I think it is clear that A Monetary History is much more than a collection of useful time series. The book played an important - perhaps even decisive - role in the 1960s’ debates over stabilization policy between Keynesians and monetarists. It organ- ized nearly a century of U.S. macroeconomic evidence in a way that has had great influence on subsequent statistical and theoretical research. -
Sudhir Anand and Amartya Sen "Tell Me What You Eat,"
CONSUMPTION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: CONCEPTS AND ISSUES Sudhir Anand and Amartya Sen 1. Introduction "Tell me what you eat," remarked Anthelme Brillat -Savarin nearly two hundred years ago, "and I will tell you what you aye." The idea that people can be known from their consumption behaviour has some plausibility. Eating enough and well nourishes us; over- eating renders us obese and unfit; education can make us wiser (or at least turn us into learned fools); reading poetry can make us sensitive; keeping up with the Joneses can overstretch our resources; and an obsession with fast cars may make us both "quicke and dead." There are few things more central than consumption to the lives that people variously lead. AIrrr~ ~nsumption is not the ultimate end of our lives. We seek consumption for a purpose, or for various purposes that may be simultaneously entertained. The role of consumption in human lives // cannot be really comprehended without some understanding of the ends that are pursued through consumption activities." tlur ends are enormously diverse, varying from nourishment to amusement, from living long to living well, from isolated self-fulfilment to interactive socialization. The priorities of human development, with which the Human Development Reports are concerned, relate to some basic human ends, 1 For a general introduction to the contemporary literature on consumption, see Angus Deaton and John Muellbauer, Economics and Consumer Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). Consumption & Human Development Page 2 Background paper/ HDR1998 /UNDP Sudhir Anand & Amartya Sen and there is scope for scrutinizing how the prevailing consumption act i vi ties serve those ends. -
The Roman Market Economy the Princeton Economic History of the Western World Joel Mokyr, Series Editor
The Roman Market Economy The Princeton Economic History of the Western World Joel Mokyr, Series Editor A list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book. The Roman Market Economy Peter Temin Princeton University Press Princeton & Oxford Copyright © 2013 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu Jacket art: Detail of cargo ship from road to market with trade symbols in mosaic. Roman, Ostia Antica near Rome Italy. Photo © Gianni Dagli Orti. Courtesy of Art Resource, NY. All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Temin, Peter. The Roman market economy / Peter Temin. p. cm. — (The Princeton economic history of the Western world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-691-14768-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Rome—Economic conditions. 2. Rome—Economic policy. 3. Rome—Commerce. I. Title. HC39.T46 2013 330.937—dc23 2012012347 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Adobe Caslon Pro Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Charlotte This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface and Acknowledgments ix 1. Economics and Ancient History 1 Part I: Prices Introduction: Data and Hypothesis Tests 27 2. Wheat Prices and Trade in the Early Roman Empire 29 3. Price Behavior in Hellenistic Babylon 53 Appendix to Chapter 3 66 4. Price Behavior in the Roman Empire 70 Part II: Markets in the Roman Empire Introduction: Roman Microeconomics 95 5. -
M31193119 - BBRUNIRUNI TTEXT.Inddext.Indd 2200 227/02/20137/02/2013 08:1708:17 Altruistic Reciprocity 21
2. Altruistic reciprocity Herbert Gintis OTHER- REGARDING PREFERENCES AND STRONG RECIPROCITY By a self- regarding actor we mean an individual who maximizes his own payoff in social interactions. A self- regarding actor thus cares about the behavior of and payoffs to the other individuals only insofar as these impact his own payoff. The term ‘self- regarding’ is more accurate than ‘self- interested’ because an other-regarding individual is still acting to maximize utility and so can be described as self- interested. For instance, if I get great pleasure from your consumption, my gift to you may be self- interested, even though it is surely other- regarding. We can avoid confusion (and much pseudo- philosophical dis- cussion) by employing the