The term structure of inflation expectations

We use information in the term structure of survey-based forecasts of inflation to estimate a factor hidden in the nominal yield curve. We construct a model that accommodates forecasts over multiple horizons from multiple surveys and Treasury real and nominal yields by allowing for differences between risk-neutral, subjective, and objective probability measures. We establish that model-based inflation expectations are driven by inflation, output, and one latent factor. We find that this factor affects inflation expectations at all horizons but has almost no effect on the nominal yields; that is, the latent factor is hidden. We show that this hidden factor is not related to either current and past inflation or the standard set of macro variables studied in the literature. Consistent with the theoretical property of a hidden factor, our model outperforms a standard macro-finance model in its forecasting of inflation and yields.     

Health, Government, and Irving Fisher

A bstract    This paper provides a few historical notes on government involvement in health, followed by a summary of the theoretical arguments that economists offer in its support. Irving Fisher's views and recommendations about health are examined in the light of today's perceptions concerning health, health economics, and health policy. The wide variety of roles that the U.S. and other governments currently play in health is reviewed, and the ability of economics to explain these roles is assessed. The consequences of government involvement for the health of populations, for expenditures on health care, and for political and social stability are examined. The paper concludes with an overview of new worldwide trends in health policy and some probable explanations for these trends.     

Searle's Monadological Construction of Social Reality

A BSTRACT . One aim of this paper is to make visible the connection between Searle's views on social reality and his general ontology, and at the same time to show that some peculiar features of his analysis of social reality are a natural outcome of his general ontology. The paper contains five sections. In the first Searle's naturalism is philosophically situated and its differentia specifica explained. Then, Searle's view that intentional states exist only in brains is presented. One might say that, according to Searle, each mind is, although caused by a material brain, a Leibnizian monad. This view is related to an important, but neglected, distinction that Searle himself has made between requirement conditions of satisfaction and required conditions of satisfaction. In the third section, it is pointed out that, necessarily, sometimes there has to exist some kind of relation of satisfaction between the two kinds of conditions of satisfaction. Searle, however, has never really discussed what this satisfaction relation may look like. The upshot of all the remarks is that, fourth, Searle's general ontology automatically implies an ontology of social reality according to which a social fact can only exist as a scattered aggregate whose items exist in the brains of the people who constitute it. Finally and fifth, I try to think with Searle against Searle. His monadological view of social reality cannot, Searle notwithstanding, be regarded as being close to the direct realism of common sense. Searle's realism is an indirect realism. However, if Searle's view that intentional states exist only in brains is rejected, then the rest of his ontology has features that may take us closer to a direct realism. Such a move, which in one respect takes us closer to common sense, takes us in another respect away from common sense. The title of the last section is "Social Reality and the Impossibility of Common Sense."     

Larry Moss and the Struggle Against Racism by the Whately Professors of Political Economy

In this note, we highlight an important consideration of Larry Moss's life's work, the continual struggle within economics against racism. Larry initiated and supported the symposium on eugenics published by the American Journal of Economics and Sociology in July 2005. He edited the volume Social Inequality, Analytical Egalitarianism and the March Toward Eugenic Explanations in the Social Sciences in August 2008. These constitute obvious signs of Larry's concern.
He conjectured that the Trinity College Dublin political economists who held the Whately professorship should be thought of as a school. Such a school was in fact identified in 1850 by an outsider who pointed to their shared opposition to racial explanations within an institutional setting. That shared opposition allowed them to speak against the narrow interests of the rulers of the country. Of course, other political economists of the time, Mill in particular, were also emphatic in their anti-racism. Thus, not only do we need to take up Larry's challenge to describe the Trinity College school but we must also seek its connections with the Scottish-English group of anti-racists.     

Searle and Collective Intentionality

A BSTRACT . Several key elements go into Searle's construction of social reality, namely, collective intentionality, constitutive rules, and status functions. But by far the most important and arguably contentious of these is collective intentionality. Searle postulates his notion of collective intentionality as a solution to a conflict between two of his own problematic claims: the irreducibility of collective intentions to singular intentions and what he sees as the requirements of methodological individualism. According to Searle, methodological individualism seems to require that we reduce collective intentionality to individual intentionality; however, this contradicts his claim that collective intentionality is irreducible to individual intentionality plus some mutual beliefs. I will show that at least part of what is really at stake here is Searle's internalism or, as he puts it, his "brain in a vat condition." My strategy will be to examine his internalism and show that Searle's account is far more radical than other internalists in that he extends internalism beyond its usual domain of the mental to incorporate social facts. While there are no knockdown arguments in favor of either internalism or externalism as normally construed in the philosophy of mind, I will show that Searle's account of collective intentionality introduces an element of privacy to social facts that denies us the public access to the conditions on the basis of which we normally take collective facts to obtain.     

Measuring the Extent of Structural Remedy in Section 7 Settlements: Was the US DOJ Successful in the 1990s?

This paper suggests an innovative measure of structural relief obtained in a typical Section 7 settlement. The fraction of competitive overlap subject to divestiture as a condition of the settlement is modeled as a function of merger-specific efficiencies, the proportion of the deal held “hostage” to antitrust review, the merger’s anticompetitive potential, and other factors. The model is applied to data on 86 recent Justice Department cases covering the period 1990–2003 and to the subsample of 1990s cases. All data are collected from publicly available documents only. The government is found to secure larger divestitures when the cost to the acquirer of delaying the settlement is high. The resulting estimates are used to predict several out-of-sample observations. I would like to thank the General Editor and two anonymous referees for many helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. The remaining errors are mine.