When the first Conte government began converting the Five Star Movement and Lega’s manifestos into expenditure items for the 2019 budget law, it quickly became obvious that Italy’s macroeconomic po...

According to the modern widespread approaches to the nature of external debt and its effects on economic processes, debt financing is among the distinctive features of the liberalization-oriented world of nowadays. Accordingly, unrestricted capital flows signify orientation at macroeconomic balance, since under the conditions when administrative barriers are absent capital distribution is even and symmetric, enabling leveling of factor prices. Associated with these arguments is a claim that prices of goods and services do not indicate non-negligible fluctuations and a (...) financial system gains economic agents' confidence. This research addresses the issues of the phenomenon of external debt and provides an insight into the U.S. external debt and its effects on both the U.S. and world economy. The findings show that the U.S. external debt is of no considerable threat to the world economy in the short-term, since the peace of the world's economic leader's growth exceeds that of debt servicing expenditures. However, an economic decline may turn the status-quo upside down, since the country may face inability to raise enough funds in time to discharge its financial liabilities, especially to non-residents. (shrink)

The aim of the article. The aim of the article is to identify the components of social and economic systems life cycle. To achieve this aim, the article describes the traits and characteristics of the system, determines the features of social and economic systems functioning and is applied a systematic approach in the study of their life cycle. The results of the analysis. It is determined that the development of social and economic systems has signs of cyclicity and is explained (...) methodologically by the axiomatics, rules and laws. Understanding of circular patterns has been formed long ago and now is recorded by scientists monitoring the properties of natural and artificial environment of human activity. During the study, it was found out that in scientific literature there is no unified description of the life cycle elements of social and economic systems at personal, micro, meso, macro and global levels. The paper investigates the cyclical patterns in multilevel social and economic systems for a human, employee, family, product, company, city, industry, elite, macroeconomic indicators, humanity, global processes, global economic system and the Universe. It is noted that at grass-roots administrative levels of the global environment of a human life activity system, a thesis about the cyclicity of development and the stages of the life cycle is considered by a wide circle of scientists and is doubtless. On hierarchically higher management levels of the global environment of human activity system, the scientists noticed the similar patterns of the cyclical nature. Problematic and discussion questions about cyclic development of social and economic systems are identified: the uncertainty of the driving force source of repeated changes; the vague distinction between systemic (internal) and off-system (external) influence on development; the lack of a unified description of development nature at different managerial levels; the use of different descriptive terms for the same constituent elements of repeated changes (period, stage, phase, wave, cycle); the uncertainty of the number of repeated changes constituent elements; the absence of an identification mechanism of the exact time of changes in the constituent elements of repeated changes; the surface description of out-of-system period of the subjects activity («before-system» period of creation and «after-system» period of liquidation); attaching more importance to primary and less importance to ultimate component elements of the repeated changes; the lack of reliable mechanism for predicting and forecasting the dynamics of constituent components of repeated changes. It is noted that all social and economic systems are developed within repeated changes and they have the same attributes of cyclicity: the fluctuation of indicators is marked that characterize the condition of the subject; the presence of system (from creation to liquidation) and out-of-system (creation – «design» and liquidation – «disposal») periods are noted; the subjects are created by the actions of other subjects (that is, subjects do not arise «out of nowhere», but are the result of actions of other subjects – «constructors»); after cessation of subjects functioning, their resources are used by other subjects (that is, the subjects do not disappear «nowhere», and they are transformed into the resources of other subjects – «recovery»); a unidirectional life cycle from «birth» to «death» is observed in the subjects; the subjects do not have to undergo the whole life cycle (each time might be the last); the subjects display similar changes of the indicators during their activity; ascending, peak and descending fluctuations of indicators are observed in the subjects; minor fluctuations occur in the constituent elements; the subjects have individual nature of indicator fluctuations and duration of activity. Conclusions and directions of further researches. The scientific novelty of the study is identification structure of life cycle of social and economic system with definitions of: common («before-system state», «growth», «stabilization», «reduction», «after-system state») and specific («creation», «slow growth», «rapid growth», «growth stabilization», «short stabilization», «rapid reduction», «slow reduction», «liquidation») constituent elements of repeated changes; marginal borders of indicators; dynamics of constituent elements of life cycle; key points of changing nature of the indicators dynamics. Identification of the life cycle of social and economic systems characterizes potentially possible limits of their activity in time and provides the possibility of further research of aspects of the cyclical development for methodological basis formation and the development of applied measures of systemic development in the areas of marketing and management innovations. (shrink)

