Never-Before-Published Hannah Arendt on What Freedom and Revolution Really Mean (Literary Hub)
Boom and Gloom (Claremont Review of Books)
The Bitcoin Law: Counterfeit Free Choice in Currency (Alt-M)
Huge Diego Rivera mural about to go up at SFMOMA (The Mercury News)
NOL has revisited works of Diego Rivera here (this particular mural, aka Pan American Unity) and here (another mural, Frozen Assets – Fondos Congelados – from 1931).
This article is part of a series on bitcoin (and bitcoiners’) arguments about money and particularly financial history. See also:
(1) ‘On Bitcoiners’ Many Troubles’, Joakim Book, NotesOnLiberty (2019-08-13)
(2): ‘Rothbard’s First Impressions on Free Banking in Scotland Were Correct’, Joakim Book, AIER (2019-08-18)
(4): ‘Bitcoin’s Fixed Money Supply Is a Weakness’, Joakim Book, AIER (2019-08-28)
The great monetary economist and early Nobel Laureate John Hicks used to say that monetary theory “belongs to monetary history, in a way that economic theory does not always belong to economic history.”
Today I’m going to illustrate exactly that with respect to the Bitcoiner’s (mistaken) progressivism in another episode of Financial History to the Rescue.
In the game of monetary competition, the Bitcoin maximalists posit, the “harder” money always wins out. I’ve been uneasy with the statement as it (1) isn’t clear to me what “harder” money (or money’s “hardness”) really means, and (2) probably isn’t historically true. So we end up with something that’s false, or vague – or both! Clearly unsatisfactory. As I pointed out in my overview post to this series, financial and monetary history is almost always more nuanced than what such simple generalizations allow.
Luckily enough, Saifedean Ammous at the Soho Forum debate last week, did inadvertently provide me with a useable definition – and I intend to use it to debunk the idea that money’s history is one of increased hardness. Repeatedly Saif claimed that monetary history, before the advent of central banking, showed us that the harder money always won out: whenever two monetary networks clashed (shells and silver; wampum and gold) the “harder” money won. The obvious implication is that Bitcoin, being the “hardest” money, will similarly win out. Right off the bat, there’s some serious problems here.
First, it’s not altogether clear that such “This time is not different” arguments apply. Yes, economic history teaches us not to discount what seems to be long-standing or universally applicable phenomena – but also to take notice of the institutional setting in which they happen. Outcomes specific to, say, the Classical Gold Standard, rarely generalize into our hyper-modern financial markets with inflation targeting central banks.
Second, over the twentieth century we literally went from the hardest money (gold) to the “softest” money (central bank-created fiat paper money). Sure, you can argue that this was unfair or imposed upon us from above by wars and welfare states, but discounting it as irrelevant strikes me as overly cherry-picking. If the hardest money “lost” before, what makes you think that your new fancy money will win out this time around?
Then Saif returned to the topic of hardness and defined it as a money whose supply is “the hardest to increase.” The hardness of Cowrie shells or Wampum or gold or Whale’s teeth or Rai stones or the other early money that Jevons listed and discussed in 1875, all rely on a difficult, costly and inconvenient process of extraction and/or production. Getting Rai stones from far-away islands, stringing beads together into extended strips of Wampum, or digging up gold from inaccessible patches of the earth were all cumbersome and expensive processes. In Saif’s mind, this contributed to their hardness. Their money stock were simply difficult to expand – in jargon: their money supplies were inelastic.
The early 1600s Dutch Republic struggled with another problem. As the main financial centre of the time, countless hard money (coins) from all over the world were used in Amsterdam. Estimates say over a thousand legally recognized kinds of coins – and presumably even more unrecognized coins. A prime setting for monetary competition: they were all pretty hard (Saif’s definition: difficult and costly to expand) commodity moneys, of various quality, origin, and recognition in trade.
