Authors Chris Coyne and Peter Boettke succeed very well in explaining the topics they cover in a way students will find easy to follow. Naturally enough, there are points of detail which other Austrians might address differently, and in particular, the way in which one can use praxeological knowledge to attain various policy goals needs more clarification than we find here. But all in all, _The Essential Austrian Economics_ is useful and helpful.
{"title":"Book Review: The Essential Austrian Economics","authors":"D. Gordon","doi":"10.35297/QJAE.010095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35297/QJAE.010095","url":null,"abstract":"Authors Chris Coyne and Peter Boettke succeed very well in explaining the topics they cover in a way students will find easy to follow. Naturally enough, there are points of detail which other Austrians might address differently, and in particular, the way in which one can use praxeological knowledge to attain various policy goals needs more clarification than we find here. But all in all, _The Essential Austrian Economics_ is useful and helpful.","PeriodicalId":39988,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81922581","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}
This article reviews the analytical justification, the theoretical content, and the practical experience of inflation targeting, which has become the standard framework for monetary policy. It shows that due to the inflation-targeting literature’s neglect for the money demand as part of the monetary relation that drives price determination, it provides a distorted theoretical account of the most basic relations in a monetary economy and an illusionary vision of what a modern central bank could achieve. The last section of the article uses the recent monetary history of Ukraine to illustrate the pitfalls and illusions of inflation targeting.
{"title":"The Illusions of Inflation Targeting, With an Application to Ukraine","authors":"N. Gertchev","doi":"10.35297/QJAE.010086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35297/QJAE.010086","url":null,"abstract":"This article reviews the analytical justification, the theoretical content, and the practical experience of inflation targeting, which has become the standard framework for monetary policy. It shows that due to the inflation-targeting literature’s neglect for the money demand as part of the monetary relation that drives price determination, it provides a distorted theoretical account of the most basic relations in a monetary economy and an illusionary vision of what a modern central bank could achieve. The last section of the article uses the recent monetary history of Ukraine to illustrate the pitfalls and illusions of inflation targeting.","PeriodicalId":39988,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90990687","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}
Kay and King are not Austrians, but in this important book, they lend aid and comfort to several key points of Austrian economics. With potent arguments against mainstream neoclassical methodology, and rejecting the use of conditions for general equilibrium, they have written an impressive and erudite book that ranges over many disciplines.
{"title":"Book Review: Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers","authors":"D. Gordon","doi":"10.35297/QJAE.010094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35297/QJAE.010094","url":null,"abstract":"Kay and King are not Austrians, but in this important book, they lend aid and comfort to several key points of Austrian economics. With potent arguments against mainstream neoclassical methodology, and rejecting the use of conditions for general equilibrium, they have written an impressive and erudite book that ranges over many disciplines.","PeriodicalId":39988,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73727089","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}
The conventional wisdom has it that US Democrats and those on the American left support incremental steps in the direction of socialism, if not an all-out endorsement of the concept. However, in at least one area—regulation—Republicans and the American political right have also, albeit unwittingly, spread the seeds of socialism not just in Washington, DC, but all across the world. This article reviews the history of federal regulation in the United States, and in particular the arcane, technical history of cost-benefit analysis (CBA), a tool that has become increasingly central in battles over regulation between the Left and the Right. Although right-wing political operatives latched on to CBA in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the tool has a long, complicated history, aspects of which could even be called socialist in nature.
{"title":"The Unlikely Story of American Regulatory Socialism","authors":"James Broughel","doi":"10.35297/QJAE.010089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35297/QJAE.010089","url":null,"abstract":"The conventional wisdom has it that US Democrats and those on the American left support incremental steps in the direction of socialism, if not an all-out endorsement of the concept. However, in at least one area—regulation—Republicans and the American political right have also, albeit unwittingly, spread the seeds of socialism not just in Washington, DC, but all across the world. This article reviews the history of federal regulation in the United States, and in particular the arcane, technical history of cost-benefit analysis (CBA), a tool that has become increasingly central in battles over regulation between the Left and the Right. Although right-wing political operatives latched on to CBA in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the tool has a long, complicated history, aspects of which could even be called socialist in nature.","PeriodicalId":39988,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91373888","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}
Literary critics often use economics to interpret the texts they consider, but often they have mistaken ideas about economics. They oppose the free market and are frequently Marxists. Spivey, an English professor at Arizona Christian University who specializes in American literature, asks, why not instead use correct economics instead? And by “correct” economics, he means Austrian economics. In _Re-Reading Economics in Literature_, Spivey discusses five books from an Austrian perspective.
