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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Economics
The H.C. Carey School Of U.S. Currency Doctors: A "Subtle Principle" And Its Progeny, Stephen Meardon
The H.C. Carey School Of U.S. Currency Doctors: A "Subtle Principle" And Its Progeny, Stephen Meardon
Economics Department Working Paper Series
Henry C. Carey led a school of post-Civil War U.S. currency doctors prescribing an “elastic currency,” expanding and contracting according to commercial needs. The problem for the Careyites was reconciling elasticity, which implied inconvertibility with gold, with the related aim of decentralized financial power. Careyite currency doctors included, among others, Wallace P. Groom, editor of the New York Mercantile Journal, and Henry Carey Baird, Carey’s own nephew and inheritor of his mantle. Their prescribed reform of the banking system featured a financial innovation that would remove superfluous currency from circulation while supplying what was needed. The innovation was an …
The State-Constituted Market Economy: A Conceptual Framework For China’S State–Market Relations, Isabella Weber, Hao Qi
The State-Constituted Market Economy: A Conceptual Framework For China’S State–Market Relations, Isabella Weber, Hao Qi
Economics Department Working Paper Series
Scholars increasingly conclude that China has created a distinct economic system. Yet despite a growing literature with valuable contributions on the institutional arrangements under ‘capitalism with Chinese characteristics’, the economic mechanisms underpinning China’s state–market relations remain undertheorised. In this paper we develop a conceptual framework of what we call China’s state-constituted market economy. We argue that the Chinese state ‘constitutes’ the market economy by not only creating new markets through industrial and innovation policies, but by continuously participating and steering markets for essentials in order to stabilise and guide the economy as a whole. Essential is thereby defined as ‘systemically …
Systemic Cycles Of Accumulation And Chaos In The World Capitalist System: A Missing Link, Giorgos Galanis, Christian Koutny, Isabella Weber
Systemic Cycles Of Accumulation And Chaos In The World Capitalist System: A Missing Link, Giorgos Galanis, Christian Koutny, Isabella Weber
Economics Department Working Paper Series
We re-examine the Systemic Cycles of Accumulation (SCA) of Arrighi (2010) and Arrighi and Silver (1999) which provide a framework for the analysis of the cyclical patterns of geographical expansion of trade and production and the related shifts of hegemonic power within the world capitalist system. Within the SCA framework, the last stage of a hegemonic cycle is characterized by what is called ‘systemic chaos’, however the drivers of these chaotic dynamics have not been explicitly analyzed. This article fills this gap by providing a link between the accumulation process, the spatio-temporal fix, and systemic chaos, in three steps. First, …
World Profit Rates, 1960-2019, Deepankar Basu, Julio Huato, Jesus Lara Jauregui, Evan Wasner
World Profit Rates, 1960-2019, Deepankar Basu, Julio Huato, Jesus Lara Jauregui, Evan Wasner
Economics Department Working Paper Series
In this paper we present estimates of the world profit rate using country-level data from the Extended Penn World Table 7.0 and industry-level data from the World Input Output Database. The country-aggregated world profit rate series spans the period from 1960 to 2019, and the industry-aggregated world profit rate series runs from 2000 to 2014. The country-aggregated world profit rate series displays a strong negative linear trend for the period 1960-1980 and a weaker negative linear trend from 1980 to 2019. A medium run decomposition analysis reveals that the decline in the world profit rate is driven by a decline …
The (Im-)Possibility Of Rational Socialism: Mises In China’S Market Reform Debate, Isabella M. Weber
The (Im-)Possibility Of Rational Socialism: Mises In China’S Market Reform Debate, Isabella M. Weber
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This paper investigates the long first decade of reform in China (1978-1992) to show that Mises, in particular his initiating contribution to the Socialist Calculation Debate, became relevant to the reconfiguration of China’s political economy when the reformers gave up on the late Maoist primacy of continuous revolution and adhered instead to an imperative of development and catching up. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao had rejected the notions of efficiency and rational economic management. In the late 1970s, the reformers under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership elevated these notions to highest principle. As a result, Mises’ critique that socialism could not achieve …
The Nature Of Money And The Theory Of International Trade: Thornton And Ricardo, Isabella M. Weber
The Nature Of Money And The Theory Of International Trade: Thornton And Ricardo, Isabella M. Weber
Economics Department Working Paper Series
