Category Archives: Law of Markets

The moribund state of economic theory

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I wrote about Hugh Goodacre’s post on the History of Economics discussion thread under the heading, How many economists can dance on the head of a pin?. This is what he said in his post:

Sir, The moribund orthodoxy that currently exercises such an inflexible grip on university economics departments will, as Wolfgang Münchau comments, inevitably face a challenge, and this “will come from outside the discipline and will be brutal” (“Macroeconomists need new tools to challenge consensus”, April 13). The orthodoxy has brought this dismal prospect on itself through the brutality with which it has purged those departments of any other school of thought than its own.

Indeed, in its extreme version, the orthodoxy’s doctrine holds quite simply that there are “no schools of thought in economics”, a totalitarian assertion all too true in most economics departments today, so ruthless has been the purge of alternatives. As a result, the different approaches to economic issues of Adam Smith, Bentham, Ricardo, Marshall, Keynes, Friedman and so on are all relegated to the fringe subject of the “history of economic thought”.

This is indeed a 1984 situation, in which the very idea that debate could exist on how to approach economic issues is regarded as a mere historical memory, and consequently of purely antiquarian interest.However, economics students are increasingly demanding a pluralistic curriculum, as discussed by Martin Wolf in “Aim for enlightenment, technicalities can wait” (April 11). Similarly, the “fossilised habits of thought” entrenched in much of the economics professions are facing increasing criticism from within the academic world (see, for example, “The world no longer listens to the deaf prophets of the west”, Mark Mazower, April 14). Let us hope that all this pressure from students, from the worlds of journalism and of interdisciplinary debate, will combine to bring university economics departments back into the world of liberal academic life from which they have for so long isolated themselves.

I left a very substantial space in time for others to say their piece, but after almost a week, I felt I had waited long enough. This is what I wrote:

I have let six days go by to see if anyone else was interested in Hugh Goodacre’s message on the moribund state of economic theory. The more time goes by, the more I am convinced there is this subject taught at universities called “economics”, and there is this aspect of the world that is called “the economy”, but the first has only a remote relationship to the second. And I could not agree more about the following in the letter Hugh quoted, with two minor qualifications which I will come to:

‘In its extreme version, the orthodoxy’s doctrine holds quite simply that there are “no schools of thought in economics”, a totalitarian assertion all too true in most economics departments today, so ruthless has been the purge of alternatives. As a result, the different approaches to economic issues of Adam Smith, Bentham, Ricardo, Marshall, Keynes, Friedman and so on are all relegated to the fringe subject of the “history of economic thought”.’

My first qualification is the exclusion of John Stuart Mill and second is the inclusion of John Maynard Keynes. Mill is excluded because he has become so far off the beaten track that virtually no one even thinks of his contribution to economic theory, which was massive and arguably a good deal greater than Ricardo or Bentham. Ricardo could no longer be read to gain insights into the operation of an economy, while with Mill you certainly can.

But the inclusion of Keynes is a mystery. Virtually all macro is Keynesian. Who nowadays writes contra-Keynes? Is there any economist in the world writing today – other than myself – who is associated with a strident anti-Keynesian perspective? I can think of hardly a one, and there are not many more than a dozen. Following the dismal failures of fiscal and monetary policies to restore growth – both of which I consider Keynesian to their roots – I cannot understand why there has been so little interest in a post mortem of some kind and the investigation of alternatives.

I can only wish Hugh and his associates the best of luck in their quest to broaden the spectrum of opinion that are considered worth consideration within schools of economics. It is long overdue.

If I knew how to write these things without antagonising the others, I would. But years in the midst of a political environment, and then all this blogging, has left me with a style of writing not necessarily perfectly equipped for the academic world. But following my post was this one from one of the great economists of the world, Professor Richard Lipsey, from whose world class introductory text I had previously learned and taught. And this is what he said:

I agree completely with the others who say that many modern economics departments (but not, I think, mine) admit of no conflicts among, or even the existences of, various modern approaches. It is a mystery how anyone can hold to this view in the light of institutionalists who emphasise the importance of institutions, ‘Newtonians’ of various sorts who use maximising equilibrium models and evolutionists who emphasis evolving systems without static equilibria. And this only mentions a few of the competing visions of how best to study the economy.

