The Bell Curve, publié en 1994, par Herrnstein et Murray, est un ouvrage dense, aussi riche qu’il a été couvert de critiques venant de toutes parts, attaquant tous les aspects du livre. Que ce soit la question de la pertinence du test de QI, sa valeur prédictive sur les résultats socio-économiques, les différences de QI entre les ethnies, l’héritabilité et les tentatives échouées à stimuler le QI, aucun sujet n’a été épargné par les auteurs qui ont tenté de couvrir autant de sujets que possible.
Category Archives: Economie
Hülsmann on the Economics of Deflation
The Ethics of Money Production
by Jörg Guido Hülsmann
Chapter 3: Money within the Market Process
3. DISTRIBUTION EFFECTS
This way of presenting things is not fully correct. It is true that an increased money supply tends to bring about higher money prices, and thus diminishes the purchasing power of each unit of money. But it is not true that this process necessarily operates in favor of the debtor and to the detriment of the creditor. A creditor may not be harmed at all by a 25 percent decrease in the purchasing power of money if he has anticipated this event at the point of time when he lent the money. Suppose he wished to obtain a return of 5 percent on the capital he lent, and that he anticipated the 25 percent depreciation of the purchasing power; then he would be willing to lend his money only for 30 percent, so as to compensate him for the loss of purchasing power. In economics, this compensation is called “price premium” — meaning a premium being paid on top of the “pure” interest rate for the anticipated increase of money prices. This is exactly what can be observed at those times and places where money depreciation is very high. 3
3 Late scholastic Martín de Azpilcueta argued that price premiums were not per se usurious, but legitimate compensations for loss of value. See Martín de Azpilcueta, “Commentary on the Resolution of Money,” Journal of Markets and Morality 7, no. 1 (2004) §48–50, pp. 80–83.
A creditor might actually benefit from lending money even though the purchasing power declines. In our above example, this would be so if the depreciation turned out to be 15 percent, rather than the 25 percent he had expected. In this case, the 30 percent interest he is being paid by his debtor contains three components: (1) a 5 percent pure interest rate, (2) a 15 percent price premium that compensates him for the depreciation, and (3) a 10 percent “profit.”
The same observations can be made, mutatis mutandis, for the debtors. They do not necessarily benefit from a depreciating purchasing power of money, and they can even earn a “profit” when money’s purchasing power increases if the increase turns out to be less than that on which the contractual interest rate was based. It all depends on the correctness of their expectations.
The Myth of ‘Involuntary Unemployment’
Since layoff is necessary to allow obsolete firms to decline or disappear in favor of new firms that tend to conform to the changes of individual preferences, a frictional unemployment emerges.
Obviously, unemployment caused by regulations (e.g., minimum wage, unemployment benefits, labor unions) is considered as involuntary unemployment. Economists do not deny this. But some still subscribe to the idea that frictional unemployment could be labelled involuntary unemployment as well.
Income Inequality and IQ, by Charles Murray
Charles Murray (1998)
Foreword
This study is one of a series commissioned by the American Enterprise Institute on trends in the level and distribution of U.S. wages, income, wealth, consumption, and other measures of material welfare. The issues addressed in the series involve much more than dry statistics: they touch on fundamental aspirations of the American people – material progress, widely shared prosperity, and just reward for individual effort – and affect popular understanding of the successes and shortcomings of the private market economy and of particular government policies. For these reasons, discussions of “economic inequality” in the media and political debate are often partial and partisan as well as superficial. The AEI series is intended to improve the public discussion by bringing new data to light, exploring the strengths and weaknesses of various measures of economic welfare, and highlighting important questions of interpretation, causation, and consequence.
Each study in the series is presented and discussed in draft form at an AEI seminar prior to publication by the AEI Press. Marvin Kosters, director of economic policy studies at AEI, organized the series and moderated the seminars. A current list of published studies appears on the last page.