self-regarding/other- regarding terminology. One major result of behavioral game theory is that when modeling market processes with well- specified contracts, such as double auctions (supply and demand) and oligopoly, game- theoretic predictions assuming self- regarding actors are accurate under a wide variety of social settings (see Kachelmaier and Shehata, 1992; Davis and Holt, 1993). The fact that self- regarding behavior explains market dynamics lends credence to the practice in neoclassical economics of assuming that individuals are self- regarding. However, it by no means justifies ‘Homo economicus’ because many economic transac- tions do not involve anonymous exchange. This includes employer- employee, creditor- debtor, and firm- client relationships. Nor does this result apply to the welfare implications of economic outcomes (e.g., people may care about the overall degree of economic inequality and/or their positions in the income and wealth distribution), to modeling the behavior of taxpayers (e.g., they may be more or less honest than a self- regarding indi- vidual, and they may prefer to transfer resources toward or away from other individu- als even at an expense to themselves) or to important aspects of economic policy (e.g., dealing with corruption, fraud, and other breaches of fiduciary responsibility). -
Economic Thinking in an Age of Shared Prosperity
BOOKREVIEW Economic Thinking in an Age of Shared Prosperity GRAND PURSUIT: THE STORY OF ECONOMIC GENIUS workingman’s living standards signaled the demise of the BY SYLVIA NASAR iron law and forced economists to recognize and explain the NEW YORK: SIMON & SCHUSTER, 2011, 558 PAGES phenomenon. Britain’s Alfred Marshall, popularizer of the microeconomic demand and supply curves still used today, REVIEWED BY THOMAS M. HUMPHREY was among the first to do so. He argued that competition among firms, together with their need to match their rivals’ distinctive feature of the modern capitalist cost cuts to survive, incessantly drives them to improve economy is its capacity to deliver sustainable, ever- productivity and to bid for now more productive and A rising living standards to all social classes, not just efficient workers. Such bidding raises real wages, allowing to a fortunate few. How does it do it, especially in the face labor to share with management and capital in the produc- of occasional panics, bubbles, booms, busts, inflations, tivity gains. deflations, wars, and other shocks that threaten to derail Marshall interpreted productivity gains as the accumula- shared rising prosperity? What are the mechanisms tion over time of relentless and continuous innumerable involved? Can they be improved by policy intervention? small improvements to final products and production Has the process any limits? processes. Joseph Schumpeter, who never saw an economy The history of economic thought is replete with that couldn’t be energized through unregulated credit- attempts to answer these questions. First came the pes- financed entrepreneurship, saw productivity gains as simists Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, James Mill, and his emanating from radical, dramatic, transformative, discon- son John Stuart Mill who, on grounds that for millennia tinuous innovations that precipitate business cycles and wages had flatlined at near-starvation levels, denied that destroy old technologies, firms, and markets even as they universally shared progress was possible. -
Retail Inventory Behavior and Business Fluctuations
ALAN S. BLINDER Princeton University Retail Inventory Behavior and Business Fluctuations THE enigmatic behavior of the U.S. economy during the 1980 recession makes it more imperative than ever that some of the mystery that sur- rounds inventory behavior be solved. On the surface, the economy seems to have reacted quite differently to what appear to be rather similar exter- nal shocks (principally, rapid increases in oil prices) in 1973-75 and in 1979-80. However, if one abstracts from inventory behavior and focuses on final sales, the two recessions look rather similar. Several observations confirm this. First, the briefest recession in U.S. history was also the first in which inventory investment did not swing sharply toward liquidation between the peak and the trough. Second, if one judges the contraction by real final sales instead of real GNP, the 1980 recession was actually far deeper than the "severe" 1973-75 recession.1 And third, the way the 1980 recession was concentrated into a single quarter seems less unusual if one looks at real final sales instead of real GNP. In the 1973-75 reces- I thank Danny Quah for exceptional research assistance. I also thank Gregory Mankiw and Leonard Nakamura for research assistance and Stephenie Sigall and Phyllis Durepos for quickly and efficiently typing the paper. I am grateful to mem- bers of the Brookingspanel and to a numberof colleagues for helpful discussions on this research. I apologize to those I leave out when I mention Angus S. Deaton, David Germany, Wayne Gray, F. Owen Irvine, Jr., Louis J. -