The three decades of armed struggle, the subsequent drought, and deliberate policies of neglect and mismanagement by the last two regimes in Eritrea made growth of the Eritrean economy practically impossible. After independence, the country achieved a steady growth for some years. However, due to the border conflict with Ethiopia, the economy was characterised by severe macroeconomic imbalances and unusually high level of public expenditure. Poverty and inflation also increased many folds. Both domestic and external public debts reached unsustainable (...) levels. Thus, an attempt is made in this paper to delve into some important trends of the Eritrean economy before and after 1998. The paper highlights some of the key economic issues like education, health, infrastructure, unemployment, poverty etc., and provides some concluding remarks. (shrink)

Underscoring the economic significance of the Knightian distinction between risk and uncertainty, Don Katzner forcefully challenges the continued dominance of the expected utility model based on subjective probability in macroeconomic analysis and offers in its place a simple yet elegant model of decision making inspired by the pioneering work of G.L.S. Shackle. In doing so, Katzner lends support to a research program to identify a more coherent and empirically grounded theory of decision making under uncertainty. Our paper makes three (...) contributions to this program. First, we argue that the appropriate choice of a model of individual behavior under uncertainty cannot be adjudicated merely on logical, a priori grounds, but must ultimately be based on consistency with observed behavior. There are many internally consistent models and their external conditions of validity hardly ever rely on inconceivable scenarios. Second, while Katzner’s model certainly provides a plausible foundation for understanding choice under uncertainty, we suggest that it is somewhat underdetermined. It requires further theoretical articulation to yield testable predictions which differentiate it from competing approaches. Third, we discuss recent experimental findings that may need to be addressed by any satisfactory theoretical account of decision making under uncertainty. (shrink)

It has long been recognized that productivity growth and the business cycle are closely interrelated. Yet, until recently, the two phenomena have been investigated separately in the economics literature. This book provides the first consistent attempt to analyze the effects of macroeconomic volatility on productivity growth, and also the reverse causality from growth to business cycles. The authors show that by looking at the economy through the lens of private entrepreneurs, who invest under credit constraints, one can go some (...) way towards explaining persistent macroeconomic volatility and the effects of volatility on growth. Beginning with an analysis of the effects of volatility on growth, the authors argue that the lower the level of financial development in a country the more detrimental the effect of volatility on growth. This prediction is confirmed by cross-country panel regressions. The data also suggests that a fixed exchange rate regime or more countercyclical budgetary policies are growth-enhancing in countries with a lower level of financial development. The former reduce aggregate volatility whereas the latter reduce the negative effects of volatility on long-term productivity-enhancing investment by firms. The book concludes with an investigation into how the interplay between credit constraints and pecuniary externalities is sufficient to generate persistent business cycles and to explain the occurrence of currency crises. (shrink)

We consider the potentially major role of lay economic representations in economic theoretical modelling. Departing both from the rational expectation hypothesis, that supposes a maximal cognitive fit between agents’ representations and the variables in the model, and from an approach in terms of psychological biases that would externally affect agents’representation of their environment, we consider that lay representations have essential features that make them potentially valuable tools for the reconciliation of normative and practical perspectives in macroeconomics. By reviewing a series (...) of studies in the sub-field of the psychology of lay economics, we first emphasize the collective and pragmatically-oriented features of these lay economic representations. We thereby uncover the major role of language and meaning, seemingly non-economic human institutions, in laying down the basis for economic understanding. Secondly, we directly address the question of the internal logic and cognitive features of these representations and uncover/in uncovering typical circular causal reasoning in lay macroeconomics. We finally re-assess the question of the maximal fit between ordinary economic psychology and predictive economic modelling. (shrink)

