A timely showcasing is called for: thus strolling mask-free from the White House, Trump stationed himself before a nearby Episcopal church, faced cameras, and flaunted a borrowed Bible (2 Jun 20). In ...a poll cited on CNN (3/19/21, 3:30), 47% of Trump voters over all had no interest in the vaccine, and Google reports (3/20/21) that a quarter of GOP House members have not been vaccinated (see "As Republicans Shun the Vaccine, Congress Toils to Return to Normal," Catie Edmondson, New York Times, 20 Mar 21, p. A5). While such analogies may befuddle political issues, the prescribed mask's actual salutary benefits are not in dispute among the vast majority of scientists and other experts who have consistently warned its shunning plays havoc on countless lives. Painfully speaking for many, a bereaved offspring interviewed on CNN in mid-October 2020, attributes her father's Covid-19 death to his dismissing the safety concerns derided by Trump whom he greatly admired (see also, House Dem., Bonnie Watson Coleman's account, "I got Covid-19 Because My GOP Colleagues Dismiss Facts," Washington Post, 13 Jan 21, p. A25).
We argue that the economy of the industrialized world, taken as a whole, is currently—and for the foreseeable future will remain—highly prone to secular stagnation. But for extraordinary fiscal ...policies, real interest rates would have fallen much more and be far below their current slightly negative level, current and prospective inflation would be further short of the 2 percent target levels, and past and future economic recoveries would be even more sluggish. We start by arguing that, contrary to current practice, neutral real interest rates are best estimated for the bloc of all industrial economies, given capital mobility between them and the relatively limited fluctuations in their aggregated current account. We show, using standard econometric procedures and looking at direct market indicators of prospective real rates, that neutral real interest rates have declined by at least 300 basis points over the last generation. We argue that these secular movements are in larger part a reflection of changes in saving and investment propensities rather than the safety and liquidity properties of Treasury instruments. We highlight the observation that, ceteris paribus, levels of government debt, the extent of pay-as-you-go old-age pensions, and the insurance value of government health care programs have all operated to raise neutral real rates. Using estimates drawn from the literature—as well as two general equilibrium models emphasizing, respectively, life-cycle heterogeneity and individual uncertainty— we suggest that the “private sector neutral real rate” may have declined by as much as 700 basis points since the 1970s. The extent of the substantial shifts in private saving and investment propensities over time has been obscured by the impact of this decline in real rates. Our diagnosis necessitates radical revisions in the conventional wisdom about monetary policy frameworks, the role of fiscal policy in macroeconomic stabilization, and the appropriate level of budget deficits, as well as social insurance and regulatory policies. To that end, much more of creative economic research is required on the causes, consequences, and policy implications of the pervasive private sector excess saving problem.
This paper seeks to convince historians that investigating how tractability has shaped individual and collective modeling choices in economics is a valuable endeavor. To do so, I first survey the ...economic methodology literature on tractability, one that grew out of methodologists’ attempts to explain why their authors make unrealistic assumptions. I then compare these accounts with the few instances where 20th century economists discussed tractability explicitly. This short survey suggests that there is a need for historians to document the collective dynamics at work when tractability motives are invoked. I suggest that disentangling theoretical, empirical and computational tractability might be fruitful, but also difficult. I ask how and why choices made for tractability purposes meant to be idiosyncratic and temporary often become collectively entrenched, sometimes creating “tractability traps.” Finally, I consider the existence of “tractability standards” that differ across time and fields.
The most devastating rebuttal of socialism – eclipsing all the evils and failures of the capitalist system – is that it just does not work; for which the prime evidence is the (alleged) dismal ...performance of the USSR’s economic model of state ownership and planning. Underpinning that narrative are pro-market theories which are falsified, in what they say about capitalism, by our daily experience; this article challenges their claims and explanations regarding socialism. The attempt to build an economy which could power the road to a communist future encompassed astonishing successes, as well as serious difficulties presaging its eventual defeat. To understand these problems, as well as the achievements, requires consideration of something which is absent from the prevailing narratives about the “actually existing socialism” of the 20th century: the huge importance of international technology transfers in economic development, and of the power deployed by the USA - during the Cold War, and increasingly again today – in imposing technology sanctions to reinforce its global dominance.
In this paper, the classification of crisis states and their dynamics is carried out. The asset crisis model is approximated and formalized. Invariant stationary components and the boundaries of ...crisis fluctuations are determined, which allows for predictions of the course of a crisis. The hypothesis of the phase invariance of crises is statistically confirmed, and four main phases and five marker points in the development of an investment asset crisis are distinguished. A statistical study of the changes in the value of 620 investment assets over 7 years (1,584,720 values) was conducted, including 710 crisis asset states (9940 values), which allowed us to formulate a mathematical model of crisis variability that makes it possible to detect the onset of crisis phases or the passage of marker points via the values of the first- and second-order derivatives of the model. This model has not only evaluative properties, but also predictive properties relative to the risk of a crisis asset, which is also confirmed experimentally. An experiment is conducted to assess the quality of the econometric crisis model, which is based on real historical data. The results of the experiment showed the high quality of the model as a crisis detection tool. A method of early detection of the initial crisis phase is developed, in which it is seen that a statistically unpredictable state causes such a change in the indicator that it violates the valid bound constraints.
American economist Paul Krugman has become a highly influential public intellectual in the social sciences. The natural and physical sciences need a public intellectual like Krugman to make more ...effective arguments for the existence and urgency of climate change, the benefits of vaccine use, and other pressing issues. To demonstrate how such a goal can be achieved, this article presents a rhetorical analysis of Krugman’s public intellectual writing in The New York Times from 2013 to 2016. The substantial public impact of this body of work stems from Krugman’s use of rhetorical strategies that are both similar to and—more importantly—a departure from strategies used by other well-known public intellectuals in the sciences.
Global liquidity shortage as well as the availability on the market of overpriced assets and derivatives led to the situation where the global economy depends primarily on liquidity, becoming prone ...to chain-consistent world crises. Only for the last 15 years, the world has witnessed a continuous series of crises. Therefore, the study of the processes and phenomena of crisis is one of the most important scientific and practical tasks. The aim of this work consisted in the development of methods and models for the early detection of crises in the economy. The significance of the work is to develop an econometric model and tools for detection of crisis.
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