Interest Rates and Expected Inflation: a Selective Summary of Recent Research
This PDF is a selection from an out-of-print volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research Volume Title: Explorations in Economic Research, Volume 3, number 3 Volume Author/Editor: NBER Volume Publisher: NBER Volume URL: http://www.nber.org/books/sarg76-1 Publication Date: 1976 Chapter Title: Interest Rates and Expected Inflation: A Selective Summary of Recent Research Chapter Author: Thomas J. Sargent Chapter URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c9082 Chapter pages in book: (p. 1 - 23) 1 THOMAS J. SARGENT University of Minnesota Interest Rates and Expected Inflation: A Selective Summary of Recent Research ABSTRACT: This paper summarizes the macroeconomics underlying Irving Fisher's theory about tile impact of expected inflation on nomi nal interest rates. Two sets of restrictions on a standard macroeconomic model are considered, each of which is sufficient to iniplv Fisher's theory. The first is a set of restrictions on the slopes of the IS and LM curves, while the second is a restriction on the way expectations are formed. Selected recent empirical work is also reviewed, and its implications for the effect of inflation on interest rates and other macroeconomic issues are discussed. INTRODUCTION This article is designed to pull together and summarize recent work by a few others and myself on the relationship between nominal interest rates and expected inflation.' The topic has received much attention in recent years, no doubt as a consequence of the high inflation rates and high interest rates experienced by Western economies since the mid-1960s. NOTE: In this paper I Summarize the results of research 1 conducted as part of the National Bureaus study of the effects of inflation, for which financing has been provided by a grait from the American life Insurance Association Heiptul coinrnents on earlier eriiins of 'his p,irx'r serv marIe ti PhillipCagan arid l)y the mnibrirs Ut the stall reading Committee: Michael R. -
American Economic Association
American Economic Association /LIH&\FOH,QGLYLGXDO7KULIWDQGWKH:HDOWKRI1DWLRQV $XWKRU V )UDQFR0RGLJOLDQL 6RXUFH7KH$PHULFDQ(FRQRPLF5HYLHZ9RO1R -XQ SS 3XEOLVKHGE\$PHULFDQ(FRQRPLF$VVRFLDWLRQ 6WDEOH85/http://www.jstor.org/stable/1813352 $FFHVVHG Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aea. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Economic Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Economic Review. http://www.jstor.org Life Cycle, IndividualThrift, and the Wealth of Nations By FRANCO MODIGLIANI* This paper provides a review of the theory Yet, there was a brief but influential inter- of the determinants of individual and na- val in the course of which, under the impact tional thrift that has come to be known as of the Great Depression, and of the interpre- the Life Cycle Hypothesis (LCH) of saving. -
Download > the Keynesian Reaction to Lucas Duke 2017 Danilo Silva V1
The First Keynesian Reactions to Lucas’s Macroeconomics of Equilibrium Danilo Freitas Ramalho da Silva Federal University of ABC, Brazil January, 2017 E-mail: [email protected] 1. Introduction This paper describes the first Keynesian reactions to Lucas’s macroeconomic models in the early 1970’s. The referred Lucas’s models are equilibrium models in which the rational expectations hypothesis plays a central role in the prediction of expected values, in such a way that agents can make optimal intertemporal decisions given the set of information available to them. These models also imply a complete rejection of what Lucas considered to be the standard macroeconometric models at the time, in which some kind of adaptive expectations was typically used. I will show that the first Keynesian reaction to Lucas’s models was a criticism of the adoption of the rational expectations hypothesis, based on the argument that the hypothesis was not reasonable. This criticism reveals the fundamental methodological difference between Lucas and his first critics, since Lucas’s defense of the rational expectations hypothesis was based on its operationality, not on its reasonability. I will also show that Lucas’s complete rejection of what he then called the standard macroeconometric models was firstly considered by the Keynesians an extreme and unnecessary attitude, and that some of the Keynesians actually wanted to incorporate Lucas’s criticism into their own models - when appropriate - instead of just discarding them. Finally, I will show that new keynesians promptly incorporated the rational expectations hypothesis into their models in the mid-1970’s while the old keynesians did not, and this was the result of a move of new keynesians towards the operationality of assumptions and away from the reasonability of assumptions in their models. -