Christopher DeMuth
President, American Enterprise Institute
Natural Monopoly and the Question of the Factors of Production
Many economists wrongly believe that a natural monopoly would emerge through price-cutting war in a free market. The cut-throat competition is a process by which a big firm can definitely (according to the theory) drive out the other competitors through price-cutting wars. They argue that this is possible simply because big firms experience lower costs of production than smaller firms due to large-scale production. When all the remaining competitors are out of the game, no one can challenge the monopoly anymore. Apart from Rothbard’s comments, there are some additional serious problems with the theory of natural monopoly.
Obsolescence programmée : un mythe programmé sur Arte
Tout récemment, un débat sur France Culture a eu lieu en ce qui concerne l’obsolescence programmée, opposant Alexandre Delaigue face à Serge Latouche. Ici, le podcast. Il fait suite à la tribune d’Econoclaste sur l’obsolescence programmée un an plus tôt.
Le mythe de l’obsolescence programmée. Alexandre Delaigue, mardi 8 mars 2011, 19:19.
Le mythe du chômage involontaire dans le marché libre
Dans la mesure où le chômage est nécessaire (Cahuc & Zylberberg 2005) pour permettre aux industries désuètes de péricliter au profit des industries nouvelles qui tendent à se conformer aux changements des préférences individuelles, un chômage frictionnel émerge.
Bien entendu, le chômage causé par les réglementations du marché du travail (salaire minimum, syndicats) est considéré comme étant involontaire. Les économistes ne le nient pas. Mais certains économistes souscrivent quand même à l’idée que le chômage frictionnel pourrait être également de nature “involontaire”.
The 1873-1879 Great Depression and the 1879-1896 Gold Standard Period : A So Horrible Deflation ?
There is a common belief among keynesians that a situation of a falling prices will result in a recession, that is, the business cycle is related to the fluctuations in prices. As we shall see, this claim is not supported by empirical evidence. Needless to say, a deflation resulting from a monetary contraction as a result of an increase in interest rate should not be confused with a deflation resulting from economic growth as a result of productivity gain. The first implies a stagnation or decline of economic growth, while the second implies an increase in economic growth where there are more goods to purchase. Regarding the “debtor-creditor injustice”, see Selgin (1988, ch. 9, pp. 106-107).
Uncertainty and Cost of the Keynesian Stimulus
Keynesians wrongly believe that government spending during recession (i.e. fiscal stimulus) will stimulate the economy to the extent that the money will put into motion the idle resources.
The Fatal Flaw of the Keynesian Multiplier Theory
The Failure of the New Economics, 1959, Henry Hazlitt.
Chapter XI
“THE MULTIPLIER”
1. The Magic of It
Let us try to find in plainer language what it is that Keynes is saying here. He explains on the next page: “It follows, therefore, that, if the consumption psychology of the community is such that they will choose to consume, e.g. nine-tenths of an increment of income, then the multiplier k is 10; and the total employment caused by (e.g.) increased public works will be ten times the primary employment provided by the public works themselves” (pp. 116-117).
What Keynes is saying, among other things, is that the more a community spends of its income, and the less it saves, the faster will its real income grow! Nor do the implications of its own logic frighten him. If a community spends none of its additional income (from, say, the increased public works), but saves all of it, then the public works will give only the additional employment that they themselves provide, and that will be the end of it. But if a community spends all of the additional income provided by the public works, then the multiplier is infinity. This would mean that a small expenditure on public works would increase income without limit, provided only that the community was not poisoned by the presence of savers.
Keynes does not hesitate to accept this deduction, but he accepts it in a peculiar form. “If, on the other hand, they [the community] seek to consume the whole of any increment of income, there will be no point of stability and prices will rise without limit” … But just how did prices get into it? The “propensity to consume,” and “the multiplier,” we have been assured up to this point, are expressed in terms of “wage-units,” which, Keynes assures us, means “real” terms and not money terms. — (p. 137)
Analyse Economique 