nep-hpe  New Economics Papers on History and Philosophy of Economics
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Issue of 2019‒09‒23
seventeen papers chosen by
Erik Thomson (University of Manitoba)
 http://ep.repec.org/pth72

[Selections by Humberto Barreto for SHOE list.]

 1. The Relation Between Law and Morality
   Emima Alistar
 2. Pluralism and political economy in interwar britain: G.D.H. Cole on
     economic planning
   Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak
 3. How economics became an interventionist science (and how it ceased to
     be)
   Rafael Galvão de Almeida
 4. DSGE Models and the Lucas Critique. A Historical Appraisal.
   Francesco Sergi
 5. Doing Bad to Look Good: Negative Consequences of Image Concerns on
     Pro-social Behavior
   Ivan Soraperra; Anton Suvorov; Jeroen van de Ven; Marie Villeval
 6. The Evolutionary Stability of Optimism, Pessimism, and Complete
     Ignorance
   Burkhard C. Schipper
 7. Reconsidering the Role of Farmer Politics in Swedish Democratization
   Bengtsson, Erik
14. The economy of well-being: Creating opportunities for people’s
     well-being and economic growth
   Ana Llena-Nozal; Neil Martin; Fabrice Murtin
16. Uneven and combined development as a methodological tool: a dynamic
     approach after a dialogue between Kondratiev and Trotsky
   Eduardo da Motta e Albuquerque
17. Do we really know that U.S. monetary policy was destabilizing in the
     1970s?
   Haque, Qazi; Groshenny, Nicolas; Weder, Mark

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 1. The Relation Between Law and Morality
   Emima Alistar ("Dimitrie Cantemir" Christian University, Bucharest,
    Romania)
  Most specialists agree that between law and morals there is a close
  connection, because the moral principles of good, justice and truth are
  appliances and promoted by the rule of law, even if the right and the moral
  retains its identity. However, over time, their views on the problem of
  knowing what is the relationship between law and morals were contradictory.
  Between law and morals, I consider that there is only an apparent
  contradiction, because the two concepts are complementary. The right would
  seem a trap for lawyers in that could make them to resist the temptation to
  not see beyond the letter of the law, given that the need for law
  enforcement and understanding of its spirit. A true man of law must not only
  know the law but also to look beyond it and realize that the main attraction
  of the moral law.
   Keywords: : law, moral, philosophy, religion, rationality
   Date: 2019–04
 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:cpaper:53eh&r=hpe

 2. Pluralism and political economy in interwar britain: G.D.H. Cole on
     economic planning
   Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak (Cedeplar-UFMG)
  The political philosophy of pluralism enjoyed great currency in Britain
  during the early decades of the 20th century, as an alternative to the
  extreme poles of individualism and collectivism. Positing the existence of
  multiple types of political allegiances in any society, pluralism questioned
  the notion of state sovereignty by advocating that other forms of
  associational life should be recognized as legitimate sources of political
  power. In an age of increasing state intervention in economic affairs,
  however, this fragmentation of power concerned political economy as well.
  The paper explores the interplay between political claims for a weaker state
  and economic claims for a stronger state through a case study of G.D.H.
  Cole, the foremost British advocate of guild socialism and a prolific writer
  on economic planning. While defending the cause of democratic industrial
  self-management, Cole envisioned stateled economic planning as a
  transitional device for developing the communal loyalties necessary for a
  well-functioning socialist economy.
   Keywords: pluralism, state sovereignty, economic planning, G.D.H. Cole,
    democracy.
   Date: 2019–09
 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td609&r=hpe

 3. How economics became an interventionist science (and how it ceased to
     be)
   Rafael Galvão de Almeida (Cedeplar-UFMG)
  The relationship between economics and State has been intimate ever since
  classical political economy. However, perceptions about the role and size of
  the State have changed according to the epoch. In other words, economic
  theory assigned a bigger or a smaller role to the State depending on the
  political situation. This article analyses the change in economists and
  economic theory’s perception of the role of the State in the economy, from
  favoring an interventionist approach from the 1930s to the 1960s, and a
  liberal approach from 1970s, in order to understand the factors behind this
  change.
   Keywords: theory of economic policy; economic planning; liberalism;
    neoliberalism
   Date: 2019–09
 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td612&r=hpe

