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Subject:
From:
Thomas Humphrey <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 24 Feb 2014 15:59:34 -0500
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1. James Ahiakpor claims that Keynes bamboozled and hoodwinked  
generations of economists into believing that Wicksell's version of  
the cumulative process (CP) was definitive. In so doing, James both  
overstates Keynes's persuasiveness and understates economists'  
intelligence. The idea that Keynes could fool so many economists for  
so long is ludicrous. After all, economists, who famously preach the  
gospel of rationality, must be given credit for being perceptive and  
rational themselves. If the economics professions christens the CP  
model with Wicksell's name, it must be because the profession finds  
his statement indeed definitive, not because Keynes fooled them into  
believing so.

2. James quotes Marshall's own statement of the CP analysis as being  
superior to Wicksell's. In fact, it is inferior. It makes no mention  
either of the natural rate, or of a natural rate-market (discount)  
rate differential. True, it does mention the word "cumulative." But it  
fails to explain the forces that close the two-rate differential and  
bring the CP to a stop. Being deficient of these elements, Marshall's  
account could hardly put CP analysis on the map. Wicksell's could.

3. James evidently thinks that the natural recuperative powers of a  
free-market economy are themselves capable of maintaining the economy  
in equilibrium, or of quickly restoring it to equilibrium upon a  
disturbance. No help is needed from the central bank or from the  
Treasury. Maybe so, but some of us think that those self-equilibrating  
properties occasionally take too long to operate or to manifest  
themselves. In such cases, it is widely accepted that monetary and  
fiscal policies can help. Are all the textbooks wrong to contain  
chapters on monetary and fiscal policy?

4. I don't understand James's criticisms of Stigler's Law.

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