The Management of Market-Oriented Economies: A Comparative Perspective

The 1981 reform of the Chilean pension system was revolutionary at its time. It was the first instance of a mature public Pay-As-You-Go social security system being converted into a mandatory defined contribution system managed by the private sector. This paper contends that a unique confluence of events were responsible for this change. The rise of a dictatorship in Chile, a struggling public retirement system, and a cadre of Chicago oriented economists determined to make Chile a model free market neoliberal economy. This was later followed by the Washington Consensus and the promotion of Chilean reform by the World Bank. This paper analyzes the Chilean reform and its subsequent development; evaluating it on both efficiency and equity grounds. While the evidence for efficiency gains is mixed there is little doubt that equity has suffered under the new system. Nevertheless, it continues to evolve and equity concerns are increasingly being addressed.     

Editor's Feature

This study makes a number of observations about the way in which the current crisis in particular, but economic crises more generally, are reported upon by the media. Considering terminology used to describe the financial crisis of 2007/2008 by employing a dataset of 956 articles from The Economist, we study what terms are used, why, and how they evolve. We consider how the frequency of negative emotional terms and the frequency of negative economic terms increase from the period of no-crisis to the period of the crisis. Increasing incidence lowers levels of consumer confidence. We predict that as the crisis evolves the nature of the terminology used to describe it will change, and that the present crisis will receive a special name, like the "Great Depression" of the 1930s. We explore a number of possibilities, and conclude that the preferred name will be the "Credit Crunch."     

Alvin Harvey Hansen: Economic Growth and a More Perfect Society: The Economist's Role in Defining the Stagnation Thesis and in Popularizing Keynesianism

Abstract . Alvin H. Hansen was one of the leading American economists from the 1930s to the 1960s. He was largely responsible for the popularization of Keynesian economics in the United States and Canada. He was responsible for the development of the secular stagnation thesis which explained 19th century American economic growth in terms of population growth, the frontier, and technology. The diminishing of these factors explained the decrease in the American economic growth rate in the 20th Century. Hansen's policy conclusions to prevent stagnation were Keynesian in nature and, as a result, Hansen was an early advocate of active fiscal policy in the United States. He differed with Terborgh.     

Samuelson's Principles of Economics in 1948 and 1973

This article differs from those usually found in this journal, but it was felt that it would be of interest to most college teachers of economics. Professor Brazelton has systematically compared early and recent editions of Paul Samuelson's famous textbook, noting how Samuelson has substantially changed over a period of 25 years. Because Samuelson's text has had a profound influence on the content and approach to the introductory course, the changes that have occurred in that book should be noted by everyone responsible for teaching principles of economics.