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Recursive Collective Actions Problems: The Structure Of Procyclicality In Financial And Monetary Markets, Macroeconomies And Formally Similar Contexts, Robert C. Hockett
Recursive Collective Actions Problems: The Structure Of Procyclicality In Financial And Monetary Markets, Macroeconomies And Formally Similar Contexts, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The hallmark of a collective action problem is its aggregating multiple individually rational decisions into a collectively irrational outcome. Arms races, “commons tragedies” and “prisoners’ dilemmas” are well-known, indeed well-worn examples. What seem to be less widely appreciated are two complementary propositions: first, that some collective action problems bear iterative, self-exacerbating structures that render them particularly destructive; and second, that some of the most formidable challenges faced by economies, societies, and polities are iteratively self-worsening problems of precisely this sort. Financial markets, monetary systems and macroeconomies in particular are rife with them – as are other complex systems subject to …
Debt, Deflation, And Debacle: Of Private Debt Write-Down And Public Recovery, Richard W. Vague, Robert C. Hockett
Debt, Deflation, And Debacle: Of Private Debt Write-Down And Public Recovery, Richard W. Vague, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Most public discussion of the world’s continuing financial and macroeconomic troubles focuses rightly on debt. It focuses wrongly, however, on public debt. The real source of our ills is global-trade-related private debt overhang among millions of households below the top of the wealth distribution in the “developed” world. That is the provenance of both (a) the asset price bubbles and busts in whose aftermath we still struggle, and (b) the fact that we’re still struggling. Public sector debt growth in the developed world since 2009 is merely a symptom – the product of thus far failed treatment – of this …