How can societies advance social justice? Many of the goals of social justice are addressed by research on economic freedom, including social tolerance and protection of minority rights, promotion of democracy and political freedoms, and income inequality. We survey the academic literature on these topics and find that in many cases economic freedom can serve to advance the goals of social justice. Income equality is the goal for which the results are the least clear, and it is possible that some components of economic freedom increase income inequality, but the effects are nuanced. Based on these results, advocates of social justice may indeed want to embrace economic freedom in some areas while recognizing that there may sometimes be a trade-off between various goals.
{"title":"Is Economic Freedom the Hidden Path to Social Justice?","authors":"Jeremy Horpedahl, J. Jackson, D. Mitchell","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3304173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3304173","url":null,"abstract":"How can societies advance social justice? Many of the goals of social justice are addressed by research on economic freedom, including social tolerance and protection of minority rights, promotion of democracy and political freedoms, and income inequality. We survey the academic literature on these topics and find that in many cases economic freedom can serve to advance the goals of social justice. Income equality is the goal for which the results are the least clear, and it is possible that some components of economic freedom increase income inequality, but the effects are nuanced. Based on these results, advocates of social justice may indeed want to embrace economic freedom in some areas while recognizing that there may sometimes be a trade-off between various goals.","PeriodicalId":257017,"journal":{"name":"NDSU: Working Papers (Topic)","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130564984","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}
Early in his career, Hayek viewed attempts to stabilize exchange rates by facilitating cooperation between central banks, with respect to their demand for gold, to be at odds with the fundamental mechanisms of the gold standard. He opposed proposals by Irving Fisher, Gustav Cassel, and Ralph Hawtrey that promoted stabilization of demand for gold and price levels as a next best option. Hayek viewed the nations that refused to devalue their currency after monetary expansion during wartime as complicit in degrading the international gold standard. In 1935 Hayek's emphasis began to change, his position sounding much like the arguments of Cassel and Hawtrey. Though he eventually gave up hope that the international gold standard would be reestablished, his later work on money provides theoretical underpinnings for systems that would promote the same sort of stability and predictability that the classical gold standard had provided.
{"title":"The Evolution of Hayek's Thought on Gold and Monetary Standards","authors":"J. Caton","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3072766","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3072766","url":null,"abstract":"Early in his career, Hayek viewed attempts to stabilize exchange rates by facilitating cooperation between central banks, with respect to their demand for gold, to be at odds with the fundamental mechanisms of the gold standard. He opposed proposals by Irving Fisher, Gustav Cassel, and Ralph Hawtrey that promoted stabilization of demand for gold and price levels as a next best option. Hayek viewed the nations that refused to devalue their currency after monetary expansion during wartime as complicit in degrading the international gold standard. In 1935 Hayek's emphasis began to change, his position sounding much like the arguments of Cassel and Hawtrey. Though he eventually gave up hope that the international gold standard would be reestablished, his later work on money provides theoretical underpinnings for systems that would promote the same sort of stability and predictability that the classical gold standard had provided.","PeriodicalId":257017,"journal":{"name":"NDSU: Working Papers (Topic)","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114261600","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}