 4. DSGE Models and the Lucas Critique. A Historical Appraisal.
   Francesco Sergi (University of the West of England, Bristol)
  This contribution to the history of the economic thought aims at describing
  how “Econometric Policy Evaluation: A Critique” (Lucas, 1976) has been
  interpreted through four decades of debates. This historical appraisal
  clarifies how Lucas’s argument is currently understood and discussed within
  the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) approach. The article
  illustrates how two opposite interpretations of the Lucas Critique arose in
  the early 1980s. On the one hand, a “theoretical interpretation” has been
  championed by the real business cycle (RBC) approach; on the other hand, an
  “empirical interpretation” has been advocated by Keynesians. Both
  interpretations can be understood as addressing a common question: Do
  microfoundations imply parameters’ stability? Following the RBC theoretical
  interpretation, microfoundations do imply stability; conversely, for
  Keynesians, parameters’ stability (or instability) should be supported by
  econometric evidence rather than theoretical considerations. Furthermore,
  the article argues that the DSGE approach represent a fragile compromise
  between these two opposite interpretations of Lucas (1976). This is
  especially true for the recent literature criticizing the DSGE models for
  being vulnerable to the Lucas Critique.
   Date: 2018–01–06
 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwe:wpaper:20181806&r=hpe

 5. Doing Bad to Look Good: Negative Consequences of Image Concerns on
     Pro-social Behavior
   Ivan Soraperra (CREED - Center for Research in Experimental Economics and
    Political Decision Making - UvA - Universiteit van Amsterdam); Anton
    Suvorov (National Research University Higher School of Economics
    [Moscow]); Jeroen van de Ven (ASE - Amsterdam School of Economics - UvA -
    University of Amsterdam [Amsterdam]); Marie Villeval (GATE Lyon
    Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - ENS Lyon -
    École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL
    - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université
    Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - Université de Lyon - CNRS - Centre National
    de la Recherche Scientifique)
  Several studies show that social image concerns stimulate pro-social
  behavior. We study a setting in which there is uncertainty about which
  action is pro-social. Then, the quest for a better social image can
  potentially conflict with genuinely pro-social behavior. This conflict can
  induce \bad" behavior, where people lower both their own and others'
  material payoffs to preserve a good image. This setting is relevant for
  various types of credence goods. For example, recommending an inexpensive
  treatment reduces the expert's profits and may not satisfy the true needs of
  the client, but is generally good for the expert's image (as it signals the
  lack of greed). We test experimentally if people start to act bad in order
  to look good. We find that people care about their social image, but social
  image concerns alone do not induce them to act bad. That is, without future
  interactions, social image concerns do not lead to bad behavior. However,
  with future interactions, where building up a good image has instrumental
  value (reputational concerns), we do find evidence of bad behavior in the
  short run to secure higher earnings in the long run.
   Keywords: Social image,credence goods,prosocial behavior,reputation
   Date: 2019
 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02285897&r=hpe

 6. The Evolutionary Stability of Optimism, Pessimism, and Complete
     Ignorance
   Burkhard C. Schipper (Department of Economics, University of California
    Davis)
  We provide an evolutionary foundation to evidence that in some situations
  humans maintain either optimistic or pessimistic attitudes towards
  uncertainty and are ignorant to relevant aspects of the environment. Players
  in strategic games face Knightian uncertainty about opponents' actions and
  maximize individually their Choquet expected utility with respect to
  neo-additive capacities (Chateauneuf, Eichberger, and Grant, 2007) allowing
  for both an optimistic or pessimistic attitude towards uncertainty as well
  as ignorance to strategic dependencies. An optimist (resp. pessimist)
  overweights good (resp. bad) outcomes. A complete ignorant never reacts to
  opponents' changes of actions. With qualifications we show that in finite
  populations optimistic (resp. pessimistic) complete ignorance is
  evolutionary stable and yields a strategic advantage in submodular (resp.
  supermodular) games with aggregate externalities. Moreover, this
  evolutionary stable preference leads to Walrasian behavior in these classes
  of games.
   JEL: C72 C73 D01 D43 D81 L13
   Keywords: ambiguity, Knightian uncertainty, Choquet expected utility,
    neo-additive capacity, Hurwicz criterion, Maximin, Minimax,
    supermodularity, aggregative games, monotone comparative statics, playing
    the field, evolution of preferences
   Date: 2019–09–17
 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cda:wpaper:334&r=hpe