Modern society is developing under the condition of globalization processes. Geographical boundaries are no longer able to restrict financial transactions and agreements between states. Due to the process of financial globalization, role of gold in the world economy has experienced significant transformations. During the period of bimetallism and monometallism this metal served as money, and after the process of demonetization for the gold was officially assigned the status of precious commodity. But, despite the demonetization of gold de jure, demand for (...) this precious metal is significant not only in the industry but also in the investing activities. As a result, study of the impact of macroeconomic indicators on the gold price volatility remains important today. With the purpose of a more detailed analysis of factors influencing the growth of gold price, world economic indices have been used during the research, namely: index of economic globalization, index of political globalization, GDP increase according to purchasing power parity , investments share in GDP and gold reserves. Result of the research shows that with further globalization of economic and political sphere, as well as with increase in world GDP can be observed slowdown in growth of both nominal and real price of gold. However, the increase of the share of investment in world GDP will contribute to the intensive growth of the real price of gold. Also our study has showed that despite the fact that gold and silver belong to the group of the precious metals, the influence of various external factors on them differs. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to determine the relationship between the economic well-being of countries and their openness to external markets. The scientific novelty consists in the comparison of two groups of countries with different characteristics and identifying specific patterns of the impact of selected macroeconomic factors on GDP. The article presents an econometric analysis and contains regression equations for each state. Interpretation of the coefficients of the derived models makes it possible to estimate changes in GDP with (...) the change of indicators. As a result, it was revealed that export is the most stable and strongly influencing the economy of all countries macroeconomic factor, and the strength of influence depends on the level of development of the country. The stability of GDP in developing countries is largely achieved through the regulation of internal factors, and in developed countries through exports regulation. (shrink)

A slight stabilization of some macroeconomic indicators Ukraine in conditions of long-term preservation of structural imbalances in the domestic economy against the background of global economic recovery, reduce consumer demand in the global markets combined with the devaluation of the hryvnia no reason to conclude that ensure the sustainability of enterprises to the likely financial and economic turmoil. Given this situation, the article identifies the main problems of accounting of foreign exchange transactions in Ukraine through the prism of foreign (...) software security. At present actualized issue integration into the European economic space, which leads to aggravation of the issue of financial payments in foreign currency and their reflection in the accounting business. Stand unstable economic situation in the domestic market of Ukraine leads the majority of domestic enterprises to shift to foreign markets. Foreign trade enterprises directly related to the riskiness and exposure to foreign shocks her, so constantly need to monitor the status of foreign security. Based on empirical research using the software package MS Excel, articles in the research and forecasting of external economic security of Ukraine and brought a further increase of this indicator in a strategic perspective. However, foreign financial and payment transactions engaged in enterprise involving consideration of exchange rate fluctuations, in which there are exchange differences significantly affect the financial results of the company. In order to improve the accounting currency transactions in the context of foreign trade enterprises proposed harmonization of national and international accounting systems using international standards in national accounting system and financial reporting. (shrink)

Long considered as an economic giant and a political dwarf, Japan begins to solve this paradox by acquiring a political weight on the international scene. lts diplomacy remains non-assertive and its military role limited. But it has an increasing influence on the structure of the world economy by the size of its GNP, the composition and spread of its external economy and its capital ftows, and by the impact of its industrial policy on the international division of labour. The growing (...) macroeconomic and financial interdependence between the US and Japan has an incidence on defence high technology and on the transfert of resources to the Third World. Japan's new status as a world power is acknowledged even by Gorbachov's « Eastern » policy. Japan's case weakens the assumption of the realist paradigm of international relations theory that power and interdependence are incompatible. (shrink)

Households and banks have increasingly displaced non-financial businesses and governments as the primary debtors in modern capitalist economies, resulting in more severe economic cycles, increased inequality, and external macroeconomic imbalances. Yet while the trend is nearly universal among developed economies, its intensity varies a great deal from country to country. This article highlights the common international causes behind the global expansion of household and financial sector debt; the divergent national approaches to household credit that cause household and financial sector (...) indebtedness to vary from country to country; and the likely causes of these disparate approaches. National approaches to interest rate restrictions, property transfer taxation, high loan-to-value mortgages, mortgage interest taxation, and secondary markets for consumer debt can either encourage or mitigate household and financial sector borrowing. Whether a country encourages or mitigates such credit is determined by an idiosyncratic mix of institutional, political, and ideational factors. Especially important are the size of domestic pension funds, banks’ preferred business models, the political power of financial firms, and whether policymakers are more sensitive to the gains promised by a credit-fueled expansion or to the risks posed by an overleveraged collapse. (shrink)