I do not suppose this is the place to dwell on the contentious additional point raised by Steve Kates but I would observe that there is a world of difference between traditional Keynesian, New-Keynesian, and post-Keynesians. The econometric models of my country’s Department of Finance and its Central Bank use updated and expanded Keynesian income-flow models. So, like it or not, updated traditional Keynesian concepts, insights and measurement categories are still useful in the work of applied economists.

Since as a text book writer, I am often accused of accepting the modern no-differences view, I mention below three of my recent publications that put forward alternative visions to the prevailing one. This is not only to set the record straight but in the belief that they might be of some interest to those who agree that creative criticisms of the prevailing view are needed.

I would also say that in going ahead, we should not throw the maximising baby out with the bath water of its overuse. Partial equilibrium, maximising models of some markets, such as foreign exchange and wheat, are useful.

Recent non-orthodox recent publications by Lipsey

“Does History Matter: Empirical Analysis of Evolutionary versus New Classical Economics” (with Kenneth I Carlaw), Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 2012.

“Some Contentious Issues in Theory and Policy in Memory of Mark Blaug,” in Mark Blaug: Rebel with Many Causes, M. Boumans and M. Klaes (eds.), (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar), 2013

“The Phillips Curve and the Tyranny of an Assumed Unique Macro Equilibrium” Simon Fraser University Discussion Paper, 2014

He may not agree with my anti-Keynesian views, but sees it properly as a legitimate perspective. More importantly, if Richard Lipsey sees the moribund nature of economic theory as a genuine issue to be considered, there are some very influential people who have seen the problem and are willing to add their names to the list of those who are dissatisfied with standard economic teaching and practice. I don’t know how much dynamite it will take to break up the logjam, but this is certainly a very much needed assist.

The best test of a sound economist

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A friend and colleague has written a fascinating paper on the various interactions amongst later classical economists from the late middle of the nineteenth century through to the end. Part of his paper dealt with Mill’s Fourth Proposition on Capital – “demand for commodities is not demand for labour” – on which I have just published a paper explaining its meaning which no one else has been able to do since Leslie Stephen at the end of that century. Most intriguingly for everyone since, in 1876 he described it as “the best test of a sound economist” which no one, until me this year, has been able to make sense of. Here is my reply to his note to me. I also have put this up since I think it is a perfect example of why the study of the history of economic thought makes someone a better economist. Where is the standard issue economist who would even begin to know what any of this is about?

As always, it was a fascinating paper from which I learned a great deal, even some things I didn’t want to know, such as Cairnes form of rheumatism which sounds like a kind of torture you would wish on no one. But being almost entirely like Leslie Stephen in the issues you discuss, I can stand in as a proxy to see things from his point of view.

On your three points:

(1) It is perfectly clear to everyone that Mill’s Fourth Proposition (MFP) is a restatement of Say’s Law. The problem is that they don’t understand Say’s Law which I have translated thus: demand deficiency does not cause recessions and a demand stimulus will lead neither to recovery nor higher employment. That is the point, and the words support my view. Economists since 1936 have been trapped in the belief that classical economists always assumed full employment, on the assumption, I guess, that they were idiots. Once you see that they never thought any such thing, you are able to take the first steps in understanding Mill and MFP.

(2) You say that the issue came up again in the 1870s because of a rekindling of interest in the wages fund doctrine. This may well be, but whatever may have rekindled the issue, the arguments in support of the Fourth Proposition have nothing to do with the wages fund doctrine. I don’t teach the wages fund, but I do teach all four propositions. But you have to understand Mill, which no one, absolutely no one in my view, does.

