Financial crisis of metaphor

This paper presents an analysis of the mathematical models of the prevailing orthodoxy within the field of financial economics in light of the financial crisis. The financial crisis presents a challenge to the language of orthodox financial economics. From an Austrian perspective, this challenge to the language of orthodox financial economics is centred on a small number of pressure points stemming from the mathematical-quantitative nature of the prevailing orthodoxy, especially the distortion of or obstruction to the communication of pertinent ‘knowledge’ by the adoption of a formalism that pushes aside many of the most important aspects of the human action represented in financial markets. The result is a crystalline structure of mathematical models that suffer from serious salience imbalance. The highly salient features of mathematical objects are not directly applicable to and have a low salience in the list of features of the financial economic reality. The financial crisis has accentuated this salience imbalance. The orthodoxy has experienced a financial crisis of metaphor.     

Homogeneity and Heterogeneity Within and Across Boundaries and Shorelines: Ensemble of Darwin's Finches and Human Transaction Types

Synopsis: In the most famous example of the biological process of adaptive radiation, two forces explain the fourteen distinct species of Darwin's finches on the Galápagos and Cocos Islands: First, populations adapt to their respective distinct ecological environments. Second, previously separated populations come in contact and may adapt to mitigate inter-species competition. The result is a complex pattern of homogeneity and heterogeneity among the birds, both on a single island and across islands. This pattern reflects the finches' adaptations both to the distinct ecological conditions created by the visible shorelines that separate the islands' niches and to the finches' own less-visible cultural and societal shorelines. The New Institutional Economics highlights the fact that human institutional infrastructures also exhibit complex homogeneities and heterogeneities, as we adapt those infrastructures to accomplish the tasks at hand in distinct geographic and societal contexts. Mixes of both state enforcement and self-enforcement, through inter-temporal, inter-issue, and inter-actor linkages, provide support and enforcement for transactions; and those mixes differ across transactions and across states. When transactions occur across state or cultural shorelines, institutional infrastructures must be flexible enough to accommodate those differences, without allowing the differences to become disguised protectionism or barriers to competition. These issues contribute to many of the regulatory disputes associated with ‘globalization’. We briefly consider two concrete recent examples: (1) the European Union–United States ‘Safe Harbor’ Agreement that regulates firms' policies toward Internet-data privacy; and (2) international trade policy negotiations over regulation of ‘geographical indications’ (for example, Champagne or Roquefort) as means of assuring product quality for processed foods. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Federal Stability in Unequal Societies

The stability of federal systems is a thorny issue. Several scholars have attempted to come to grips with this problem and have proposed mechanisms or institutions which may contribute to the stabilization of federal systems. In many instances, however, the underlying mechanisms and micro-foundations are poorly specified. In this paper I build upon existing models dealing with decentralization and secession to incorporate unequal income distributions and externalities of public goods. Based on this some insights may be derived on the appropriate mechanisms to foster federal stability. JEL Classification: H77, H41, C72 This paper partly draws on research funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No. 5004-0487882/1). An earlier version entitled ‘‘Federalism and the Size of Nations’’ was presented at the conference ‘‘Micro-Foundations of Federal Institutional Stability’’ at Duke University (Durham, April 30–May 1, 2004). Comments by participants at this conference and greatly appreciated. First version: March 2004, this version: November 1, 2004     

Poverty traps and the robust political economy of development assistance

Robust political economy emphasizes the lack of benevolence and omniscience of would be reformers. In addition, we consider the effects of biased decision-making for the robustness of the policy implications. This paper examines the robustness of the policy implications of models based on coordination failures and poverty traps. In particular, we address the revival in ‘big push’ type models and its policy implications. We argue that attempts to promote economic development through ‘big push’ models lack robustness. JEL Code O1, O20, P26, P41     

Do we really care about Biodiversity?

