History of Economics eJournal最新文献

{"title":"Forced Savings and Political Malinvestment","authors":"Bryan P. Cutsinger","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3565510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3565510","url":null,"abstract":"Steven Horwitz's book, Micro-foundations and Macroeconomics has been at the center of the post-crisis revival of Austrian business cycle theory. Much of the work that has been done on this topic has either extended or refined Horwitz's framework. This paper's aim is more modest. In it, I apply Horwitz's framework to the Confederate monetary experience during the U.S. Civil War. While there was an excess supply of money, I do not find any evidence that it generated a credit boom - quite the contrary. That said, there is evidence of forced savings, which the state and Confederate governments used to fund large-scale investment projects, among other things. While this is not malinvestment in the traditional sense, I argue that allocating credit in response to political incentives is unlikely to result in a sustainable capital structure. This finding points to the need to incorporate the notions of forced savings and malinvestment into a broader political-economy perspective.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121391552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Keynes, Sraffa y la ley de grafeno de los salarios (Keynes, Sraffa and the Graphene Law of Wages)","authors":"Hernando Matallana","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3563433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3563433","url":null,"abstract":"<b>Spanish Abstract:</b> Esta nota considera la lógica monetaria del salario relativo para el caso de trabajo homogéneo, la incidencia tributaria del impuesto sobre las diversas formas del ingreso funcional y la lucha por el salario relativo en el caso de trabajo heterogéneo en la economía monetaria de producción. La discusión advierte que el salario relativo disponible y con ello la condición económica de los trabajadores en el sistema de los mercados, se ajustan al interés particular de la clase funcional de los propietarios de riqueza.<br><br><b>English Abstract:</b> This note considers the monetary logic of the relative wage for the case of homogeneous labor, the incidence of taxation on the different forms of functional income, and the struggle over the relative wage for the case of heterogeneous labor in the monetary production economy. The discussion reveals that the disposable relative wage, hence the economic condition of the workers in the market system, is adjusted according to the particular interest of the wealth-owners.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127326590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Paul Baran’s Economic Surplus Concept, the Baran Ratio, and the Decline of Feudalism","authors":"T. Lambert","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3555182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3555182","url":null,"abstract":"In his book, the Political Economy of Growth (1957), and in an article he wrote several years earlier (1953), the economist Paul A. Baran noted how in an economic system characterized by a hierarchy of classes and where economic and political power are concentrated in the top class of such a system, the amount of output and income above what is consumed by most people (e.g., food, clothing, housing, public safety, education) mostly goes to the top class. This extra amount is what he called the economic surplus, a form of savings or income left over after consumption. In a feudalistic system, there is little incentive to use the proceeds of this type of surplus to buy more tools and equipment for more production of output and income. The lord or baron has little incentive to lend or give serfs money because he may not benefit from any increased productivity by them. It is with capitalism that such incentives to re-invest in production become important. This paper uses recently published and estimated historical data to illustrate Baran’s observations and thoughts on feudalism. It is shown that during the 13th and 14th centuries in England that the economic surplus declined, and this decline helps to explain the “crisis of feudalism” that started in the 13th century. It is not until several centuries later when capitalism becomes the dominant economic system that the economic surplus begins to rise on a consistent basis probably due to the reinvestment of a portion of the surplus into productive activities and a greater ratio of capital income to rental income and a greater ratio of investment to economic surplus. However, and somewhat surprisingly, by the 19th Century the surplus still does not attain levels reached in the 13th Century.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129354056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Voluminous, Repetitive, and Intractable: Samuelson on Early Development Economics","authors":"M. Boianovsky","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3548093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3548093","url":null,"abstract":"In the late 1970s Paul Samuelson drafted the outline of a paper, never published, with a critical assessment of the theoretical innovations of postwar development economics. He found the subject essentially intractable. The present paper discusses how that assessment fits in Samuelson’s published writings on economic development, throughout several editions of his textbook Economics and in some papers he wrote after that assessment. Increasing returns posed a main analytical hurdle, together with the elusive attempt to provide “laws of motion” of economic development. Samuelson’s notion of “tractability” may be traced back to Peter Medawar’s well-known definition of science as the “art of the soluble.”","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"76 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133465416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Monetary History","authors":"Indrajit Mallick","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3581641","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3581641","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes the evolution of money and monetary institutions in the context of the functional aspects of money. The different monetary standards in history are discussed in terms of the interplay of economic and political motives. The institutions supporting the existence, evolution and innovations of the medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account are discussed. Empirical evidence on velocity and demand for money is provided.