(3) You say that Stephen’s statement that it was the best test of a sound economist was not an offhand comment as I do. I thought of it as offhand given the nature of the book he was writing. It was far from being a book on economic theory and while it is in context, it is not essential to the point he was making over all.

On your paper, let me make a few points related to these matters.

(i) You quote the proposition incorrectly, but it is this error that is part of the problem. The proposition is “demand for commodities is not demand for labour”. You wrote, “a demand for commodities is not a demand for labour” (p 9 and 13). This is fundamental and was the same problem that Simon Newcomb had. It is not micro. It is classical macro. Mill is looking across the entire economy and pointing out that lifting the level of aggregate demand does not lower the unemployment rate. I can see that, but no one else can see that. Aside from myself, no one, so far as I know, opposed the stimulus because it would not create jobs. To me, because I understand Mill, and therefore believe because of that that I understand how an economy operates, the failure of the stimulus was an absolute certainty. I listen to Krugman-style blather about how the stimulus was not large enough or that we are beset by secular stagnation and it is all ridiculous. Mill makes it clear, but to understand Mill you must absolutely give up on modern macro (and on Real Business Cycle theory as well). Stephen says it precisely right as you quote him (14-15) where he points out that expenditure by the rich will not lower unemployment. Substitute the government for the rich and you will see what he is getting at. I say the same and have more than enough evidence given the past six years. What evidence does a Keynesian have that they know the first thing about any of it?

(ii) The notion that MFP has been “exploded” is news to me. Marshall and Hayek tried to show that it was true, if you just made these wee adjustments. Of course, they made it completely incomprehensible and leached out of it any reason to see it as a “fundamental” proposition. They just couldn’t understand it for reasons I explain in my paper. That is why, I also think it is the “best test of a sound economist” which is why I think there are so few sound economists left. No Keynesian is a sound economist since each and every one would fail this test.

(iii) You seem to think that Stephen and Ruskin couldn’t agree on economic issues because of their different philosophies, and that Ruskin was shoveled out because he was not amongst the professional economic elite. I went back to read Ruskin’s Munera Pulveris after watching Mr Turner and even with the best will in the world, which I then had, could not bear it. Ruskin is a rotten economist. He asks the wrong questions and comes up with stupid answers. Mill, and I presume Stephen, were concerned about the poor and wished to raise living standards and see them employed (as I wish to do myself). It’s not even that I disagree with him but that Ruskin had literally nothing to contribute to any serious debate about how economies work. It wasn’t that they disagreed but that Ruskin’s views were irrelevant since he wasn’t looking at serious questions.

But these differences aside, your paper was very stimulating reading. Could you send me in the direction of this additional debate over MFP that followed from the debate over the wages fund. There may be something there that I should follow up on.

I am very pleased to find myself cited by you in this excellent paper.

Kind regards

The old economic verities are coming back

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Chris M very kindly brought this to my attention on another thread: There’s a theory about what drives the US economy that you hear all the time. This financial expert says it’s completely wrong. And just what is the right theory?

“Consumption is zero percent of our economy.
It’s always production.”

It goes on to say:

If you don’t believe that, decide one day that you’re just going to consume and do nothing else. If so, you will very quickly die an unclothed, unfed death.

You must produce first in order to consume. And so it is production that drives the economy forward. And so, when you think about … economists love to say “We want everyone to consume, consume, consume.”

Well how are we more productive? We’re productive precisely because people save, and their savings flow toward more productive ways to build cars, to manufacture computers.

It is thanks to savings that we enjoy cell phones that we can watch tv on; that we increasingly have a good chance of winning the battle against cancer; that we get to drive cars that will at some point drive us around.

That’s because of savings. Savings are what power the economy forward. Consumption is the easy part. We all want to consume. But saving is what allows us to eventually consume.

