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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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