 7. Reconsidering the Role of Farmer Politics in Swedish Democratization
   Bengtsson, Erik (Department of Economic History, Lund University)
  In discussions of Scandinavian democratization, it is commonplace to argue
  that long-standing farmer representation in parliament and a lack of
  feudalism encouraged a democratic-participatory civic culture within the
  peasant farmer class – or perhaps in the population as a whole. The present
  essay questions this interpretation in the Swedish case. It centers on a
  re-interpretation of farmer politics at the national level from a
  two-chamber system of representation after the 1866-67 reform to the
  alliance between the farmers’ party and Social Democracy in 1933 and offers
  a new analytical account of the way that one class’s attitude to democratic
  inclusion can change over time, owing to changed political and economic
  relationships to other classes. I show that Swedish farmers did not organize
  themselves independently of nobles and land-owners until the 1920s, and that
  they did not play the role of an independent pro-democratic force. On the
  contrary, the broad-based organizations of farmers in the 1920s and 1930s,
  with their democratic, participatory culture, appear to have been heavily
  influenced by the political culture of liberals and the labor movement,
  which in democratic society opened the door to a re-shaping of Swedish
  farmer politics that abandoned the old (subservient) alliance with estate
  owners. It was not democratic farmers who gave rise to Social Democracy –
  rather, it was Social Democracy that caused farmers to become democratic.
  Understanding farmer politics correctly also opens up a new understanding of
  the determinants of Swedish democratization.
   JEL: H10 N53 N54 P16
   Keywords: democratization; agrarian politics; Sweden; class structure;
    farmers; Sonderweg
   Date: 2019–08–21
 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:luekhi:0205&r=hpe


14. The economy of well-being: Creating opportunities for people’s
     well-being and economic growth
   Ana Llena-Nozal (OECD); Neil Martin (OECD); Fabrice Murtin (OECD)
  As well-being has matured as a statistical and measurement agenda, it has
  become increasingly relevant as a “compass” for policy, with a growing
  number of countries using well-being metrics to guide decision-making and
  inform budgetary processes. One remaining challenge has consisted in
  providing policy-makers with a better understanding of the linkages between
  the drivers of well-being and economic growth. This paper develops the
  concept of an “Economy of Well-being” as a basis for highlighting these
  linkages and showing how policy can most effectively leverage them. The
  paper defines an economy of well-being around the idea of a “virtuous
  circle” in which individual well-being and long-term economic growth are
  mutually reinforcing. It also explores the characteristics of an economy of
  well-being and the conditions under which it can be sustained. Secondly,
  based on a survey of existing empirical evidence, the paper contributes to
  outline how economies of well-being can be built. It provides analysis of
  several important channels through which economic growth and well-being
  support and reinforce one another, focusing on the multidimensional impact
  of policies in four areas that research has shown to be important for
  well-being: Education and Skills; Health; Social Protection and
  Redistribution; and Gender Equality.
   JEL: D61 I14 I24 I38
   Keywords: equality of opportunity, multidimensional analysis, policy
    linkages, social investment, well-being
   Date: 2019–09–20
 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:stdaaa:2019/02-en&r=hpe


16. Uneven and combined development as a methodological tool: a dynamic
     approach after a dialogue between Kondratiev and Trotsky
   Eduardo da Motta e Albuquerque (Cedeplar-UFMG)
  This paper suggests that Trotsky's elaboration on uneven and combined
  development can be a methodological tool to understand contemporary
  capitalism. A dialogue with Kondratiev is a starting point, as each new
  technological revolution creates a new level of unevenness. Technological
  revolutions also transform channels through which combination takes place.
  As both unevenness and combination change over time, it is possible to have
  a dynamic approach to the process of uneven and combined development. This
  dynamic approach is a methodology to investigate how new amalgams between
  modern and archaic forms shape varieties of capitalism at the periphery and
  transform the global dynamic of capitalism.
   Keywords: technological revolutions; center-periphery divide; varieties of
    capitalism; expansion of global capitalism
   Date: 2019–09
 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td610&r=hpe

17. Do we really know that U.S. monetary policy was destabilizing in the
     1970s?
   Haque, Qazi; Groshenny, Nicolas; Weder, Mark
  The paper re-examines whether the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy was a
  source of instability during the Great Inflation by estimating a
  sticky-price model with positive trend inflation, commodity price shocks and
  sluggish real wages. Our estimation provides empirical evidence for
  substantial wage-rigidity and finds that the Federal Reserve responded
  aggressively to inflation but negligibly to the output gap. In the presence
  of non-trivial real imperfections and well-identified commodity
  price-shocks, U.S. data prefers a determinate version of the New Keynesian
  model: monetary policy-induced indeterminacy and sunspots were not causes of
  macroeconomic instability during the pre-Volcker era.
   JEL: E32 E52 E58
   Date: 2019–09–11
 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bof:bofrdp:2019_020&r=hpe

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