Japan's remarkable economic success especially from the 1960s to the 1980s has attracted extensive worldwide attention. However, the world's admiration has plummeted since the 1990s, when the Bubble Economy burst, bringing on chronic stagnation. Since then, the world has regarded the Japanese economy less as a desirable model and more as an evident failure with many lessons for other economies. These external judgments, positive and negative, have also affected how the Japanese perceive their own economy. This article reviews how these (...) domestic and international perceptions of Japan's economy have varied. It situates the companion articles by Hwang (2012) and Harada (2012) in the historical context of studies of the Japanese economy. This article especially discusses one recurring fixation that muddles comprehension of factors underpinning Japan's economic success and failure: the tendency to overestimate characteristics that supposedly are specific to Japan and different from other market-oriented economies. From the 1960s through the 1980s, scholars, commentators, policy-makers, and the public insisted these characteristics were singular and significant contributors to Japan's remarkable economic development. Since the 1990s, they have considered them the root causes of Japan's remarkable stagnation. Both are exaggerations. Although some singularly Japanese attributes perhaps contributed to Japan's economic ascent and decline, it is equally plausible they did not. It is more likely that poorly conceived and executed macroeconomic policies, especially monetary policy, had greater influence on Japan's post-1990s stagnation. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of the role of government borrowing in the system of modern market relations, in which the search for tools to maintain or increase the social welfare of citizens is one of the urgent issues. In conditions of weak economic growth and a slow increase in the standard of living of the population, one of the most significant ways to activate economic growth is precisely the amount of funds raised by the state for solving (...) key social problems. As part of the study, an analysis of internal and external government borrowings of the Russian economic system was carried out, using the tools of the theory of probability and mathematical statistics, the degree of influence of government debt on macroeconomic development was revealed, and ways to optimize government borrowing were proposed. (shrink)

In recent years, the project of providing microeconomic foundations for macroeconomics has taken on new urgency. Some philosophers and economists have challenged the project, both for the way economists actually approach microfoundations and for more general anti-reductionist reasons. Reductionists and anti-reductionists alike, however, have taken it to be trivial that the macroeconomic facts are exhaustively determined by microeconomic ones. In this paper, I challenge this supposed triviality. I argue that macroeconomic properties do not even globally supervene on microeconomic (...) ones. This is simply a consequence of the difference in the explanatory goals of the respective fields, which implicitly carve out the microeconomic property set in such a way that it underdetermines macroeconomic properties. It means, however, that microeconomics-based foundations for macroeconomics are inadequate in principle. (shrink)

Causality in Macroeconomics examines causality while taking macroeconomics seriously. A pragmatic and realistic philosophy is joined to a macroeconomic foundation that refines Herbert Simon's well-known work on causal order to make a case for a structural approach to causality. The structural approach is used to understand modern rational expectations models, regime switching models, Granger causality, vector autoregressions, the Lucas critique, and concept exogeneity. Techniques of causal inference based on patterns of stability and instability in the face of identified regime (...) changes are developed and illustrated in two empirical case studies. (shrink)

Macroeconomic fluctuations in interest rates, exchange rates, and inflation can be considered sources of good or bad “luck” for corporate performance if management is unable to adjust operations to these fluctuations. Based on a sample of 2,091 US firms, we decompose the impacts of macroeconomic fluctuations on three measures of CEO compensation. Our study provides empirical support for the importance of considering macroeconomic fluctuations in designing CEO incentive schemes. It adds to the managerial power literature on moral (...) hazard and CEO compensation by pinpointing the obvious risk that the CEO in an asymmetric and non-linear reward system will be inclined to prioritize his/her own cash flow at the expense of fulfilling an assumed agency role. The policy conclusion for remuneration committees and board of directors is to filter out macroeconomic influences on performance to be rewarded whenever an asymmetric compensation scheme has been opted for. (shrink)

In these two volumes, a group of distinguished economists debate the way in which evidence, in particular econometric evidence, can and should be used to relate macroeconomic theories to the real world. Topics covered include the business cycle, monetary policy, economic growth, the impact of new econometric techniques, the IS-LM model, the labour market, new Keynesian macroeconomics, and the use of macroeconomics in official documents.