Another feature of 17th century Amsterdam was the international environment of Bills of Exchange (circulating private credit notes). Briefly summarized, merchants across the world traded debts on Amsterdam bankers or traders, and rather than holding and transporting bullion across the world, they transported the debt of the most trustworthy and reliable Dutch financiers. As all such bills required a settlement medium in Amsterdam, trade on thin margins was very sensitive to fluctuations in prices between the commodity moneys in which their bills were denominated – and very sensitive to debasements and re-defined values by various European proto-governments.
In 1609, the City of Amsterdam created the Wisselbank (initially a 100% reserve exchange bank) specifically tasked with standardizing the coinage and to insulate the bill market from currency fluctuations (through providing a ‘neutral’ unit of account for bills settlement). The Bank accepted deposit of whatever coin at the legally recognized rate (unrecognized at metal content) and delivered ”high-quality Dutch trade coins” upon withdrawal. To fund itself, it added a withdrawal fee of 1.5%, but no internal transfer fee, which made holding currency at the Bank very expensive in the short-term, but very cheap in the long-term. Merchants also avoided much of the withdrawal fee by simply trading balances with one another rather than depositing and withdrawing trade coins. In return for this cost-saving, sellers of bank balances would share a portion of the funds saved with the buyer in what’s known as the “Agio”: the price of Bank money in terms of current money outside the Bank’s accounts. This price would fluctuate like any other price on the market and would indicate the stance of liquidity demands.
In a classic example of Alchian’s monetary competition by transaction costs, Dutch merchants and financiers “outsourced” the screening and assaying of unfamiliar coins. They preferred settling their transactions through the (cheaper) medium that was deposits in the Bank.
And it gets worse for the bitcoiner’s story. In 1683, the Bank coupled its deposits with specific receipts for withdrawal; to gain access to coins, one was required both to hold balances and to purchase a receipt issued by the Bank (they also changed the pricing). Roughly speaking, the Bank became a fractional reserved bank (with capped withdrawals) overnight – and contrary to what the hardness argument would imply, the agio on Bank money rose to above par!
Two monetary historians, Stephen Quinn and William Roberds, summarize one of their many writings on the Wisselbank as follows:
“imaginary money on the Bank’s ledgers succeeded because it was more reliable than the real stuff. […] The most liquid asset in the economy was no longer coin, but a sort of ‘virtual banknote’ residing in Bank of Amsterdam accounts.”
Further,
“the evolution of the agio shows that the market valued irredeemable balances as if they were closely tied to backing trade coins” (my emphasis)
The story of the Amsterdam Wisselbank’s monetary experiments and innovations show us that monetary adaption relies on many more dimensions than “hardness.” Sometimes “hard” money is defeated by “soft” money, since the softer money brought other benefits to its users – in this case a cheap and reliable settling medium.
The lesson for bitcoin-vs-fiat-vs-FinTech is pretty clear: hard money doesn’t always “win”; and sometimes “soft” money can better serve the needs of consumers in a free market.
This article is part of a series on bitcoin (and bitcoiners’) arguments about money and particularly financial history. See also:
(2): ‘Rothbard’s First Impressions on Free Banking in Scotland Were Correct’, Joakim Book, AIER (2019-08-18)
(3): ‘The Harder Money Wins Out’, Joakim Book, NotesOnLiberty (2019-08-19)
(4): ‘Bitcoin’s Fixed Money Supply Is a Weakness’, Joakim Book, AIER (2019-08-28)
It is unfair to expect technologically savvy bitcoiners to also be apt and well-read monetary economists. By no means do the skills and experiences of either have to overlap. Through the rise of Bitcoin with its explicit central banking challenge and attempt to become a worldwide currency, the subject matter of the two groups has unexpectedly clashed. All arguments that support or attack bitcoin is a head-first dive into monetary economics – sometimes exhuming centuries-long disputes among monetary economists and often blatantly distorts and overlooks money and banking arrangements of the past.
We can’t have that, can we.