This paper addresses from an economic perspective the issue of global biodiversity conservation. It challenges the perception that the world really cares a great deal about biodiversity and is prepared to pay the full cost of maintaining this stock of natural capital. Despite the existence of a plethora of international agreements there still seems to be a global ‘deficit of care’ surrounding efforts to combat challenges such as those posed by global warming and biodiversity conservation. More light can be thrown on the degree of care by measuring both the actual expenditures and the stated willingness to pay for biodiversity conservation. However, actual expenditures are much lower than willingness to pay estimates recorded in the published literature. Using the criteria that the ‘right’ amount of conservation effort is one where the marginal economic benefits from conservation just equal the marginal costs of conservation, the paper explores the biodiversity conservation conundrum and concluded that, on the available evidence, the world does not care too much about this natural capital stock and bequests to future generations. An erratum to this article can be found at     

The ‘science-as-market’ analogy: a constitutional economics perspective

The ‘science-as-market’ analogy has been used in support of the notion that in science just as in markets competition works as an effective instrument for reconciling the self-interested ambitions of individual agents with the social function that science and markets are supposed to serve. This paper examines the analogy from a constitutional economics perspective, drawing attention to the role that the rules of the constitution of the ‘game of science’ as well as the ‘market game’ play in conditioning the ways in which competition works in the two realms.     

Saving neighborhoods by saving farms: Metropolitan congregations united for St. Louis challenges urban sprawl

Critics usually decry urban sprawl's impact on the natural geograph— polluted air and water, vanishing farmlands, forests and open spaces. However, urban sprawl's effect onhuman geography has been even greater, as exemplified by metro St. Louis. With the region's urbanized land growing at seven times the rate of urbanized population, sprawl accelerated the decline of the central city and older, built-out suburbs (St. Louis lost over half its population since mid-century), increased economic segregation and stagnation (10 percent in 20 years by one measure) even as racial barriers were slowly lowered, and widened fiscal disparities among local governments (St. Louis City's property evaluation shrank by over 70 percent in 35 years). Inner-city and older-suburb coalitions, like Metropolitan Congregations United for St. Louis, are now joining environmental advocates to lobby for new state growth management laws. “We cannot win the ‘inside game’ without winning the ‘outside game,’” church leader explained. David Rusk is an urban policy consultant and author of Cities without Suburbs (1993),Baltimore Unbound (1995), andInside Game/Outside Game (1999). He is a former mayor of Albuquerque and New Mexico legislator.     

商业银行危机成因研究

商业银行安全是金融安全的重中之重,因此,国际金融界和各国政府都十分重视防范商业银行危机。本文运用统计理论与方法,从银行内部管理不善、贷款过于集中、投机行为、宏观经济形势恶化、贷款人的逆向选择及道德风险、同业竞争过度等角度系统分析了商业银行危机的产生原因与机制,商业银行危机产生的原因。     

Towards a Disequilibrium Theory of Endogenous Economic Growth

This paper discusses the need for a new approach to economic growth theory. The standard theory of growth-in-equilibrium driven by exogenous, uncaused, productivity gains has an implication that is both unjustified and perverse from a policy perspective: that government intervention of any kind can only introduce constraints and reduce option space, thus decreasing potential growth. It is argued that growth theory should (1) acknowledge the importance of natural resources, especially fossil fuels, as a driver of past and present economic growth, (2) incorporate an explicit recognition that growth is a consequence of technological innovation, especially radical innovation, that often responds to natural resource scarcities or other societal needs and (3) explicitly reflect the fact that the important (i.e. scarce) factors of production in economics can and do change over time, i.e. from a rural ‘cowboy’ economy of the past to an urbanized ‘spaceship’ economy of the future. In short, it should reflect the fact that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. The first and third of these modifications have been proposed before, but not in combination. The third seems to be new.     

