Animal Spirits

by Jerry O’Driscoll

In a previous post, Mario Rizzo reminds us that Keynes was concerned with the volatility of investment.  Keynes was not alone.  By the dawn of the 20^th century, virtually every significant business cycle theorist viewed the volatility of investment as the central theoretical problem.

In the General Theory, Keynes (p. 149) posed the problem as follows: “The outstanding fact is the extreme precariousness of the basis of knowledge on which our estimates of prospective yield have to be made.” It quickly becomes clear that Keynes means “expectations,” not knowledge.  And investment is not governed by “the genuine expectations of the professional entrepreneur” (p.151).

Economics To End Economics

by Mario Rizzo  

I used to think that Ludwig von Mises was exaggerating quite a bit when he suggested that Keynes was not really an economist. One way he did this was to associate Keynes with infamous monetary cranks like Silvio Gesell. The following quotation will give you a flavor of Mises’s opinion:  

“John Maynard Keynes, late economic adviser to the British Government, is the new prophet of inflationism. The “Keynesian Revolution” consisted in the fact that he openly espoused the doctrines of Silvio Gesell. As the foremost of the British Gesellians, Lord Keynes adopted also the peculiar messianic jargon of inflationist literature and introduced it into official documents. Credit expansion, says the Paper of the British Experts of April 8, 1943, performs the “miracle . . . of turning a stone into bread.” The author of this document was, of course, Keynes. Great Britain has indeed traveled a long way to this statement from Hume’s and Mill’s views on miracles.”   

Robert Barro on the Impotence of Stimulus

by Mario Rizzo

In an interesting opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Robert Barro and Charles Redlick give empirical evidence supporting the claim that stimulus spending doesn’t work. By “doesn’t work” they mean that the government spending multiplier is less than 1. This means that stimulus spending increases national income by less than the amount of new spending. Why? Barro and Redlick are vague on the reasons.

Richard Posner on the Precipice

by Mario Rizzo   

Richard Posner’s latest conversion is both charming and alarming. It is charming because it exhibits a youthful enthusiasm for a newly-discovered idea: Keynesianism. He just recently read John Maynard Keynes’s book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Posner’s tone echoes that of Paul Samuelson:

“To have been born as an economist before 1936 was a boon—yes. But not to have been born too long before!”

Then Samuelson quotes William Wordsworth:

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!”

The Great Moderation In Macroeconomics

by Mario Rizzo  

I have now read both Paul Krugman’s New York Times essay on the state of macroeconomics and John Cochrane’s reply. They are each, in very different ways, quite disappointing. The level of argument is poor, the prejudices are simplistic, and the tones are annoying.  

Auction Markets and Optimally Sticky Prices

by Joseph T. Salerno

Keynesian macroeconomists, old and new, have long criticized their classical and contemporary opponents for ignoring reality and treating the market economy as a giant auction in which prices are “perfectly flexible,” responding instantly to changes in supply and demand.  This charge is wrong on two counts.  First, all markets for outputs and inputs function precisely like auctions; and, second, auctions are not characterized by perfectly flexible prices but by an optimal degree of stickiness in prices that is determined by the market itself.

In this post I will deal with second point, because it has been generally neglected in responding to the Keynesians.  To illustrate this point I will use the example of a one day on-site auction of 49 unsold condominiums at a 73-unit complex that recently took place in Auburn, Alabama and which I also happened to attend.

Prices and Information

by Jerry O’Driscoll  

In the recent discussion of Say’s Law, the issue of “sticky” prices came up. The term is the source of much confusion. The opposite of “sticky” prices is not “flexible” prices, but infinitely flexible prices. No matter how flexible a price, short of infinite flexibility, there will be quantity responses. Quantity responses are an inherent part of market economies, do not signal market imperfections, and do not typically trigger income-constrained processes.  

Price setting incurs information costs. How does a producer or  retailer know when to change his prices? Where does that information  come from?  

Say’s Law Today

by Jerry O’Driscoll  

This post follows on my earlier one, “It’s All About Say’s Law.”  

Say’s Law of Markets answered the fears of under-consumption as the spreading industrial revolution brought forth an ever more bountiful supply of goods. The law’s logic is that production creates the income that is the source of the demand for goods.     

In the General Theory, J. M. Keynes recast Say’s Law as the proposition that “the aggregate demand price of output as a whole is equal to its aggregate supply price for all volumes of output.” That formulation would be foreign, if not incomprehensible, to any economist who had ever subscribed to Say’s Law.  That law negates the concept of “output as a whole”    

It’s All About Say’s Law

by Jerry O’Driscoll

A friend with Keynesian leanings recently remarked that “it’s all about Say’s Law.”  He was referring to the contemporary debates over macroeconomic policy.  He was correct, but few economists on any side of the debates understand that is the issue, or why it is important.

Should Economists Think About What They Do?

by Mario Rizzo  

Believe it or not, this is a controversial question!

Brad DeLong has argued that the profession seems to know less today about macroeconomics than, say, Keynes did. Paul Krugman has expressed similar sentiments. They see a kind of collective or professional unlearning in the past thirty or forty years. They are right.