One of the most delightful events in the libertarian world is the monthly Soho Forum debate run by Gene Epstein. Yesterday’s splendid showdown between Profs. George Selgin and Saifedean Ammous on the suitability of Bitcoin as a Medium of Exchange is bound to get some serious traction once the recording is on available only – look out for that!
A great debate for anyone interesting in monetary system and monetary economics more generally, this was probably the best and most entertaining of many Soho Forum debates I’ve watched. It’s a good format that forces speakers to engage and respond to one another’s arguments, which makes a two-hour conversation on something as technical and intricate as Bitcoin’s monetary role an absolute delight; even those of us deep into this nerdy rabbit hole can learn a lot and walk away with a trove of inspiration.
Channeling that inspiration into long-form, multi-part reviews of the relevant financial and monetary history is exactly what I’m going to do!
One question I often get regarding my research interests (banks, money and financial markets in the past) is the mildly offensive but absolutely correct question to ask: who the f— cares?! Bitcoin and the question of monetary regimes are perfect examples that make financial history relevant: the rise of crypto questions the fundamentals of monetary systems, systems that very rarely change. Naturally, the financial historian has an edge here, having a lot more nuanced knowledge about past monetary and financial arrangements and their operations. History becomes our (only) laboratory, to which the financial historian typically has a lot to contribute.
Moreso than other topics, fundamental questions of monetary regimes are explicitly pitted against other possible regimes – by their nature comparative and always informed by historical experience. It takes about two-and-a-half sentences before debates over money invoke some reference to financial and monetary history – as they should, since they illustrate how some (aspect of) a different monetary regime worked. Frustratingly enough, there’s a good chance that the speaker has mindboggingly little idea of what s/he’s talking about!
That’s where I like to come in. To a roomful of aspiring monetary economists at Cato’s Alternative Money University in July this year, Randall Wright‘s response to why he does monetary economics at all (“to debunk all this B-S!”) generalizes pretty well.
I’m gonna use this post to review some of the mistakes Saifedean made yesterday – and use it going forward as an updated collection of future posts on the topic, especially as I go through Saif’s promising book, The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking. The aim here is to respectfully clarify the parts of the Bitcoin arguments where I’d like to think that I have a comparative advantage – financial and monetary history – and to better develop my understanding of the monetary theory involved.
Here are some points that came up yesterday:
This progressively upward story is pretty compelling: better money overtake worse money until one major player unfairly took over gold – the then-best money – replacing it with something inferior that the Davids of the crypto world now intents to reverse. […] Too bad that it’s not true. Virtually every step of this monetary account is mistaken.
Some additional housekeeping from yesterday:
Bear with me over the next few months, as I make my way through Saif’s book and engage with these thrilling debates. Feel free to interrupt/comment on Twitter at any point if you think I’ve made a factual/empirical error, error in reasoning or in relevance to Bitcoin.
And yes, keep in mind that this is a respectful inquiry into fascinating topics with people who agree on like 92% of everything. Feel free to call me out for unnecessarily snarky and offensive thing as we go along – and welcome to the party!
In the world of cryptocurrencies there’s a hype for a certain kind of monetary history that inevitably leads to bitcoin, thereby informing its users and zealots about the immense value of their endeavor. Don’t get me wrong – I laud most of what they do, and I’m much looking forward to see where it’s all going. But their (mis)use of monetary history is quite appalling for somebody who studies these things, especially since this particular story is so crucial and fundamental to what bitcoiners see themselves advancing.
Let me sketch out some problems. Their history of money (see also Nick Szabo’s lengthy piece for a more eloquent example) goes something like this:
This progressively upward story is pretty compelling: better money overtake worse money until one major player unfairly took over gold – the then-best money – replacing it with something inferior that the Davids of the crypto world now intents to reverse. I’m sure it’ll make a good movie one day. Too bad that it’s not true.
Virtually every step of this monetary account is mistaken.