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124203916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is the Most Unproductive Firm the Foundation of the Most Efficient Economy? Penrosian Learning Confronts the Neoclassical Fallacy","authors":"William Lazonick","doi":"10.36687/inetwp111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.36687/inetwp111","url":null,"abstract":"Edith Penrose’s 1959 book The Theory of the Growth of the Firm [TGF] provides intellectual foundations for a theory of innovative enterprise, which is essential to any attempt to explain productivity growth, employment opportunity, and income distribution. Properly understood, Penrose’s theory of the firm is also an antidote to the deception that is foundational to neoclassical economics: The theory, taught by PhD economists to millions upon millions of college students for over seven decades, that the most unproductive firm is the foundation of the most efficient economy. The dissemination of this “neoclassical fallacy” to a mass audience of college students began with Paul A. Samuelson’s textbook, Economics: An Introductory Analysis, first published in 1948. Over the decades, the neoclassical fallacy has persisted through 18 revisions of Samuelson, Economics and in its countless “economics principles” clones. This essay challenges the intellectual hegemony of neoclassical economics by exposing the illogic of its foundational assumptions about how a modern economy functions and performs.\u0000\u0000The neoclassical fallacy gained popularity in the 1950s, during which decade Samuelson revised Economics three times. Meanwhile, Penrose derived the logic of organizational learning that she lays out in TGF from the facts of firm growth, absorbing what was known in the 1950s about the large corporations that had come to dominate the U.S. economy. Also, during that decade, the knowledge base on the growth of firms on which economists could subsequently draw was undergoing an intellectual revolution, led by the business historian, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. He was engaged in the first stage of a career that would span more than a half century, during which Chandler documented and analyzed the centrality to U.S economic development of what he would come to call “the managerial revolution in American business.”\u0000\u0000In combination, the works of Penrose and Chandler form intellectual foundations for my own work on the Theory of Innovative Enterprise—an endeavor that has enabled me, as an economist, to recognize not only the profound importance of organizational learning for economic theory but also the illogic of the neoclassical theory of the firm for our understanding of the central institution of a modern economy, the business corporation. In this essay, I argue that the key characteristic of the innovative enterprise is fixed-cost investment in the productive capabilities of the company’s employees to engage in organizational learning. The purpose of this investment in organizational learning is to develop a higher-quality product than was previously available. When successful, the development of the higher-quality product enables the firm to capture a large extent of the market, transforming high fixed cost into low unit cost. The result is sustainable competitive advantage that enables the growth of the firm, contributing to the growth of the economy as a whole.\u0000\u0000I a","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127990721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Keynesian Uncertainty Can Only Be Represented by Imprecise, Non Additive, Interval Valued Probability or Decision Weights Like Keynes’s C: Ordinal Probability Can’t Represent Keynesian Uncertainty","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3523572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3523572","url":null,"abstract":"J M Keynes’s two logical relations of rational degree of probability, α, 0≤α≤1 and Evidential Weight of the Argument, w, 0≤w≤1, where w measures the degree of completeness of the evidence, can’t be represented or associated with ordinal probability, although Keynes’s theory of probability can easily deal with ordinal probability with the aid of Keynes’s principle of indifference if symmetries are present. α can be, in some limited instances, represented by a numerical, precise, definite, exact, additive probability if, and only if, w=1, although, in general, for w<1, it must be represented by an non additive interval estimate of probability or by a decision weight, like Keynes’s original, path breaking innovation of his conventional coefficient, c. \u0000 \u0000Nowhere in Boole’s 1854 The Laws of Thought is any concept of ordinal probability discussed analyzed or applied in any detail. This is because ordinal probability can never deal with overlapping estimates of probability, which creates problems of non comparability, non measurability or incommensurability that Boole and Keynes solved with interval valued probability.