A rich recent literature reinvestigates the nature of money, but little attention has been paid to the ramifications of the ways in which we theorize money for the theory of international trade. This paper examines the logical relationship between the neutrality of money and self-balancing trade based on Henry Thornton and David Ricardo as two foundational contributions to credit and commodity money theories respectively. I show that both authors theorize trade as self-balancing whenever money is conceptualized as neutral. I distinguish two notions of the neutrality of money: ex ante and ex post neutrality. In Thornton’s Paper Credit money is …
China’S Ancient Principles Of Price Regulation Through Market Participation: The Guanzi From A Comparative Perspective, Isabella Weber
China’S Ancient Principles Of Price Regulation Through Market Participation: The Guanzi From A Comparative Perspective, Isabella Weber
Economics Department Working Paper Series
The History of Economic Thought as a field has long taken it as a premise that so far as ancient economic thought is concerned, only the Greeks and Romans are worth studying. This paper introduces the Guanzi as a core text in ancient Chinese economic thought on price stabilization from a comparative perspective with ancient Greek contributions. The Guanzi presents a framework for the empirical analysis of market fluctuations and price movements and derives principles of economic governance from this analysis. In contrast Plato and Aristotle come to the question of price determination from the angle of moral philosophy. They …
Shooting For An Economic “Miracle”: German Post-War Neoliberal Thought In China’S Market Reform Debate, Isabella M. Weber
Shooting For An Economic “Miracle”: German Post-War Neoliberal Thought In China’S Market Reform Debate, Isabella M. Weber
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This paper develops a comparative and connected history of the debates over transition to a market economy in West-Germany after World War II and in China during the first decade of reform and opening up under Deng Xiaoping (1978-1988). At both historical moments the political aim was to reintroduce market mechanisms into a dysfunctional command economy. The question what kind of price reform this required was subject to heated debates among economists. This paper shows how the West-German 1948 currency and price reform was introduced into the Chinese reform debate by German ordoliberals and neoliberals like Friedman. It traces how …
The (Far) Backstory Of The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, Stephen Meardon
The (Far) Backstory Of The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, Stephen Meardon
Economics Department Working Paper Series
In two pairs of episodes, first in 1824 and 1846 and then in 1892 and 1935, similar U.S.-Colombia trade agreements or their enabling laws were embraced first by protectionists and then by free traders. The history of the episodes supports the view that although political institutions exist to curb de facto political power, such power may be wielded to undo the institutions’ intended effects. The doctrinal affinities and interests of political actors are more decisive determinants of the free-trade or protectionist orientation of trade agreements than the agreements’ texts or legal superstructures. The long delay from signing to passage of …
On Kindleberger And Hegemony: From Berlin To M.I.T. And Back, Stephen Meardon
On Kindleberger And Hegemony: From Berlin To M.I.T. And Back, Stephen Meardon
Economics Department Working Paper Series
The most notable idea of Charles P. Kindleberger’s later career is the value of a single country acting as stabilizer of an international economy prone to instability. It runs through his widely read books, The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (1973), Manias, Crises, and Panics (1978), A Financial History of Western Europe (1984), and kindred works. “Hegemonic stability,” the idea is called in the literature it inspired. This essay traces Kindleberger’s attachment to the idea back to his tenure as chief of the State Department’s Division of German and Austrian Economic Affairs from 1945 to 1947 and adviser to the …
The Free-Trade Doctrine And Commercial Diplomacy Of Condy Raguet, Stephen Meardon
The Free-Trade Doctrine And Commercial Diplomacy Of Condy Raguet, Stephen Meardon
Economics Department Working Paper Series
Condy Raguet (1784-1842) was the first Chargé d’Affaires from the United States to Brazil and a conspicuous author of political economy from the 1820s to the early 1840s. He contributed to the era’s free-trade doctrine as editor of influential periodicals, most notably The Banner of the Constitution. Before leading the free-trade cause, however, he was poised to negotiate a reciprocity treaty between the United States and Brazil, acting under the authority of Secretary of State and protectionist apostle Henry Clay. Raguet’s career and ideas provide a window into the uncertain relationship of reciprocity to the cause of free trade.