ECONOMIC AFFAIRS最新文献

{"title":"Why not better and cheaper? Healthcare and innovation By James B Rebitzer and Robert S Rebitzer. Oxford University Press. 2023. 200 pp. £22.99 (hbk). ISBN: 978-0197603109. £17.36 (ebk). ISBN: 978-0197603123","authors":"Kristian Niemietz","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12624","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12624","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 1","pages":"197-198"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140053046","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":"Who do you think is the greatest-ever economist?","authors":"Mark Skousen","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12622","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12622","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 1","pages":"170-177"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140053159","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":"Sing as we go: Britain between the wars By Simon Heffer. Hutchinson Heinemann. 2023. 948 pp. £35.00 (hbk). ISBN: 978-1529152647. £14.99 (pbk). ISBN: 978-781804940983. £10.99 (ebk). ISBN: 978-1529152654","authors":"J R Shackleton","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12626","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12626","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 1","pages":"194-196"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140053034","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":"Moving to the Left: what people in Chile think of capitalism and the rich","authors":"Axel Kaiser, Rainer Zitelmann","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12620","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Despite Chile's economic success following the introduction of free market reforms in the 1970s and 1980s, in October 2019 the country experienced massive demonstrations and violent outbursts that ultimately resulted in the election of anti-capitalist President Gabriel Boric in 2021. In this article, we contextualise this dramatic shift to the Left, presenting findings from two surveys on the image of capitalism and the image of the rich conducted by Ipsos MORI in Chile in 2021 and 2022. They confirm an anti-rich and anti-capitalist climate of opinion which played an important role in the social crisis of 2019 that ultimately enabled President Boric's election.</p><p>Chile had long been regarded as a model capitalist country in South America. As Gary Becker (<span>1997</span>) put it, Chile became “an economic role model for the whole underdeveloped world” after the free-market reforms implemented by the ‘Chicago Boys’ (Edwards, <span>2023</span>) in the 1970s and 80s. These reforms were instituted under the military dictatorship following the overthrow of the Allende government in 1973, but, in the words of Paul Krugman (<span>2008</span>, p. 31), the Chicago-inspired reforms “proved highly successful and were preserved intact when Chile finally returned to democracy in 1989”.</p><p>The available data certainly support the narrative of success. Chronic inflation, which had peaked at over 500 per cent in 1973, fell below 10 per cent by the 1990s and under 5 per cent by the 2000s (Banco Mundial, <span>2022</span>). Between 1975 and 2015 per capita income in Chile quadrupled, reaching US$23,000, the highest in Latin America (CNEP, <span>2015</span>). As a result, from the early 1980s to 2014 poverty fell from 45 per cent to 8 per cent (CNEP, <span>2015</span>). Several indicators show that this ‘economic miracle’ benefited the majority of the population. Thus, for example, in 1982 only 27 per cent of Chileans had a TV set; by 2014 it was 97 per cent (CNEP, <span>2015</span>). The same picture holds for refrigerators (from 49 to 96 per cent), washing machines (from 35 to 93 per cent), and cars (from 18 to 48 per cent), among other items. More fundamentally, life expectancy rose from 69 to 79 years in the same time period, and housing overcrowding fell from 56 to 17 per cent. The middle class, as defined by the World Bank, grew from 23.7 per cent of the population in 1990 to 64.3 per cent in 2015, with extreme poverty falling from 34.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent (LYD, <span>2017</span>).</p><p>On average, access to higher education grew by a factor of five in the same time period, mostly benefiting the bottom quintile, which saw its access to higher education increase by eight times (PNUD, <span>2017</span>, p. 20). This is consistent with the growth of income in the different socio-economic groups. While between 1990 and 2015 the income of the richest 10 per cent grew by a total of 30 per cent, the income of the poorest 10 per cent saw an increase ","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 1","pages":"139-153"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecaf.12620","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140053157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The case for 100% money: Ten reasons for separating money issuance from banking","authors":"Samuel Demeulemeester","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12614","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12614","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The ‘100% money’ proposal aims at divorcing the creation of money from banking, by requiring 100% reserves on transaction accounts. The public monetary authority would then be the sole issuer of means of payment, while the banks would function as true intermediaries, financing loans with pre-existing money. This article, building on the works of 1930s economists such as Irving Fisher, presents ten arguments in favour of this reform proposal — arguing that it would, in particular, prevent cumulative variations in the money stock, facilitate monetary control, reduce government intervention in banking, improve public finances, and make money creation more neutral.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 1","pages":"57-70"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecaf.12614","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140053042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"So far, Central Bank Digital Currencies have failed","authors":"Kevin Dowd","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12621","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines the experiences of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) implemented so far. To date, CBDCs have been implemented in two countries (Finland and Ecuador) where they have failed and been abandoned. They have also been implemented in three Caribbean cases and in China and Nigeria; these five cases are ongoing. These experiences can be summarised as a series of abandoned experiments, embarrassing flops and monumental exercises in policymaker hubris, one of which has already produced a major disaster. In each case where data exist to assess the situation, the public demand for CBDCs has been extremely low. Experience suggests that CBDCs do not offer tangible benefits which existing alternatives cannot already deliver. One might speculate that future CBDCs will fail for similar reasons.