| on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Gerrard, Bill |
| Abstract: | In his recent paper in this journal, Bateman (2021) breaks with the “Standard View” of Ramsey’s influence on Keynes and argues that Ramsey’s pragmatist philosophical thought underpinned both Keynes’s acceptance of Ramsey’s subjective theory of probability, and Keynes’s adoption of a narrative theory of the role of confidence in economic fluctuations in the General Theory. In this paper it is argued that Bateman is right both in emphasizing the influence of Ramsey’s pragmatist philosophy on Keynes’s thought during the development of the General Theory and afterwards, and in arguing that the influence of Ramsey’s pragmatist philosophy partly explains Keynes’s emphasis on the importance of the state of confidence in Chapter 12 of the General Theory. However, it is argued that Ramsey’s pragmatist philosophy had a much greater influence on Keynes than acknowledged by Bateman. Furthermore, contra Bateman, Keynes’s move to a more pragmatist philosophical position does not imply that Keynes’s accepted Ramsey’s subjective theory of (measurable) probability. |
| Date: | 2022–07–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:astpj&r=hpe |
| By: | Cati, Matteo Maria |
| Abstract: | This paper reinterprets, differently from the existing literature, the relationship between law and economics not from the point of view of a lawyer-economist but rather from the point of view of an economist-mathematician, and it raises a methodological issue. To do so, some of the elements of the theory of sets are borrowed to argue that behavioral economics, its application to behavioral law and economics, and behavioral economists have generalized the pioneering work of Judge Calabresi, with reference to the famous books ‘Tragic Choices’ and ‘The Future of Law and Economics – Essays in Reform and Recollection’. Even if the usage of the theory of sets made in this paper is intuitive, some of its basics are reviewed in the appendix. |
| Date: | 2022–09–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:7xmtv&r=hpe |
| By: | Ahiakpor, James C.W. |
| Abstract: | Paganelli (2022) casts doubt on whether Adam Smith argues a “Four Stages” theory or a “stadial model” of socio-economic development; she dismisses the usefulness of cross-section data to evaluate Smith’s theory of the evolution of economies; and she misinterprets several texts in the Wealth of Nations. Disregarding more accurate interpreters of Smith, she invites us to inquire again into the causes of the wealth of nations since Smith, in her judgment, has failed in that effort. But Smith’s Wealth of Nations, carefully read, is an essential guide to policy formulation to promote the efficient development of economies. My comment clarifies. |
| Date: | 2022–07–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:tfsjm&r=hpe |
| By: | Guillaumont Patrick (FERDI - Fondation pour les Etudes et Recherches sur le Développement International) |
| Abstract: | Origin of the concept related to vulnerability. Before recently invading the vocabulary of the social sciences, the concept of resilience was a physical notion that referred to shock resistance. The use that is now made of it in the social sciences, particularly in economics, psychology, and ecology, remains in accordance with the initial definition: it is a capacity to resist shock or trauma. In the vocabulary of economics the concept of resilience has spread in the wake of that of vulnerability: vulnerability to a shock. |
| Date: | 2022–10–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03831673&r=hpe |
| By: | Blaber, Richard Michael |
| Abstract: | The so-called ‘Doomsday Argument’ of Carter, Nielsen, Leslie, Gott, and Bostrom is examined, in conjunction with attempts to refute it, in relation to the real-world prospects of catastrophic climate and environmental change, and loss of biodiversity. If the late James Lovelock was right in his hypothesis that the biosphere is protected by a ‘Gaia’ self-defence mechanism, humans may well face extinction precisely because they constitute a threat to the survival of the biosphere. |
| Date: | 2022–08–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:ne2z9&r=hpe |
| By: | Abel FRANCOIS (LEM, Université de Lille); Laurent WEILL (LaRGE Research Center, Université de Strasbourg); Nicolas EBER (LaRGE Research Center, Université de Strasbourg) |
| Abstract: | What makes economics students different? There is a long-lasting debate on this issue discussing the selection process and the indoctrination effect of economics program. We use the unique framework of the French higher education system in which students could freely choose their discipline to provide new evidence on this question. We conduct a survey on a large group of students from one of the largest French universities at the very beginning of their program before any potential indoctrination. We confirm the self-selection effect: students self-selecting in economics have more economic-oriented attitudes and values than other students. Besides, they also prefer the market price solution to a scarce resource allocation problem. We also find evidence of a parental heritage mediation on the relationship between the program and the students’ values and, to a less extent, a student working experience mediation. Finally, we do not find clear evidence for indoctrination related to economic teaching, but we detect a general indoctrination towards more government intervention in all undergraduate programs. |