First, governments have almost always defined – or at least seriously impacted – decisions over what money individuals have chosen to use. From the early Mesopotamian civilizations to the late-19th century Gold Standard that bitcoin is often compared to, various rulers were pretty much always involved. Angela Redish writes in her 1993 article ‘Anchors Aweigh’ that
under commodity standards – in practice – the [monetary] anchor was put in place not by fundamental natural forces but by decisions of human monetary authorities. (p. 778)
Governments ensured the push to gold in the 18th and 19th centuries, not a spontaneous order-decentralized Mengerian process: Newton’s infamous underpricing of silver in 1717, initiating what’s known as the silver shortage; Gold standard laws passed by states; large-scale network effects in play in trading with merchants in those countries.
Secondly, Bills of Exchange – ie privately issued debt – rather than precious metals were the dominant international money, say 1500-1900. Aha! says the bitcoiner, but they were denominated in gold or at least backed by gold and so the precious metal were in fact the real outside money. Nope. Most bills of exchange were denominated in the major unit of account of the dominant financial centre at the time (from the 15th to the 20th century progressively Bruges, Antwerp, Amsterdam and London), quite often using a ghost money, in reference to the purchasing power of a centuries-old coins or social convention.
Thirdly, monetary history is, contrary to what bitcoiners might believe, not a steady upward race towards harder and harder money. Monetary functions such as the medium of exchange and the unit of account were seldomly even united into one asset such as we tend to think about money today (one asset, serving 2, 3 or 4 functions). Rather, many different currencies and units of accounts co-emerged, evolved, overtook one another in response to shifting market prices or government interventions, declined, disappeared or re-appeared as ghost money. My favorite – albeit biased – example is early modern Sweden with its copper-based trimetallism (copper, silver, gold), varying units of account, seven strictly separated coins and notes (for instance, both Stockholms Banco and what would later develop into Sveriges Riksbank, had to keep accounts in all seven currencies, repaying deposits in the same currency as deposited), as well as governmental price controls for exports of copper, partly counteracting effects of Gresham’s Law.
The two major mistakes I believe bitcoiners make in their selective reading of monetary theory and history are:
1) they don’t seem to understand that money supply is not the only dimension that money users value. The hardness of money – ie, the difficulty to increase supply – as an anchoring of price levels or stability in purchasing power is one dimension of money’s quality – far from the only. Reliability, user experience (not you tech nerds, but normal people), storage and transaction costs, default-risk as well as network effects might be valued higher from the consumers’ point of view.
2) Network effects: paradoxically, bitcoiners in quibbling with proponents of other coins (Ethereum, ripple, dash etc) seem very well aware of the network effects operating in money (see ‘winner-takes-it-all’ arguments). Unfortunately, they seem to opportunistically ignore the switching costs involved for both individuals and the monetary system as a whole. Even if bitcoin were a better money that could service one or more of the function of money better than our current monetary system, that would not be enough in the presence of pretty large switching costs. Bitcoin as money has to be sufficiently superior to warrant a switch.
Bitcoiners love to invoke history of money and its progression from inferior to superior money – a story in which bitcoin seems like the natural next progression. Unfortunately, most of their accounts are lacking in theory, and definitely in history. The monetary economist and early Nobel Laureate John Hicks used to say that monetary theory “belongs to monetary history, in a way that economic theory does not always belong to economic history.”
Current disputes over bitcoin and central banking epitomize that completely.
The growing literature on Bitcoin offers little more than passing mentions to Bitcoin’s monetary rule. This is the topic of this short paper.
The growing literature on Bitcoin can be divided in two groups. One performs an economic analysis of Bitcoin focusing on its monetary characteristics. The other one looks takes a financial look at the price of Bitcoin. Interestingly, both of these groups have not given much more than passing comments to the problem whether or not Bitcoin has the right monetary rule. This paper argues that Bitcoin in particular, and cryptocurrencies in general, do not have a good monetary rule, and that this shortcoming seriously limits its prospect of becoming a well-stablished currency.
At the Sound Money Project I have a comment on the importance of distinguishing between the bitcoin technological innovation and its use as a means of exchange. A solid technological innovation does meant that bitcoin is necessarily properly coded to be a successful monetary experiment.