Sustainable Development and a Dwindling Carbon Space

Curbing global warming by setting long term maxima for temperature rise or concentrations of greenhouse gases defines spaces within which further emissions of these gases are to remain (referred to here as ‘carbon spaces’). This paper addresses questions related to how to share between countries the carbon space and/or efforts to stay within it, in the perspective of sustainable development; different allocation mechanisms are reviewed, responding to criteria such as ‘responsibility’ for climate change, ‘capability’ to engage in abating it, and ‘potential’ or future contribution. The carbon space remaining at any time will depend on effective mitigation up till that time, and will condense if more stringent maxima are to be set; per capita this space becomes smaller with rising population. Sharing the carbon space in a fair way requires “convergence” of currently widely unequal per capita emissions. If the world is to stay within the carbon space consistent with <2° warming, then developed economies—the wealthiest sources of greenhouse gases should quickly and deeply engage in mitigation. Also, substantial mitigation is to take place in developing countries and that this will require substantial support to developing countries (financially, technologically). Changing development paths can make a major contribution to climate change mitigation; this requires changes in investment, production and consumption patterns. Green New Deals as proposed in the context of a widened response to the current economic crisis could become a first phase of a fundamental transition towards a decarbonised global economy worldwide. Concerns to do with equity as well as sustainability must be incorporated and integrated into coherent transitory strategies.     

Global financial crisis as a phenomenon of stock market overshooting

Inspired by Dornbusch’s model of exchange rate overshooting we develop a theory of stock market behaviour and its impact on the real economy. The idea is that stock market prices overshoot and undershoot their long-run equilibrium values which are determined by the development in the real economy. The overshooting is triggered primarily by a loose monetary policy. With our model we explain the genesis of the global financial crisis (GFC) 2008/2009 primarily as the result of a loose monetary policy in the USA. Following the overshooting and crash in the stock market the real economy dropped into a recession. After modelling the interaction of three markets with different speed of adjustment—money, stocks and goods—for a closed economy we expand it to an open economy and lastly study the spillovers of a financial market crisis between countries (from a large to a small country) by introducing the transmission channels of external trade or cross-border financial transactions. A long-lasting monetary easing as exhibiting by the Fed and the ECB since 2007 and 2008, respectively could—according to our model—generate another boom-bust cycle.     

The evolution of IT innovations in Swedish organizations: a Darwinian critique of ‘Lamarckian’ institutional economics

Fundamental correspondence and analogies between the evolution of technological and biological innovations call for an ‘innovation Darwinian’, ‘universal Darwinian’ or ‘memetic’ approach to understanding technology innovation. Neo-institutional, in fact pseudo-Lamarckian evolutionary economic theory, represented by North, Nelson and Winter, Freeman and others, is criticized. Pseudo-Lamarckian (“by volition”) evolution is explained and analyzed on Darwinian grounds (as intentional and artificial selection), as is Schumpeter’s definitions of creative and imitative innovation. Data from a web survey among Swedish public and private organizations in 1999 are studied. Data show that Darwinian co-evolutionary interaction between producers and users or clients provide essential conditions and stronger influence on creative IT innovations than both ‘Lamarckian’ strategies and competition.

Darwinism in economics: from analogy to ontology

Several social scientists, including ‘evolutionary economists’, have expressed scepticism of ‘biological analogies’ and rejected the application of ‘Darwinism’ to socio-economic evolution. Among this group, some have argued that self-organisation is an alternative to biological analogies or Darwinism. Others have seen ‘artificial selection’ as an alternative to natural selection in the socio-economic sphere. Another objection is that Darwinism excludes human intentionality. It is shown that all these objections to ‘biological analogies’ and ‘Darwinism’ are ungrounded. Furthermore, Darwinism includes a broad theoretical framework for the analysis of the evolution of all open, complex systems, including socio-economic systems. Finally and crucially, Darwinism also involves a basic philosophical commitment to detailed, cumulative, causal explanations. For these reasons, Darwinism is fully relevant for economics and an adequate evolutionary economics must be Darwinian, at least in these fundamental senses. However, this does not undermine the need for auxiliary theories and explanations in the economic domain.     

The role of controls in the international financial crisis

The impact of the great financial crisis that started in the United States with the implosion of “subprime” loans has drawn the public’s attention on one of the most innovative branches of financial market, the famous derivatives. The financial crisis and the involvement of major banking institutions thus call for some thinking about the concept of control in Italy and in a globalized world. In Italy, even though the scale of the risks connected with transactions in derivatives is limited, some banks may have damaged their reputations by pushing complex derivative products onto unwitting clients. Apart from reassurance and all kinds of justifications, and without arguing whether this was deliberate or not, the monetary authorities, Consob, and ABI have clearly reported the risk of a world financial crisis too late.