{"title":"Book Review: Re-Reading Economics in Literature: A Capitalist Critical Perspective","authors":"D. Gordon","doi":"10.35297/QJAE.010093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35297/QJAE.010093","url":null,"abstract":"Literary critics often use economics to interpret the texts they consider, but often they have mistaken ideas about economics. They oppose the free market and are frequently Marxists. Spivey, an English professor at Arizona Christian University who specializes in American literature, asks, why not instead use correct economics instead? And by “correct” economics, he means Austrian economics. In _Re-Reading Economics in Literature_, Spivey discusses five books from an Austrian perspective.","PeriodicalId":39988,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74046777","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}
Pascal Salin's _Tax Tyranny_ is an essay on the principles of taxation. First published in 1985 under the title _L’arbitraire fiscale,_ this first English edition is most welcome. Written in a non-technical way, it is accessible to a broad readership. It serves very well as an introductory text for undergraduates, most notably in macroeconomics or public economics, but it also carries a lot of original food for thought that deserves the attention of scholars and tax practitioners. The central thesis is that there are no rational grounds for taxation and taxation can therefore never be justified. By its very nature, the tax state can never be a just state. When it taxes its citizens, it is arbitrary and tyrannical.
{"title":"Book Review: Tax Tyranny","authors":"J. G. Hülsmann","doi":"10.35297/QJAE.01009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35297/QJAE.01009","url":null,"abstract":"Pascal Salin's _Tax Tyranny_ is an essay on the principles of taxation. First published in 1985 under the title _L’arbitraire fiscale,_ this first English edition is most welcome. Written\u0000in a non-technical way, it is accessible to a broad readership. It serves very well as an introductory text for undergraduates, most notably in macroeconomics or public economics, but it also carries a lot of original food for thought that deserves the attention\u0000of scholars and tax practitioners. The central thesis is that there are no rational grounds for taxation and taxation can therefore never be justified. By its very nature, the tax state can never be a just state. When it taxes its citizens, it is arbitrary and tyrannical.","PeriodicalId":39988,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics","volume":"87 1","pages":"18837"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82418175","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}
_Austrian Economics in Contemporary Business Applications_ shows how Austrian ideas—value subjectivity, consumer sovereignty, capital allocation, entrepreneurship, etc.—can be useful “to practical management problems.” It is, up to this point, the highest scholarly achievement of the "Economics for Business" project of the Mises Institute. The book does not cover everything, but is a good first approach to summarizing Austrian ideas for business people. Next efforts should turn the focus more explicitly to entrepreneurs and businessmen and less to academics.
{"title":"Book Review: Austrian Economics in Contemporary Business Applications","authors":"F. D'Andrea","doi":"10.35297/QJAE.010092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35297/QJAE.010092","url":null,"abstract":"_Austrian Economics in Contemporary Business Applications_ shows how Austrian ideas—value subjectivity, consumer sovereignty, capital allocation, entrepreneurship, etc.—can be useful “to practical management problems.” It is, up to this point, the highest scholarly achievement of the \"Economics for Business\" project of the Mises Institute. The book does not cover everything, but is a good first approach to summarizing Austrian ideas for business people. Next efforts should turn the focus more explicitly to entrepreneurs and businessmen and less to academics.","PeriodicalId":39988,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics","volume":"18 1","pages":"18800"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75799527","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}
The signature element of the Abe Shinzō years is, without doubt, Abenomics. Will Abenomics survive the new prime minister, Suga Yoshihide? Or, to put it differently, will Japan survive Abenomics? For now Abenomics appears alive and well. The Bank of Japan is printing money at a breakneck pace. “Stimulus” is sloshing around everywhere. But this cannot go on forever, and so it won't. Those in Japan arguing for government intervention and economic relief are drawing from a deep political-economic tradition, which includes the notion of economics as mutual aid. This review essay introduces several important books that address Japanese thinking on political economy.
{"title":"The End of the Abe Administration--The End of Abenomics? Books on Past and Present in the Japanese Political Economy","authors":"J. Morgan","doi":"10.35297/QJAE.010090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35297/QJAE.010090","url":null,"abstract":"The signature element of the Abe Shinzō years is, without doubt, Abenomics. Will Abenomics survive the new prime minister, Suga Yoshihide? Or, to put it differently, will Japan survive Abenomics? For now Abenomics appears alive and well. The Bank of Japan is printing money at a breakneck pace. “Stimulus” is sloshing around everywhere. But this cannot go on forever, and so it won't. Those in Japan arguing for government intervention and economic relief are drawing from a deep political-economic tradition, which includes the notion of economics as mutual aid. This review essay introduces several important books that address Japanese thinking on political economy.","PeriodicalId":39988,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics","volume":"81 1","pages":"18795"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77300296","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}
The “new development economics” (also called behavioral development economics) consists of microeconomic experimentation based on behavioral economics and randomized controlled trials. This approach would illuminate the close relationships between preferences, culture, and institutions and point to new political opportunities. This paper describes and analyzes the new development economics’s main components and argues that the new development economics is just like the old development economics in terms of its central assumptions, objectives, and recommendations. Despite the growing recognition that social, cultural, and institutional factors profoundly affect decision-making, old and new development economists generally lean toward the extreme reductionism of the neoclassical paradigm. It is observed that research on the essence of economic development has been neglected or treated inadequately in the school’s literature. It is suggested that the findings of the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency, based on human action’s creative and entrepreneurial feature, may allow the development economics to overcome its analytical challenges.