Bitcoin is back in the spotlight as its price has soared in recent weeks. The most enthusiastic advocates see its potential to become a major private currency. But it is important to remember bitcoin is a dual phenomenon: a technological innovation and a potentially useful medium of exchange. One might recognize the technology as a genuine innovation without accepting its usefulness as a medium of exchange.
According to this Financial Times report, Bitcoin is at the verge of a critical decision.
The implications of the chosen terms (“existential crisis,” “decisive leadership,” “political flaw”) are not casual. It looks like the market that crypto-currency had carried from the beginning contain the germ of its own destruction. As in an Escher’s drawing, Bitcoin has unraveled its political strand and its whole existence is, now, dependent upon a moment of decision of the sovereign: the assembly of miners. The decisionist narrative would be fulfilled if the political decision had to be taken by acclamatio instead of voting.
Nevertheless, the decision by acclamation would be still possible: the ones who want “Bitcoin Core” might follow one direction and the other ones, who choose “Bitcoin Unlimited,” might follow their own way. After all, no existential crisis can be solved by voting.
So, which is inside of which? Is the market framed in a system depending upon a political decision of the sovereign? Or does every decision need to be taken inside a spontaneous framework of rules?
We are used to praising Bitcoin for its independence from any political factor: Bitcoin supply depends on a set of rules which allows the public to form expectations about its value with a high degree of probability of proving to be correct.
Taken in isolation, Bitcoin emulates the market. Nevertheless, being independent of political institutions is not enough for being “the market.” The attractiveness of Bitcoin is that it operates in an open system of competition of currencies. In this system, there are many other crypto-currencies, and there might be several variances of Bitcoins as well –in esse or in posse.
Imagine, for example, that Bitcoin effectively splits into Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited. Which of the two will prevail over the other? It does not matter. What really matters is that there will be several variances of currencies in competition. The factors that determine the selection of the prevailing currency depends upon a higher level of abstraction that impose an absolute limit to our knowledge.
So, is Bitcoin in an existential crisis? Does a political decision need to be made? Maybe.
But that does not imply that “The Political” will take over the reins of the crypto-currency market. Moreover, opposite political decisions are the linkages which the spontaneous selection process -in this case, of currencies- is made of. In this sense, “Bitcoin Core” and “Bitcoin Unlimited” are attributes of a competitive system and the final prevalence of one variance among other alternatives will not be the result of a deliberate decision but of an abstract process of evolution.
Dr Gibson chimes in on Chhay Lin‘s most recent post about bitcoins (I hope there will be more):
“Unspent dollars means reduced sales, and as sales decline, profits drop, layoffs increase, and the total social income decreases, making less money available for consumption. Hoarding induces more hoarding as the economy sinks into a downward spiral.” (Smith, 2009)
That’s a lot of nonsense in just two sentences. (Note this is Smith’s paraphrase of the anti-hoarding argument, which he ably disputes.)
First, there is no distinction between “spent” and “unspent” dollars. Money jumps instantly from one pocket to another whenever it is used in a transaction. All money is “idle” between jumps. This could refer to the demand to hold money which is the inverse of the velocity of money. We hold money for convenience, safety, and occasionally as a hedge against deflation.
Second, decreased velocity means price deflation, other things being equal, and if a fall in velocity happens suddenly and unexpectedly, it can be a temporary boon to buyers and a detriment to sellers. But the idea of a deflationary spiral feeding on itself is silly, if only because we all have to eat. Low prices are the cure for low prices, as bargain-hunters move in and prices stabilize.
Then there’s this “social income” phrase. Real social income is not enhanced by faster spending. It is enhanced by greater productivity which depends on private saving, which in turn depends largely on property-friendly institutions. We cannot spend our way to prosperity.