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 1","pages":"71-94"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecaf.12621","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140053253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An experiment in market-led higher education: The case of the Buckingham ‘licence’","authors":"James Tooley","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12623","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ecaf.12623","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Any higher education institution in England wanting degree awarding powers has to register with the Office for Students (OfS), an agency set up under the Higher Education and Research Act, &lt;span&gt;2017&lt;/span&gt;. (In the UK, higher education is a devolved responsibility. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have their own regulatory bodies.) Registering with the OfS brings with it a huge range of regulations, with implications for content taught, teaching methods, employment of staff and admissions of students, which drastically undermine educational independence (see Tooley, &lt;span&gt;2024&lt;/span&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Degree awarding powers in England, as in many countries across the world (e.g. Australia, India, Ireland, the Netherlands and New Zealand), go in tandem with strict government regulations. However, is it conceivable to provide higher education without degree-awarding powers and hence freedom from these regulations?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article focuses on the case of the University College at Buckingham's ‘licence’ as an example of what is, or at least was, possible. The experiment lasted from the 1976 opening of the University College at Buckingham until the University of Buckingham was granted a Royal Charter in 1983.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I am not discussing here higher education in countries which have permissive regulatory regimes, such as the United States, where there is no national protection of the title of university and degree-awarding powers (although some states have restrictions). In such countries, different issues could be explored, outside the context of this article. In certain states in the US, for instance, unaccredited institutions of higher education arise, often deemed to be low-quality and dubbed ‘diploma mills’, although conversely there are also unaccredited Bible colleges and seminaries, whose degrees do have considerable value in the market. Instead, this article asks: in countries where degree-awarding powers and the use of the university title are tightly regulated, is it possible to conceive of market-led higher education outside of this government tutelage? I argue that the case of Buckingham answers this question in the affirmative.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;By the late 1960s, notable academics in the UK were worried about the ways in which government was impinging upon university autonomy, and hence on academic freedom and scholarly excellence. They sought to launch a new university as a beacon for independence. This was not some fringe group: chaired by Sir Sydney Caine, Director of the London School of Economics (LSE), the Planning Board for an Independent University included distinguished professors such as Oxford's Max Beloff, and the LSE's Michael Oakeshott and Alan Walters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the introduction to the seminal paper setting out the case for a new independent university, the Institute of Economic Affairs' Arthur Seldon wrote: “For some years the increasing finance of universities by government has provoked thought on the urgency of at least o","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 1","pages":"160-168"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecaf.12623","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139842516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Covid-19 lesson from Sweden: Don't lock down","authors":"Fredrik N G Andersson,&nbsp;Lars Jonung","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12611","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ecaf.12611","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Covid-19 triggered a wave of lockdowns across the world, contributing to a severe downturn in economic activity. Governments responded by introducing expansionary fiscal and monetary measures. We compare the health and economic outcomes in Sweden, commonly viewed as an outlier relying more on recommendations and voluntary adjustments than on strict lockdowns, with those of comparable European OECD countries. Our results suggest that the Swedish policy of advice and trust in the population to reduce social interactions voluntarily was relatively successful. Sweden combined low excess death rates with relatively small economic costs. In future pandemics, policymakers should rely on empirical evidence rather than panicking and adopting extreme measures. Even if policymakers appeared to act rapidly and decisively, the rushed implementation of strict lockdowns in 2020/21 probably did more harm than good.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"44 1","pages":"3-16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecaf.12611","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139844905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Does the monetary base matter? A response to Tim Congdon","authors":"Scott Sumner","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12590","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12590","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"43 3","pages":"437-440"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50137296","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":"The Russia–Ukraine conflict and investor psychology in financial markets","authors":"Emon Kalyan Chowdhury,&nbsp;Umme Humaira","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12596","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12596","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study examines the effect of the Russia–Ukraine conflict on global financial markets and the resulting changes in investor psychology. We have analysed weekly data from January 2021 to March 2023, including indicators such as gross national income, Bitcoin historical price, Standard and Poor 500 index, US consumer price index, US dollar index, and investor psychology index, using a variety of econometric techniques. Our findings reveal a positive and significant correlation between investor psychology and market returns. These results highlight the importance of monitoring investor psychology during times of conflict as it can greatly impact investment decisions in financial markets, providing valuable insights for investors and policymakers.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"43 3","pages":"388-405"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50146074","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}