| Keywords: | economists, economics education, values, selection, cultural transmission. |
| JEL: | A12 A13 A20 D10 I20 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lar:wpaper:2022-07&r=hpe |
| By: | Mathias Dewatripont; Jean Tirole |
| Abstract: | Scholars and civil society have argued that competition erodes supplier morality by offering consumer choice: "If I don't do it, someone else will". This paper establishes a robust irrelevance result, whereby intense market competition does not crowd out consequentialist ethics; it thereby issues a strong warning against the wholesale moral condemnation of markets and procompetitive institutions. Intense competition, while not altering the behavior of protable suppliers, however may reduce the standards of highly ethical suppliers or non-profits, raising the potential need to protect the latter in the marketplace. |
| Keywords: | Competition, consequentialism, replacement effect, non-profits,corporate social responsability, strategic complementarities, race to the ethical bottom. |
| Date: | 2022–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/351283&r=hpe |
| By: | Nikolay Nenovsky (LEFMI - Laboratoire d’Économie, Finance, Management et Innovation - UR UPJV 4286 - UPJV - Université de Picardie Jules Verne); Dominique Torre (GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) - COMUE UCA - COMUE Université Côte d'Azur (2015-2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UCA - Université Côte d'Azur) |
| Abstract: | In summer 1931, the Austro-German banking crisis propagated in Romania and Bulgaria. In the Romanian case, the management of the crisis confronted three types of protagonists-politics, bankers and central bankers-and positions about the relevant attitude to adopt, in to avoid or not the Marmorosch Blank Bank bankruptcy. In Bulgaria, the management of the crisis was more consensual. The intervention of the Bulgarian National Bank allowed to refund the more important banks, while other 34 were declared bankrupt and smaller ones silently disappear. One of the largest banks in Bulgaria, Credit Bank, has been rescued. Archive documents, reports of participants and comments from contemporaries, emphasize the different conceptions of the function of lender of last resort by the different 1 The authors would like to acknowledge Hans-Michael Trautwein whose comments and remarks have helped to improve the quality of this text. They are also indebted to Valentin Fuscan and to the participants of the Conference |
| Keywords: | G33,lender of last resort,Balkan economic history,banking crisis,twin crises |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03815692&r=hpe |
| By: | Burton-Chellew, Maxwell |
| Abstract: | Do economic games show evidence of altruistic or self-interested motivations in humans? A huge body of empirical work has found contrasting results. While participants routinely make costly decisions that help strangers, consistent with an evolutionary novel form of altruism, participants also typically learn to pay fewer costs with experience, consistent with self-interested individuals adapting to an unfamiliar environment. Key to resolving this debate is explaining the famous ‘restart effect’, a puzzling enigma whereby failing cooperation in experiments can be briefly rescued by a surprise restart. Here we show that this canonical result, which is often assumed to be evidence of altruism, can be entirely removed, replaced, or even reversed depending on experimental design. Specifically, the restart effect (1) disappears when reputational benefits to cooperation are fully removed, consistent with strategically motivated, self-interested, cooperation; (2) can be replaced by an irrational restart that benefits no-one if individuals are grouped with computers, consistent with confusion; and (3) can even be reversed, so that contributions gradually increase rather than decrease towards the end of the game, if the contributions of the computerized groupmates are programmed accordingly. These results show that the restart effect is driven by a mixture of self-interested and irrational beliefs about the game’s payoffs and not altruism. Consequently, our results suggest that economic games have often been measuring self-interested but confused behaviours and reject the idea that conventional theories of evolution cannot explain the results of economic games. |
| Date: | 2022–06–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:hgznu&r=hpe |
| By: | Michèle Tertilt; Matthias Doepke; Anne Hannusch; Laura Montenbruck |
| Abstract: | Two centuries ago, in most countries around the world, women were unable to vote, had no say over their own children or property, and could not obtain a divorce. Women have gradually gained rights in many areas of life, and this legal expansion has been closely intertwined with economic development. We aim to understand the drivers behind these reforms. To this end, we distinguish between four types of women’s rights—economic, political, labor, and body—and document their evolution over the past 50 years across countries. We summarize the political-economy mechanisms that link economic development to changes in women's rights and show empirically that these mechanisms account for a large share of the variation in women's rights across countries and over time. |
| JEL: | D13 D72 J12 J16 N3 N40 O10 P0 |
| Date: | 2022–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30617&r=hpe |
| the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand. |