I’ll also comment on Kaminska’s claim that bitcoins “do not benefit the economy” because they do not bear interest. Along with currency and (in their time) gold and silver coins, bitcoins are what economists call “outside money” meaning they are an asset that is no one’s liability. Checking account balances are a form of “inside money” because they are at once an asset of the account holder and a liability of the bank. When outside money is deposited in a fractional-reserve bank where it becomes inside money, some is kept in reserve and some is loaned out. This apparently what is meant by “benefit to the economy” but in fact it’s a benefit to the bank which can earn profits on the new loans and to the borrower, if all goes well. It’s a detriment to the rest of us because there is an increase in the money supply which causes price inflation.
There is nothing anti-social about holding outside money. Some of us see marginal benefits in holding outside money (security, convenience) that exceed the cost in foregone interest. So what?
My own two cents on this (get it?) is merely that Dr Gibson needs to spend more time at NOL fixing the mistakes of financial journalists and keeping his fellow economists honest. (Notereaders and Notewriters, holla at me and Warren in the ‘comments’ threads if you agree!)
Yesterday, September 26th of 2015, I attended the Reinvent Money event in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, that was organized by Paul Buitink. The goal of the event was to bring people together for a grand discussion on the future of our monetary system. This discussion on monetary reforms is totally necessary if one considers the current problems with the euro and Greece, banking scandals, the rise of bitcoin and the blockchain technology, and peer-to-peer lending.
The speakers list consisted of many prominent thinkers and activists who could share with a crowd that was mostly in favor of crypto-currencies their thoughts about the current monetary system and whether money should be reinvented.
Willem Middelkoop was the first speaker and talked about the Big Reset of the monetary system that is currently orchestrated by high level officials. Jakob de Haan, head of the research department at the Dutch Central Bank, was the second speaker and stated that he does not believe in an upcoming Big Reset. While defending central banks, he argued that central banks are necessary in order to stabilize the currency and he sees five aspects that central banks should fulfill:
Other speakers included Max Keiser, Stacy Herbert, Vit Jedlicka (president of Liberland), Stephan Antonopoulos, Simon Dixon, Joris Luyendijk, Prof. Antal Lekety and some others. Some wanted to go back to a gold-based monetary system, others truly wanted to reinvent money through crypto-currencies, and a few wanted the system to stay as it is structurally. As a voluntaryist, I was quite disappointed that the pro-crypto-currency speakers saw it as a means to democratize society. I don’t fully understand what they mean with the word ‘democratize’ and how crypto-currencies could do that, but I’ve noticed that those speakers saw it as a means to make our political system more democratic. Maybe, they mean ‘anti-authoritarian’ as crypto-currencies would indeed limit the monetary powers of the government and the central bank. However, I’ve always understood it as a de-political money system that is disruptive enough to do away with the myth that government is needed at all to stabilize our currency, and hence that it would bring us closer toward a voluntaryist society – not toward a more democratic system. A democratic system, in my opinion, means a system in which the majority rules. Crypto-currencies give every individual the full ownership of their money. Thus taking personal financial affairs entirely outside the scope of government meddling, also if that government is democratically chosen.
One source of difficulty in formal empirical studies of monetary policy effects on real variables has been the common practice of focusing attention on real responses to policy innovations—i.e., unexpected components —in vector autoregression (VAR) studies. [McCallum, B.T., here]
Pois é. A criação do bitcoin e similares é um choque tecnológico, mas é também um choque monetário. Digo, você injetou mais moeda de forma descentralizada e temporalmente aleatória na economia. A princípio, isto tornaria a oferta de moeda mais instável do que a demanda, penso.
Bem, como seria de se esperar, políticos, que são tão racionais quanto nós, facilitaram o fluxo de bitcoins…para eles.Seria legal agora que pudéssemos investigar uma galera da Papuda. Será que eles têm bitcoins também?
