Lista de preocupações econômicas, 1798-2016
Autor: Drunkeynesian | Publicado: 2016-09-19T21:17:00-03:00



Deste discurso de Deirdre McCloskey, para quem a economia deve voltar a ser a "ciência otimista da riqueza" ao invés da "ciência pessimista da escassez" – e para quem as imperfeições da economia de mercado não impediram o mundo de enriquecer boa parte de uma população sete vezes maior do que em 1800 (e vão continuar não impedindo):

1. Malthus worried that workers would proliferate and2. Ricardo worried that the owners of land would engorge the national product.3. Marx worried, or celebrated, depending on how one views historicalmaterialism, that owners of capital would at least make a brave attempt toengorge it.4. Mill worried, or celebrated, depending on how one views the sick hurry ofmodern life, that the stationary state was around the corner. Then theeconomists, many on the left but some also on the right, in quick succession1848 to the present—at the same time that trade-tested betterment wasdriving real wages up and up and up by a factor of anywhere from 30 to 100,3,000 to 10,000 percent—commenced worrying about, to name a few of thegrounds for imperfections and pessimisms they discerned concerning”capitalism”:5. greed (offensive to Christians)6. alienation (as in the Young Marx)7. the uneducated taste of the workers in consumption8. the drinking habits of the workers (thus Knut Wicksell; Irving Fisher)9. infant industries (List in Germany, Carey in the United States)10. national histories of economies, as against “English” economics (the GermanHistorical School)11. lack of bargaining strength by the workers12. racial impurity13. women working14. immigration of lesser breeds15. the race to the bottom in wages and the eugenic solution (advocated by mostof the American economics profession c. 1900)16. neoclassical theory being insufficiently evolutionary (Veblen; Alchian)17. monopoly and the trusts (see Hovenkamp’s article on “the first law andeconomics movement”)18. imperialism, the last stage of capitalism (Lenin; Hobson)19. imperialism as robbery20. adulterated food if no regulation21. Veblen effects: demand curve slopes up22. unemployment (a new word with Beveridge’s book of 1909)23. lack of coordination (rationalization in the 1920s)24. the government is wise and good, unlike self-interested markets25. business cycles (eventually Schumpeter; Hayek; Keynes)26. underinvestment in increasing-returns industries (as Pigou argued)27. externalities28. under-consumption (dating back to Malthus and the general glut; thenKeynes; now the neo-Keynesians)29. monopolistic competition30. separation of ownership from control (Berle and Means)31. lack of planning (vs. Mises)32. the economy is embedded in society (Karl Polanyi)33. price-fixing markets are only recent, and optional (Karl Polanyi; vs. MichaelPolanyi)34. post-War stagnationism (Keynes, Hansen)35. investment spillovers36. unbalanced growth (Hirschman; French indicative planning)37. capital insufficiency (Harrod/Domar/Solow models; William Easterly on“capital fundamentalism”)38. businesspeople do not price by marginal cost or marginal revenue, but byaverage plus markups39. predatory pricing leads to monopoly40. few competitors in an “industry” leads away from price = marginal cost41. absence of entrepreneurs in certain cultures42. dual labor markets (W. Arthur Lewis)43. cost-push inflation (Otto Eckstein)44. capital-market imperfections45. peasant irrationality (vs. Theodore Schultz)46. cultural irrationality47. economic behavior has motives beyond self-interest48. low-level traps, cycle of poverty (W. Arthur Lewis)49. prisoner’s dilemma (and much later Elinor Ostrom’s reply)50. failure to define property rights (Alchian, Demsetz, Coase: one of a few, likethose immediately following here, from the political right)51. overfishing (H. Scott Gordon [195X] and Anthony Scott [1955])52. tragedy of the commons (Garrett Hardin)53. over-population (Hardin’s motive)54. transaction costs (Coase)55. public goods cannot be supplied privately (Samuelson; vs. Coase, Demsetz)56. public choice (Buchanan, Tullock)57. regulatory capture (ICC case Gabriel Kolko; Stigler)58. free riding (Mancur Olson)59. missing markets (George Akerlof; Joseph Stiglitz)60. the Cambridge capital controversy and the undefinability of capital (PieroSraffa; Joan Robinson; Geoffrey Harcourt; see above, Ricardo)61. informational asymmetry (Akerlof)62. unions as good monopolies (H. Gregg Lewis tested it 1955-1980)63. third-world exploitation (see above, imperialism)64. advertising (Galbraith)65. public underinvestment (Galbraith)66. fine tuning of the economy can work67. large scale econometric models are the way forward68. the invisible hand is mere magic unless proven mathematically69. the conditions sufficient in logic for invisible-hand results are unreasonable(Hahn; Arrow; Debreu)70. false trades out of equilibrium make it impossible to conclude that supply =demand is optimal71. any imperfection throws economic analysis into a hopeless world of secondbest72. all policy arguments, such as the effect of minimum wages, must beexpressed in general equilibrium, or else they are inconclusive73. most economic propositions, such as downward sloping demand curves, areonly provable econometrically74. most econometric results have serious flaws75. history is irrelevant: what matters is the future76. history is decisive: what matters is the past77. middle-income trap78. path dependency (Paul David)79. the economy is a complex system, with chaos and catastrophe80. worker cooperatives are always better than corporations, but are lamentablyrare81. lack of international competitiveness82. consumerism (see above, bad taste of workers)83. consumption externalities (Robert Frank)84. unemployment and inefficiency results from menu costs in the productmarket (neo-Keynesian neoclassicism)85. knowledge has zero opportunity cost, but is expensive to produce (PaulRomer)86. irrationality (behavioral economics)87. irrational entrepreneurs (Schumpeter; Keynes; Akerlof and Schiller)88. hyperbolic discounting89. too big to fail90. environmental degradation91. underpaying of care workers (Nancy Folbre)92. GDP is a poor indicator of anything important93. prices are influenced by an unjust distribution of income, and therefore areirrelevant to policy for a just society94. profit is against people; profit vs. social well-being95. overpayment of CEOs96. artificially high wages cause labor-saving innovation (Kaldor; Habakkuk;Allen; Robert Reich)97. the government has innovated most (Mazzucatto)98. any imperfection—orphan drugs, for example—shows that capitalism is badon balance, even if the imperfection is caused by government99. neo-liberalism has impoverished people worldwide100. neo-stagnationism (Tyler Cowen; Robert Gordon 2016 )101. rising inequality in future (Thomas Piketty)



A lista também deve servir como um superteste de História do Pensamento Econômico. Um dia consigo entender tudo.