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122429389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mises, Keynes, and Darwin: An Hypothesis on Interest Rates","authors":"Richard Stomper","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3597681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3597681","url":null,"abstract":"One of the most overlooked and least analyzed elements of Mises’ economic theory is his concept of originary interest. This is distinct from the theory of the natural rate of interest proposed by Wicksell and developed by subsequent economists. The latter concept is determined endogenously by market processes and tends to manifest itself under hypothetical equilibrium conditions. For Mises, the concept of originary interest is exogenous to the economy. Neither does it result from government intervention. It determines economic conditions, rather than being determined by them. Its provenance is never completely clear from Mises’ work, although Mises seems to think that it has an innate quality. It is suggested in this paper that the basis of originary interest is in an evolutionary adaptation of the human species. There is a discussion as to why this might arise and the role originary interest might play in aiding evolutionary development. Comparison is then made between Mises’ concept of originary interest and Keynes’ theory of liquidity preference with which it shares many similarities. Finally, the theoretical structure presented is utilized to suggest approaches to the problem of consilience of economics and the social sciences in general with other disciplines.<br>","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127902824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Communism - A Survival Analysis","authors":"V. Subramaniam","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.990944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.990944","url":null,"abstract":"Human generation try to fit into a 4 dimensional survival concepts comprising the Environment, Geography, Economic and Social dimensions, over centuries and their pedigree too progressed under these guidelines. Because of the divergent level of survival targets in the economic and social strata by each human being, wealth accumulation flows unequally among the people. Industrial revolution mechanised the human work, with cost reduction and quality/volume optimization and planted Capitalism in the world, creating a wedge in the wealth accumulation process. This inducted a class war between the owners of wealth versus the workers, who are hired and fired by them. Competition made the capitalist to realise the importance of labour and diluted their concept as “Socialism”. The disproportionate wealth accumulation among people seeded the concept of communism in the world. Communism originated by Marx in Germany, spread to Russia and was promoted by Lenin. Both assumed that the large volume of people in the world belong to the low wealth possessing worker class, will revolt towards equal wealth share, and Communism shall dominate the whole world soon. But both Marx and Lenin were “Social revolutionists” and lacked “futuristic management thoughts” on how the shared wealth will be recycled to grow more, and result in prosperity among the equally shared population ? With this limited thought, the USSR (1922) and the East Germany (GDR-1961) and were created, with the entire wealth of the nation pooled on the apex “State”, representing the entire population. The state became a monopoly and all the people were simple labourers, without any self possessions. The state utilised the labour like a commodity, without any motivation to use their original ideas and any incentive to improve the productive contribution spirit. As a result, the GDR collapsed in 1989 and the USSR dwindled in 1991, bringing an end to the 69 year old Communist concept. Also both started promoting the diametrically opposite Capitalist approach and established cooperation with the (imperialist) USA. Communism could have survived and continued as a guide for wealth and prosperity for all the nations and their people in the world, if the domestic population was considered as “superior” to the “state”. The national wealth owned by the “State” should have been invested in sectorial projects and entrusted to optimum group of people to work, manage and encouraged to meet a targeted quality volume. State should have met all needs of these groups of people. A reasonable share of the net gains should have been distributed in equal proportion to all the people involved, as an incentive. Below targets and loss should have been questioned and corrective action should have been taken. In addition, the productivity and management decision should have been oriented towards ‘socio-economic Development units”. The domestic investment should be made from domestic savings and domestic technology should be ma","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"116 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115211876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Karl Menger’s Unfinished Biography of His Father: New Insights into Carl Menger’s Life through 1889","authors":"Reinhard Schumacher, Scott Scheall","doi":"10.1108/S0743-41542020000038B009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542020000038B009","url":null,"abstract":"During the last years of his life, the mathematician Karl Menger worked on a biography of his father, the economist and founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger. The younger Menger never finished the work. While working in the Menger collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, we discovered draft chapters of the biography, a valuable source of information given that relatively little is known about Carl Menger’s life nearly a hundred years after his death. The unfinished biography covers Carl Menger’s family background and his life through early 1889. In this chapter, the authors discuss the biography and the most valuable new insights it provides into Carl Menger’s life, including Carl Menger’s family, his childhood, his student years, his time working as a journalist and newspaper editor, his early scientific career, and his relationship with Crown Prince Rudolf.","PeriodicalId":253619,"journal":{"name":"History of Economics eJournal","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125253936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}