Old bottles…
Suspeitas à parte, a questão sobre como medir o choque monetário do bitcoin é algo a ser pensado, não? McCallum já chamava a atenção para a dificuldade, em termos do debate acerca da demanda de moeda (a equação (4) do texto, reproduzida a seguir) e dos choques tecnológicos já em 2002.
mt −pt = γ0 +γ1γt +γ2Rt +εt
Agora que você se lembrou da famosa equação, eis o trecho interessante:
Indeed, it would seem almost to suggest the opposite—for the theoretical rationale for (4) is built upon the transaction-facilitating function of money, but the technology for effecting transactions is constantly evolving. And since technical progress cannot be directly measured by available variables, the effects of technical change (not captured by a deterministic trend) show up in the disturbance term, εt. But the nature of technological progress is such that changes (shocks) are typically not reversed. Thus one would expect a priori there to be an important permanent component to the εt process, making it one of the integrated type— and thereby making mt −pt not cointegrated with yt and Rt.
Podemos ver que McCallum, ao discutir a questão do progresso tecnológico, deu-nos uma pista para como poderíamos começar a entender o problema. Temos que estudar mais séries de tempo, cointegração e pensar melhor no sistema de equações que usamos. Ok, não é um conselho fácil, mas nem inventar o bitcoin foi fácil, não é?
Fica esta dica para o debate sobre o choque que é (ou os choques que são) a introdução do bitcoin no modelo.
Mas vamos aproveitar que o autor é bom e citar outro trecho!
Ah sim, em um outro excelente momento do texto, ele mostra seu conhecimento da evolução histórica do pensamento econômico. Vejam que trecho ótimo:
Now clearly the switch from the fixed-lag to the rational expectations hypothesis was the consequence primarily of theoretical, rather than empirical, analysis. At the time it seemed a rather drastic step, but after the fact it has come to be recognized as an entirely natural extension of the usual approach of neoclassical economic analysis to an area of economic activity (expectation formation) that had previously been treated in a non-standard manner. Today, many economists trained after 1980 appear, empirically, to have difficulty in even contemplating any other expectational hypothesis. Also, it should be remembered that Lucas’s critique itself was not new, but merely a (brilliantly persuasive) application of Marschak’s (1953) fundamental insight that policy analysis requires a structural (as opposed to reduced-form) model.
Marschak é um autor bem mais antigo, nascido em Kiev (Ucrânia, Putin, Ucrânia…) e, como você pode ver, não era um sujeito qualquer. Não digo para sair por aí correndo para ler artigos dele, mas pense na questão que sempre destaco aqui: a importância do capital humano na formulação e condução da política monetária. De certa forma, o genial Bryan Caplan já pensou em algo assim quando publicou aquele artigo que sempre cito aqui sobre a idea trap (versão para iniciantes aqui, para alunos que já fizeram pelo menos um ano de curso e não temem as letras do alfabeto em combinações algébricas aqui).
Só para você ter um gostinho do que Caplan intuiu:
The current paper presents a simple political– economic model of the interaction of growth, policy, and ideas to explain this puzzle. Growth, policy, and ideas are mutually reinforcing, given a key assumption about the impact of growth on ideas. Countries tend to have either all ‘‘good’’, all ‘‘mediocre’’, or all ‘‘bad’’ values. An important implication is that social forces do notinexorably drive economically unsuccessful countries to reform. In my model, policy ‘‘turn-arounds’’ instead arise due to large random disturbances that shock economies into better equilibria. While this conclusion is somewhat counterintuitive, it is much more consistent with the empirical failure of the convergence hypothesis than the optimistic ‘‘learning’’ model (Williamson, 1994a).
Pense nisto um pouco. Não é o que ocorre no Brasil? Sai uma equipe econômica que coloca a economia no lugar, entra outra que parece não ter lido nem um livro-texto básico. Não há porque a política econômica ser sempre melhor do que a anterior porque ela é feita por seres humanos. Logo, diria o leitor de Buchanan, precisamos de amarras constitucionais para não dependermos de anjos, né?
Eu adoraria falar mais disto, mas notei que isto está se transformando em outro post. (a ser publicado em De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum)
Notes On Liberty 