Macroeconomic dynamics and the at-risk-of-poverty population in Slovakia This paper deals with analysis and presentation of the core findings under the EU SILC 2009 project. Particularly we are oriented on study of the socially vulnerable groups of population identified according their income situation. As a sorting criterion for this purpose we use the standard methodology set by OECD and Eurostat. It means the 60% of the national median equivalized disposable income is applied for this criterion as the poverty threshold. (...) The national income variable is firstly calculated as a total income for each surveyed household and dived by the equivalized size of household. By this procedure the households of various structures are transformed onto generally accepted scale. The special attention of our study is oriented on the cluster of population living on income below the poverty threshold. For this population we calculate so called social deficit. Through this value we show the volume of financial means needed to upgrade the living standard of the population living bellow poverty threshold at least to the poverty threshold level.Special section of the paper is devoted to study of relation among the core macroeconomic indicators and level and size of the at-risk-of-poverty population during the period of last economic development, including both economic growth and economic recession. According our tentative findings we did not find the significant impact of economic growth on the status of socially vulnerable population. This finding however should be studied in broader context, with longer time series of relevant data and with broader set of explanatory variables. (shrink)

Macroeconomics: An Introduction, provides a lucid and novel introduction to macroeconomic issues. It introduces the reader to an alternative approach of understanding macroeconomics, which is inspired by the works of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and Piero Sraffa. It also presents the reader with a critical account of mainstream marginalist macroeconomics. The book begins with a brief history of economic theories and then takes the reader through three different ways of conceptualizing the macroeconomy. Subsequently, the (...) theories of money and interest rates, output and employment levels, and economic growth are discussed. The book ends by providing a policy template for addressing the macroeconomic concerns of unemployment and inflation. The conceptual discussion in Macroeconomics is situated within the context of the Indian economy. Besides using publicly available data, the contextual description is instantiated using excerpts from works of fiction by Indian authors. (shrink)

Argues that ontological reduction of macroeconomics to microeconomics is untenable. Existence of macroeconomic aggregates; Microfoundations of macroeconomics; Examinations of the general price level; Limits of the scientific development of microeconomics.

In these two volumes, a group of distinguished economists debate the way in which evidence, in particular econometric evidence, can and should be used to relate macroeconomic theories to the real world. Topics covered include the business cycle, monetary policy, economic growth, the impact of new econometric techniques, the IS-LM model, the labour market, new Keynesian macroeconomics, and the use of macroeconomics in official documents.

Jean-Paul Fitoussi needs no introduction as one of the world's foremost Macroeconomists of his generation. This celebration of his work includes contributions from Nobel Prize - winning economists Robert W. Clower and Robert Solow as well as Olivier Blanchard and leading economic theorist, Edmond Malinvaud.

Macroeconomics is evolving in an almost dialectic fashion. The latest evolution is the development of a new synthesis that combines insights of new classical, new Keynesian and real business cycle traditions into a dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium model that serves as a foundation for thinking about macro policy. That new synthesis has opened up the door to a new antithesis, which is being driven by advances in computing power and analytic techniques. This new synthesis is coalescing around developments in complexity (...) theory, automated general to specific econometric modeling, agent-based models, and non-linear and statistical dynamical models. This book thus provides the reader with an introduction to what might be called a Post Walrasian research program that is developing as the antithesis of the Walrasian DSGE synthesis. (shrink)

Research on UBI has blossomed in recent years, with a particular focus on conducting experiments with policies that share features with a UBI, microsimulation analysis and public opinion surveys. However, a common drawback with many of these approaches is the difficulty with examining ‘general equilibrium’ or ‘community’ effects. Macroeconomic modelling is one tool used to explore these more difficult questions of what would happen if a UBI was implemented at the national level. In this paper, a review of existing (...) analysis of the macroeconomic effects of a UBI offers an insight into the assumptions, approaches and results of these studies and how these are interlinked. Recommendations are made to increase the diversity of models used and the mechanisms and contexts explored. (shrink)

Macroeconomic events often require individuals and policy-makers to make decisions that they are not accustomed to making. For example, a sovereign debt crisis makes it necessary to either default on government debt, increase taxes, cut public spending or to impose a mixture of these measures. I argue that decisions on such matters are not derived from deep preferences; they require reflections and judgement under uncertainty. Past experiences and the interaction with other individuals are likely to influence the salience of (...) preferences in the situations of decision making. Using a simple model, I illustrate how the salience of preferences changes with different degrees of individuality and conformity. Individuality is associated with the importance of private habits, while conformity is related to the perceived dissonance between initial intuitions and social opinions. The results obtained from simple simulation exercises stress that a high degree of conformity or a low degree of individuality may lead to overreactions when social opinion makers err for a short period of time. At the same time, a low degree of conformity or a high degree of individuality or leads to delayed adjustments to new circumstances. (shrink)