It does seem the old verities are coming back, slowly, slowly, but coming back. You still have to understand saving properly, and the nature of value added and a number of other matters that must be very carefully defined and the co-ordination of their actions understood within their logical harmonies. Mises and Hayek, of course, explain it, and there is the impossible-to-read John Stuart Mill, but do not let me fail to mention this, which has the advantage of having it all explained against the backdrop of the Keynesian Revolution.

Comic relief at the AFR

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I turned from reading Chris Berg and Sinclair’s serious and excellent article on our real tax problem in the Financial Review to its next door neighbour by Brian Toohey dealing with super which must have been provided for comic relief. What is one to make of its opening two sentences?

Australia has a savings glut. So does much of the globe.

One of those mistakes no classical economist would make but every Keynesian does. Could a modern economist even begin to understand why a classical economist might have thought differently? Probably not, which is why we will raise taxes, maintain public spending and lower interest rates and never know what we are doing wrong.

Even economists are beginning to notice there is something wrong with economic theory

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The New York Review of Books ran a seminar series on “What’s Wrong with Economics” which may be found here, including the videos of the various sessions. It has taken more than half a decade for the penny to finally drop that the policies we have been applying do not work and that there may be something wrong with the economic theories we have been applying. This is the “preface” from the NYRB which is so wrong-headed in even setting out the issues that you can already see there is no possibility that they are going to get anywhere near the right answers. But at least the questions are finally being asked, because there is finally recognition that things have gone badly wrong.

This conference is taking place eight years after the onset of the Great Recession in December 2007, and nearly six years after the recession was declared to be officially over in the US in June 2009. Yet the events of six and eight years ago continue to haunt us. One of the great powers of the global economy, the Eurozone, has yet to put the recession behind it, while the uneven performance of the US economy—spurts of growth accompanied by stagnant real wages—has led economists such as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers to ask whether the US has succumbed to “secular stagnation”: Is the economy now burdened with structural impediments which will make strong and sustained growth difficult to achieve?

The Crash of 2007-2008 was an acute crisis of market disequilibrium which has imposed itself upon an economics discipline still giving pride of place to models where market forces nudge economies in the very opposite direction—towards equilibrium. Crises of disequilibrium have occurred with increasing frequency over the past thirty years: with the Latin American debt crises of the 1980s, the American Savings and Loans collapse of the late 1980s, the Scandinavian banking crisis of the early 1990s, the Asian and Russian financial crises of the late 1990s, the American “dot-com” bust of 2000, and the Crash of 2007-2008 itself which has been global in impact.

Yet treating these crises as a series of near-identical events susceptible to economic modelling does not, on the face of it, do justice to the complexity and singularity of the forces which combined to bring them about. Many of these influences seem to have had their origins well beyond the home territory of economics. Doing justice to these outside forces may require a knowledge of ethics, anthropology, contemporary history and politics, public policy, and an understanding of the beliefs, frequently delusional, which seized many of the economic actors before and during the crises.

Among these disciplines it is, unsurprisingly ethics which intrudes questions of value deepest within the territory of economics, and forces a reappraisal of where the discipline stands in the disciplinary continuum between the humanities and the natural sciences. The overwhelming preference of economists themselves is to be as closely aligned as possible with the natural sciences. But with the intrusion of such ethically charged issues as the human fallout from the Crash, and the unrelenting growth of economic inequality in the US and most European countries, the scientific and the normative in economics are becoming increasingly difficult to keep apart.

Disputes between economists which seem to derive from disagreements about data and methodologies may on closer examination be rooted in profound disagreements about values. So it can be argued, and often is, that all of us are responsible for making the best of the opportunities open to us. Those who have ended up on the wrong side of the inequality divide must have failed to make the best of these opportunities and must bear responsibility for their errors, with the state providing just enough support to save them from destitution.