An Interview with Franco Modigliani
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS WORKING PAPERS SERIES IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ECONOMICS AN INTERVIEW WITH FRANCO MODIGLIANI Interviewed by William A. Barnett University of Kansas Robert Solow MIT THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS WORKING PAPERS SERIES IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ECONOMICS WORKING PAPER NUMBER 200407 Macroeconomic Dynamics, 4, 2000, 222–256. Printed in the United States of America. MD INTERVIEW AN INTERVIEW WITH FRANCO MODIGLIANI Interviewed by William A. Barnett Washington University in St. Louis and Robert Solow Massachusetts Institute of Technology November 5–6, 1999 Franco Modigliani’s contributions in economics and finance have transformed both fields. Although many other major contributions in those fields have come and gone, Modigliani’s contributions seem to grow in importance with time. His famous 1944 article on liquidity preference has not only remained required reading for generations of Keynesian economists but has become part of the vocabulary of all economists. The implications of the life-cycle hypothesis of consumption and saving provided the primary motivation for the incorporation of finite lifetime models into macroeconomics and had a seminal role in the growth in macroeconomics of the overlapping generations approach to modeling of Allais, Samuelson, and Diamond. Modigliani and Miller’s work on the cost of capital transformed corporate finance and deeply influenced subsequent research on investment, capital asset pricing, and recent research on derivatives. Modigliani received the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics in 1985. In macroeconomic policy, Modigliani has remained influential on two continents. In the United States, he played a central role in the creation of a the Federal Re- serve System’s large-scale quarterly macroeconometric model, and he frequently participated in the semiannual meetings of academic consultants to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C. -
Kenneth J. Arrow [Ideological Profiles of the Economics Laureates] Daniel B
Kenneth J. Arrow [Ideological Profiles of the Economics Laureates] Daniel B. Klein Econ Journal Watch 10(3), September 2013: 268-281 Abstract Kenneth J. Arrow is among the 71 individuals who were awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel between 1969 and 2012. This ideological profile is part of the project called “The Ideological Migration of the Economics Laureates,” which fills the September 2013 issue of Econ Journal Watch. Keywords Classical liberalism, economists, Nobel Prize in economics, ideology, ideological migration, intellectual biography. JEL classification A11, A13, B2, B3 Link to this document http://econjwatch.org/file_download/715/ArrowIPEL.pdf ECON JOURNAL WATCH Kenneth J. Arrow by Daniel B. Klein Ross Starr begins his article on Kenneth Arrow (1921–) in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics by saying that he “is a legendary figure, with an enormous range of contributions to 20th-century economics…. His impact is suggested by the number of major ideas that bear his name: Arrow’s Theorem, the Arrow- Debreu model, the Arrow-Pratt index of risk aversion, and Arrow securities” (Starr 2008). Besides the four areas alluded to in the quotation from Starr, Arrow has been a leader in the economics of information. In 1972, at the age of 51 (still the youngest ever), Arrow shared the Nobel Prize in economics with John Hicks for their contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory. But if the Nobel economics prize were given for specific accomplishments, and an individual could win repeatedly, Arrow would surely have several. It has been shown that Arrow is the economics laureate who has been most cited within the Nobel award lectures of the economics laureates (Skarbek 2009).