In this paper I will draw attention to an important route to external world skepticism, which I will call confidence skepticism. I will argue that we can defang confidence skepticism (though not a meeker ‘argument from might’ which has got some attention in the 20th century literature on external world skepticism) by adopting a partially psychologistic answer to the problem of priors. And I will argue that certain recent work in the epistemology of mathematics and logic provides independent support for (...) such psychologism. (shrink)

This book is an investigation of the methodological and epistemological foundations of macroeconomic theory, based on an examination of the theories of Keynes and Lucas. It is divided into two parts. In the first Professor Vercelli discusses the methodological issues which lie behind the conflict among different schools of thought in macroeconomics. These issues are central to the current debate not only in many branches of economics, but also in other scientific disciplines. The traditional point of view of science (...) based on equilibrium, stability and determinism has been increasingly challenged by a new point of view in which disequilibrium, instability and uncertainty play a crucial role. This, the author argues, is bound to put macroeconomics in a new, more promising position. In the second part of the book the author compares the two main alternative research programmes in macroeconomics: that outlined by Keynes in his 'General Theory', and that suggested by Lucas, the leader of the new classical economists. (shrink)

The outline of modern macroeconomics took shape in Britain in the early nineteenth century thanks, in part, to David Ricardo, one of the most influential economists of the time. Britain was challenged by monetary inflation, industrial unemployment and the loss of jobs abroad. Ricardo pointed the way forward. As a financier and Member of Parliament, he was well versed in politics and commercial affairs. His expertise is shown by the practicality of his proposals, including the resumption of the gold standard, (...) which was essential given the destabilizing policy of the Bank of England. Ricardo's expertise appears also in his debate with T. R. Malthus about whether an industrial economy can suffer a prolonged depression. Say's Law of Markets and the Quantity Theory of Money figure prominently in his works, but not in an extreme form. He was instead a subtle theorist, recognizing the non-neutrality of money, trade depressions and unemployment. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. Molding the institutions of governance: theories of state formation and the contingency of sovereignty in fragile polities; 2. Imposing states: foreign rivalries, local collaboration, and state form in peripheral polities; 3. Feudalizing the Chinese polity, 1893-1922: assessing the adequacy of alternative takes on state-reorganization; 4. External influence and China's feudalization, 1893-1922: opportunity costs and patterns of foreign intervention; 5. The evolution of foreign involvement in China, 1923-52: rising opportunity costs and convergent approaches to intervention; 6. (...) How intervention remade the Chinese state, 1923-52: foreign sponsorship and the building of sovereign China; 7. Creating Indonesia, 1893-1952: major power rivalry and the making of sovereign statehood; 8. Siam stands apart, 1893-1952: external intervention and rise of a sovereign Thai state; 9. Domesticating international relations, externalizing comparative politics: foreign intervention and the state in world politics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe investigate the applicability of Rodrik’s accounts of model selection and horizontal progress to macroeconomic DSGE modelling in both academic and policy-oriented modelling contexts. We argue that the key step of identifying critical assumptions is complicated by the interconnectedness of the common structural core of DSGE models and by the ad hoc modifications introduced to model various rigidities and other market imperfections. We then outline alternative ways in which macroeconomic modelling could become more horizontally progressive.

This book offers an excellent survey of various macroeconomic topics that feature prominently in the research agenda and have inspired both theoretical and policy debate. The book presents an authoritative and comprehensive summary and original critique of macroeconomic approaches by a scholar whose own contribution to the field is considerable.

SummaryStarting with Descartes, epistemology has been almost entirely based on first person knowledge. We must begin, according to the usual story, with what is most certain: knowledge of our own sensations and thoughts. In one way or another we then progress, if we can, to knowledge of an objective external world. There is then the final, tenuous, step to knowledge of other minds.In this paper I argue for a total revision of this picture. All propositional thought, whether positive or skeptical, (...) whether of the inner or of the outer, requires possession of the concept of objective truth, and this concept is accessible only to those creatures in communication with others. Third person knowledge – knowledge of other minds – is thus conceptually basic. But such knowledge is impossible without knowledge of a shared world of objects in a shared time and space. Thus the acquisition of knowledge is not based on a progression from the subjective to the objective; it emerges holistically, and is interpersonal from the start. (shrink)