Or, an opposing view, that those falling behind are very often the victims of circumstances beyond their control—globalization, technological change, corporate restructuring—and that the state has a strong obligation to support them generously through difficult times and to provide them with the knowledge and skills needed to cope with new technologies and work practices. But how are these conflicts of values embedded in conflicting views about policy to be resolved?

It may be that these are disagreements of a kind that arise frequently in political and moral philosophy and reflect conflicts of plural values which do not arise in the natural sciences and which cannot be resolved by the forms of reasoning employed by scientists. They may have to be resolved either by the choices and compromises achieved through the practice of liberal democracy, or by one set of values prevailing over another through intellectual and electoral force majeur—as for example the arguments for the legal equality of women prevailed over their opponents in the course of the twentieth century.

Once again a network of beliefs and judgments extending well beyond economics may be called into play, and once again these may be strung out along the ontological continuum between the humanities and the natural sciences. Does this mean that the economist as scientist is slowly but surely being displaced by that hybrid who seems better placed to bridge these divides—the political economist?

If you want to see things properly, you will, in my view, have to start if not exactly here, at least somewhere nearby. Paul Krugman can think we have fallen into some kind of secular stagnation which is not far from being the stupidest of all possible explanations. Having backed the stimulus and the fall of official interest rates to zero, he has no idea that there are others who think that is more than enough to account for the present dismal outcome. They are clueless in New York. I would leave them to their own devices except that they are likely to take the rest of us down along with them. With these people as the leaders of the profession, it is indeed a dismal science.

AND AN ADDED BONUS: There is also Jeff Madrick on Why the Experts Missed the Recession. And why was that? Whatever the reason, here’s why I know he doesn’t know:

By lowering the target rate of interest, known as the federal funds rate, the members of the FOMC can stimulate economic growth, and by raising it, they can dampen growth and inflation.

Real Keynesians and the long run

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For sheer emptiness, you can now try this by Jonathan Schlefer: Not even Paul Krugman is a real Keynesian. And why not?

But isn’t Keynes now mainstream? No, say Foley and Taylor. The mainstream still sees economies as inherently moving to an optimal equilibrium, as Wicksell did. It still says demand causes short-run fluctuations, but only supply factors, such as the capital stock and technology, can affect long-run growth.

EVEN PAUL KRUGMAN, a self-described Keynesian, Nobel laureate, and New York Times columnist, writes in the 2012 edition of his textbook: “In the long run the economy is self-correcting: shocks to aggregate demand affect aggregate output in the short run but not in the long run.” He says Keynes and Wicksell are in key respects “essentially equivalent.”

Krugman does point to one exception: If interest rates are nearly zero, as during the financial crisis, markets lose restorative force.

The article is not worth the trouble, but the quote from Krugman does seem to suggest he is being pushed by reality. In the long-run (a year or two perhaps) Say’s Law dominates, the economy is production driven.

And there is this by John Cochrane, which was published in The Wall Street Journal in December: An Autopsy for the Keynesians . A bit premature so far as the academic world goes, but I think this is absolutely true:

This year the tide changed in the economy. Growth seems finally to be returning. The tide also changed in economic ideas. The brief resurgence of traditional Keynesian ideas is washing away from the world of economic policy.

No government is remotely likely to spend trillions of dollars or euros in the name of “stimulus,” financed by blowout borrowing. The euro is intact: Even the Greeks and Italians, after six years of advice that their problems can be solved with one more devaluation and inflation, are sticking with the euro and addressing—however slowly—structural “supply” problems instead.

C+I+G remains as the basic brainwashing tool, but even here it seems that the sleepers awake.

A UK jobs miracle and the continuing death of Keynesian theory

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Let’s start with the conventional view which is from an article whose title begins, A jobs miracle is happening in Britain:

At the start of this government, Ed Miliband predicted a jobs armageddon — austerity would inevitably mean mass unemployment. Osborne would cut 500,000 public sector jobs, he said, with ‘no credible plan to replace them’. And surely government spending is synonymous with prosperity? Boldly, he forecast a ratio: one private job would be lost for every public sector job lost — leading to the loss of ‘a million jobs in all’.