Spatial welfare economics versus ecological footprint: modeling agglomeration,externalities and trade

A welfare framework for the analysis of the spatial dimensions of sustainability is developed. It covers agglomeration effects, interregional trade, negative environmental externalities, and various land use categories. The model is used to compare rankings of spatial configurations according to evaluations based on social welfare and ecological footprint indicators. Five spatial configurations are considered for this purpose. The exercise is operationalized with the help of a two-region model of the economy, that is, in line with the ‘new economic geography.’ By generating a number of numerical ‘counter-examples,’ it is shown that the footprint method is inconsistent with an approach aimed at maximum social welfare. Unless environmental externalities are such a large problem that they overwhelm all other components of economic well-being, a ‘spatial welfare economic’ approach delivers totally different rankings of alternative land use configurations than the ecological footprint.      

中央银行在应对经济危机中的作用及局限——马克思的论述及其当代价值

马克思以英格兰银行为例,深入地研究了中央银行在应对资本主义经济危机中的作用,其主要思想可以概括为三个方面。一是中央银行具有国家货币管理机构和信用枢纽的双重性质,这决定了中央银行有应对经济危机的内在职能。二是存在两种货币危机,即货币资本运动引发的"特种危机"和"任何危机的一个阶段"。针对"特种危机",中央银行的应对措施既可能是通过增加货币供给缓解危机,也可能引发货币囤积、信用停滞、金融恐慌,从而使危机形势进一步恶化。三是中央银行无法消除后一种危机,这是由资本主义生产方式一般规律决定的。马克思关于中央银行在应对经济危机中的作用的思想在当代依然具有生命力,对我们理解经济危机、制定相关政策具有重要启示意义。     

Schumpeter’s ‘conduct model of the dynamic entrepreneur’: scope and distinctiveness

Schumpeter formulated a ‘conduct model’ of entrepreneurial behaviour. Received wisdom has emphasised the economic functions of Schumpeter’s entrepreneur, neglecting behavioural aspects. Schumpeter’s model is examined; it posits a continuum of behaviours which are ‘entrepreneurial’, that rely on socially situated, tacit knowledge and are expressions of conscious, subjective rationality. Schumpeter’s model excluded unconscious optimisation and decision rules derived from bounded rationality. Comparisons are drawn with modern neoclassical, Austrian, and the older behavioural characterisations of entrepreneurial behaviour. The newer ‘effectuation’ model of entrepreneurial behaviour is also contrasted with Schumpeter’s approach. We find, among other things, that modern Schumpeterian economics associated with Nelson and Winter is not a natural continuation of Schumpeter’s model. However, some developments in neo-Schumpeterian economics, including the effectuation model deriving from the older behavioural tradition, are congruent with both the original ‘conduct model’ and Schumpeter’s directions for further research.     

Evolutionary macroeconomics: a research agenda

In this article, the goal is to offer a new research agenda for evolutionary macroeconomics. The article commences with a broad review of the main ideas in the history of thought concerning the determinants of economic growth and an introduction to the evolutionary perspective. This is followed by a selective review of recent evolutionary approaches to macroeconomics. These approaches are found to be somewhat disconnected. It is argued that the ‘micro-meso-macro’ approach to economic evolution is capable of resolving this problem by offering an analytical framework in which macroeconomics can be built upon ‘meso-foundations’, not micro-foundations, as asserted in the mainstream. It is also stressed that the economic system and its components are complex adaptive systems and that this complexity must not be assumed away through the imposition of simplistic assumptions made for analytical convenience. It is explained that complex economic systems are, at base, energetic in character but differ from biological complex systems in the way that they collect, store and apply knowledge. It is argued that a focus upon stocks and flows of energy and knowledge in complex economic systems can yield an appropriate analytical framework for macroeconomics. It is explained how such a framework can be connected with key insights of both Schumpeter and Keynes that have been eliminated in modern macroeconomics. A macroeconomic framework that cannot be operationalized empirically is of limited usefulness so, in the last part of the article, an appropriate methodology for evolutionary macroeconomics is discussed.