{"title":"Old and New Development Economics: A Reassessment of Objectives","authors":"Victor Espinosa, Óscar R. Carreiro","doi":"10.35297/qjae.010098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35297/qjae.010098","url":null,"abstract":"The “new development economics” (also called behavioral development economics) consists of microeconomic experimentation based on behavioral economics and randomized controlled trials. This approach would illuminate the close relationships between preferences, culture, and institutions and point to new political opportunities. This paper describes and analyzes the new development economics’s main components and argues that the new development economics is just like the old development economics in terms of its central assumptions, objectives, and recommendations. Despite the growing recognition that social, cultural, and institutional factors profoundly affect decision-making, old and new development economists generally lean toward the extreme reductionism of the neoclassical paradigm. It is observed that research on the essence of economic development has been neglected or treated inadequately in the school’s literature. It is suggested that the findings of the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency, based on human action’s creative and entrepreneurial feature, may allow the development economics to overcome its analytical challenges.","PeriodicalId":39988,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80868500","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}
The new “secular stagnation hypothesis” developed by Lawrence H. Summers attempts to justify why the demand stimulus applied in the aftermath of the global financial crisis failed to revive growth in a satisfactory manner. Building on previous ideas of Keynes, Hansen, and Bernanke, Summers claims that excess savings together with feeble investment drove the natural rate of interest down to zero and advanced economies into stagnation. As the US monetary policy rate is not allowed to fall below the zero bound, Summers calls for “quantitative easing” and more expansionary fiscal policy to spur investment demand. This paper refutes Summers’s hypothesis by revealing its internal inconsistencies and presenting both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on the long-term evolution of savings, investment, productivity, and capital stock. It also estimates the natural rate of interest following the approach of Salerno (2020), which is further refined based on Rothbard’s “pure interest rate” theory. The calculation shows that the natural interest rate did not drop to zero after the global financial crisis, but has actually remained consistently and significantly above the federal funds rate and the bank loan prime rate. This not only invalidates Summers’s central claim, but confirms once more the explanatory power of the Austrian business cycle theory in relation to the main trigger of the global financial crisis and its subsequent unfinished recovery.
劳伦斯·h·萨默斯(Lawrence H. Summers)提出的新“长期停滞假说”(secular stagnation hypothesis)试图证明，全球金融危机后实施的需求刺激为何未能以令人满意的方式恢复增长。萨默斯以凯恩斯、汉森和伯南克之前的观点为基础，声称储蓄过剩加上投资疲软导致自然利率降至零，发达经济体陷入停滞。由于美国不允许货币政策利率降至零利率以下，萨默斯呼吁实施“量化宽松”和更具扩张性的财政政策，以刺激投资需求。本文通过揭示萨默斯假说的内在矛盾性，对储蓄、投资、生产率和资本存量的长期演化提出理论论证和实证证据，反驳了萨默斯的假说。它还根据Salerno(2020)的方法估计自然利率，该方法在罗斯巴德的“纯利率”理论的基础上进一步完善。计算表明，在全球金融危机之后，自然利率并没有降至零，而是实际上一直保持在联邦基金利率和银行贷款优惠利率之上。这不仅推翻了萨默斯的核心主张，而且再次证实了奥地利学派商业周期理论在全球金融危机的主要触发因素及其随后未完成的复苏方面的解释力。
{"title":"The Case against the New \"Secular Stagnation Hypothesis\"","authors":"M. Macovei","doi":"10.35297/qjae.010099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35297/qjae.010099","url":null,"abstract":"The new “secular stagnation hypothesis” developed by Lawrence H. Summers attempts to justify why the demand stimulus applied in the aftermath of the global financial crisis failed to revive growth in a satisfactory manner. Building on previous ideas of Keynes, Hansen, and Bernanke, Summers claims that excess savings together with feeble investment drove the natural rate of interest down to zero and advanced economies into stagnation. As the US monetary policy rate is not allowed to fall below the zero bound, Summers calls for “quantitative easing” and more expansionary fiscal policy to spur investment demand. This paper refutes Summers’s hypothesis by revealing its internal inconsistencies and presenting both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on the long-term evolution of savings, investment, productivity, and capital stock. It also estimates the natural rate of interest following the approach of Salerno (2020), which is further refined based on Rothbard’s “pure interest rate” theory. The calculation shows that the natural interest rate did not drop to zero after the global financial crisis, but has actually remained consistently and significantly above the federal funds rate and the bank loan prime rate. This not only invalidates Summers’s central claim, but confirms once more the explanatory power of the Austrian business cycle theory in relation to the main trigger of the global financial crisis and its subsequent unfinished recovery.","PeriodicalId":39988,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87523414","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}
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