Externalities are an important concept in economic theories of market failure, aiming to justify state regulation of the economy. This article explores the concept of externalities from a philosophical perspective. It criticizes the utilitarian nature of economic analyses of externalities, showing how they cannot take into account values like freedom and justice. It then develops the analogy between the concept of externalities and the 'harm principle' in political philosophy. It argues that the harm principle points to (...) the need for a theory of basic interests to judge when a harm is imposed. Similarly, externality analyses should use such a theory of basic interests as the basis for judgments about legitimate state intervention. This proposal is defended against objections, and illustrated with a case study of the US Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act, which shows how the judicial reasoning implicitly interprets externalities in terms of basic interests. (shrink)

Francesco Guala once wrote that ‘The problem of extrapolation is a minor scandal in the philosophy of science’. This paper agrees with the statement, but for reasons different from Guala’s. The scandal is not, or not any longer, that the problem has been ignored in the philosophy of science. The scandal is that framing the problem as one of external validity encourages poor evidential reasoning. The aim of this paper is to propose an alternative—an alternative which constitutes much better evidential (...) reasoning about target systems of interest, and which makes do without consideration of external validity. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics 1.8, Aristotle seems to argue that certain external goods are needed for happiness because, in the first place, they are needed for virtuous activity. This has puzzled scholars. After all, it seems possible for a virtuous agent to exercise her virtuous character even under conditions of extreme hardship or deprivation. Indeed, it is natural to think these are precisely the conditions under which one's virtue shines through most clearly. Why then does Aristotle think that a wide range (...) of external goods is required for virtuous activity, and therefore, for happiness? -/- I argue that there is good sense to be made of Aristotle's stance on external goods. Specifically, I explain how, on this view, a range of external goods is required for the full exercise of virtue, and I show that it is only this full exercise that is constitutive of eudaimonia. Drawing on passages in Politics 7.13 and Nicomachean Ethics 3.1, I develop and defend a distinction between the "mere" exercise of virtue, and the full or complete exercise of virtue. I argue that, for Aristotle, the distinguishing feature of this distinction is the value of the virtuous action's ends. An action that fully expresses virtue aims at an end that is unqualifiedly good, while an action that merely exercises virtue does not. I argue that the external goods Aristotle mentions in NE 1.8 are necessary for performing actions with unqualifiedly good ends, and so necessary for the complete exercise of virtue. In addition to providing a more satisfactory account than existing proposals of the role of external goods in Aristotelian happiness, my interpretation has two additional upshots. First, it brings to light an under-appreciated and independently compelling feature of Aristotle's ethical thought: the value of virtuous actions depends in part on the value of the ends they aim to realize. Second, it finds in Aristotle a distinct and powerful way of thinking about the badness of certain kinds of misfortune and deprivation: they are bad in part because they prevent us from fully realizing our capacity for moral agency, from fully engaging with value in the world. (shrink)

The global financial crisis and ensuing weak growth have increased interest in macroeconomic issues within comparative political economy. CPE, particularly the dominant Varieties of Capitalism approach, has based its analyses on mainstream economics, which limits analysis of the relation between distribution and growth and neglects the role finance plays in modern economies. It overstates the stability of the capitalist growth process and understates the potential effectiveness of government interventions. Baccaro and Pontusson have suggested a post-Keynesian theory of distribution and (...) growth as an alternative. This article generalizes their point. PK theory highlights the instability of the growth process and lends itself to an analysis of income distribution and power relations. The article identifies the analysis of financialization and financial cycles, the understanding of neoliberal growth models, and the political economy of central banks as areas where PK economics provides specific insights for CPE. It also highlights that these arguments have important implications for government policy in an era of secular stagnation with ongoing social, distributional, and economic crises. (shrink)

The Methodology of Empirical Macroeconomics stakes out a pragmatic middle-ground between traditional, prescriptive economic methodology and recent descriptive methodology. The former is sometimes seen as arrogantly telling economists how to do their work and the latter as irrelevant to their practice. The lectures are built around a case study of a concrete example of macroeconomic analysis. They demonstrate that economic methodology and the philosophy of science offer insights that help to resolve the genuine concerns of macroeconomists. Some examples of (...) questions addressed include: What is the relationship between theoretical models and empirical observations? What is the relevance of macroeconomics to policy? Should macroeconomics be viewed as a special case of microeconomics? What is the place of long-standing philosophical issues in macroeconomics, such as the scope and nature of economic laws, the role of idealizations, methodological individualism, and the problem of causality? (shrink)