The conventional Keynesian wisdom, to which Miliband subscribed, is that government spending cuts make the economy weaker: fewer public sector workers means less money spent in the shops, so less demand, therefore more unemployment. Osborne saw things differently. What if the problem was not the supply of jobs, but the supply of willing workers? If you cut taxes on low-paid work, it becomes more attractive: more people want to move from welfare. Especially if welfare reform makes it harder to game the system.

What else would someone who learns his economics from a Keynesian text believe? So let us then go to the actual situation as it has now turned out:

In five short years, Britain has gone from having mass unemployment to jobs galore. Unemployment is falling at a rate that confounds the economists, and employers are starting to panic. Maths teachers, chefs — the list of ‘shortage occupations’ grows ever longer. Construction companies are not tendering for work in London because they can’t find bricklayers. Financially this is a headache, but economically it’s a problem of success. The Prime Minister set out to get rid of the deficit. He failed. But instead he has presided over a jobs miracle — one that economists and policymakers are still struggling to understand.

Just before the Budget was published, the latest figures came out — all of them smashing records. There are 30.9 million of us in work, the most ever. That’s an employment ratio of 73.3 per cent, the highest in history. Employment is up by 1.7 million since Cameron took power and 1.5 million of these jobs are full-time. The number on Jobseekers Allowance fell by 30 per cent last year alone and the youth claimant count stands at its lowest since the 1970s. Birmingham added more jobs to its economy last year than the whole of France; Britain is adding more than the rest of Europe. David Cameron can take credit for creating more jobs than any first-term prime minister in postwar history.

The article attributes this turnaround entirely to tax cuts. Even though he notes that the central feature of Government policy has been the “austerity” program, even the writer here, who no doubt was mis-educated on Keynesian aggregate demand, cannot see, really see, what is happening before his eyes, even though he can see the outcome. Of course taxes should also be cut, which is part of the way we reduce even the ability of governments to spend. But the diversion of our resource base into productive activities is the key.

It’s this Keynesian economics that will blind you to reality. But slowly but ever so surely it is entering the dust bin of history. Shame the same cannot be said about our economics texts which still continue with the same as before.

[And my deep thanks to DB for sending this article along.]

Art Laffer in Australia

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At the end of Art Laffer’s presentation at the IPA tonight, John Roskam said there may never have been a presentation as good as the one we had just heard. And if I have misquoted John, let me apologise but whatever it was that John did say, I have never heard a presentation as good as the one I heard tonight. Lunching with Dick Chaney and Don Rumsfeld must have been the most fun group anyone has ever been part of. What a bunch they must have been [and for evidence, see the video above]!

Naturally, I think all of this because Professor Laffer said only things I could agree with instantly. And he said one thing in particular that I could not have agreed with more, and if you see what he is saying, you have to appreciate just how badly our economies have been managed. And what he said was this: “The Great Recession was caused by the stimulus package.” Imagine, my friends, what that means, not just about economic policy, but about economic theory, if that is true.

He then gave his six-point plan, not just for economic recovery but for maintaining strong rates of growth ever after:

  • introduce a low-rate broad-based flat tax
  • bring in genuine spending restraint
  • base monetary policy on a sound-money imperative
  • ensure free trade is the basis for international trade
  • keep regulation of industry to an absolute minimum
  • leave the market to itself to solve the problems businesses find themselves in.

And then at the end of the evening, there was one question that stood out only because it is has an answer that is still not easy for everyone to understand in our days of low grade macroeconomic knowledge: “Why”, he was asked, “didn’t the stimulus work?” His answer: “if you want production, you must reward production. It’s not consumption that does it, it’s production”. Seems clear enough to me, although, I fear, not to those who do not see the point.

And let me finally thank the ACCI for having had the good sense to bring Arthur Laffer to Australia.