Suchergebnisse

This article critiques current undergraduate economics textbooks' treatment of externalities. Despite a tremendous scholarly pushback since 1920 to Pigou's path-breaking writings, modern textbook authors fail to synthesize important critiques and extensions of externality theory and policy. The typical textbook treatment (a) does not distinguish pecuniary from technological externalities, (b) is silent about the invisible hand's unintended and emergent consequences as a positive externality, (c) emphasizes negative relative to positive externalities, (d) ignores Coase's critique of Pigouvian tax "solutions," and (e) presents policy "solutions" to negative externalities that ignore inframarginal external benefits that may render "solutions" harmful to social welfare. Aside from attention to "The Coase Theorem" (excerpted from only about four pages of Coase's voluminous writings), the typical textbook today discusses little of the scholarly critique that emerged in response to Pigou's anti-market polemic. Imparting economics students with Pigouvian biases is potentially harmful to both them and society because it leaves them ill-prepared to critically assess policy proposals that are alleged to solve externality problems.

A definitive scholarly edition of the correspondence and papers of Thomas JeffersonJefferson continues his pattern of returning home to Monticello for the summer months. He makes a brief visit to Poplar Forest in Bedford County to plan the development of that property. James Hubbard, a young enslaved worker at Monticello, escapes but is captured in Fairfax County. Another slave who has fled, James Hemings, rejects efforts to persuade him to return and disappears. Receiving news of the end of the conflict with Tripoli, Jefferson states that although it is "a small war in fact, it is big in principle." He devotes much of his attention to relations with Spain. He considers alliance with Great Britain to force a resolution with Spain, then chooses instead to negotiate with France for the purchase of Florida and settlement of matters in dispute with Spain. He drafts bills to organize the militia by age and create a naval militia. Specimens sent by Lewis and Clark arrive. Jefferson calculates that the United States has recently acquired cessions of well over 9 million acres of land from Native Americans. He meets with visiting Creek leaders. Answering a query, Jefferson states that Patrick Henry was "the greatest orator that ever lived" but "avaritious & rotten hearted."

Closed-system circular flow models have been ubiquitous in economics for at least half a century. Because these models account for neither new-product R&D, nor the attendant leakages and injections, they obscure understanding of (a) the distinction between new-product and process R&D, (b) the circular flow leakages and injections attending new-product R&D, and (c) Schumpeterian "creative destruction" and "swarming." To shed light upon these matters, we present an open-system circular flow model and a price theoretic explanation of the swarming overinvestment that characterizes business cycle downturns. JEL Classifications: B20, O31, E30