AbstractLast year, 2020, was the 50th anniversary of the opening of the 'Chilean road to socialism' by Salvador Allende. Although the Allende government is the political reference for the 'socialism of the 21st century' in Latin America, international supporters tend to disregard the primary cause of its downfall, focusing instead on the circumstances of Allende's death. This article explains the link between the Allende government's development policies and its macroeconomic outcomes between 1970 and 1973. It finds that Chile's economic collapse had an endogenous cause related to government policies. This supports the views of Mises and Hayek on the feasibility of socialist economic policies. Policymakers and commentators should recognise essential lessons from the Chilean experience to learn from past errors and effectively promote Latin America's economic development.
Behavioral development economics promotes the nudge theory as a mechanism to incorporate people's cognitive biases, steering their behavior in the desired direction through coercive state intervention. Cognitive biases become a reason to doubt the efficiency of decision-making psychology in the free market process. A fundamental assumption of this approach is that political decision-makers know the people's means and ends in ways that protect them from cognitive biases. This article reviews and discusses the nudge theory, based on the boost theory developed by the Austrian School of Economics. The boost theory consists of a comparative institutional perspective to provide the empowerment people need to realize their errors and correct them "on the fly" to cultivate economic development. It is argued that the nudge theory overlooks the cognitive biases of political decision-makers, neglects the comparative perspective of the institutional environment in the face of such biases, and does not consider how construction of on-the-fly judgments works. After reviewing the principles of the nudge theory, its main criticisms from the boost theory are discussed, forming novel conclusions about and research avenues on behavioral development economics, according to the steering or empowering quality of the institutional environment.
The analysis of sustainable economic growth and development often focuses on how to control the market process through coercive state intervention. While state interventionism may play a significant role in countries&rsquo ; progress, entrepreneurship is the driving force behind sustainable growth and development. Entrepreneurship is the people&rsquo ; s judgment on ideas, plans, and projects, which promises profit in uncertain times. Its effects are the creation and transmission of information and social coordination as a dynamic process of identifying and solving human problems. Sustainable development is the widening range of entrepreneurial alternatives open to people, and sustainable growth is a phase of sustainable development that depends on genuine savings to finance increasingly capital-intensive production structures. The degree to which people are entrepreneurs and the direction genuine savings take depend on institutional arrangements. Some institutions are more conducive to sustainable growth and development than others. After reviewing principles of growth and development sustainability, how coercive state intervention influences economic performance is discussed, proposing novel policy conclusions and research avenues to cultivate entrepreneurship and genuine savings in a post-COVID-19 world.
The Austrian school economics and neo-Marxist theories both have been reviving in recent years. However, the current academic discussion lacks a debate between two schools of economics with diametrically opposed views. This paper is the first and an initial Austrian challenge to Neo-Marxist scholars Nieto and Mateo's argumentation that cyber-communism and the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency are consistent to enhance economic development. Their argument focuses on two issues: (a) the existence of circular reasoning in the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency, and (b) dynamic efficiency and full economic development could be strongly promoted in a socialist system through new information and communication technologies (ICT) and the democratization of all economic life. While cyber-communism refers to cyber-planning without private property rights through ICT, dynamic efficiency refers to the entrepreneurs' creative and coordinative natures. In this paper, first, we argue that the hypothesis that dynamic efficiency and cyber-communism is not compatible. Contrary to the above cyber-communist criteria, the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency argues that to impede private property rights is to remove the most powerful entrepreneurial incentive to create and coordinate profit opportunities, the entrepreneurial incentives to create and coordinate profit opportunities are removed to identify human problems and the ability and willingness to solve them. Second, we argue that the cyber-communism system is inconsistent with economic development. In this regard, we explain how the institutional environment can cultivate or stifle dynamic efficiency and economic development. Having briefly outlined the central argument of Nieto and Mateo, we examine the institutional arrangement supporting cyber-communism. After that, we evaluate the implications of cyber-communism in the dynamic efficiency process. It becomes manifest that Nieto and Mateo's accounts are too general to recognize the complexity of how economic development works.
AbstractThis article examines the political economy of fiscal dominance during the Chilean government (1970–73) of Salvador Allende. Fiscal dominance appears when the monetary authority complies with the fiscal authority's demand to buy treasury bonds and monetise the deficit. It is argued that persistent fiscal dominance is inflationary, especially without robust fiscal and monetary rules. The Allende government financed the deficit with present taxes, debt (future taxes) and monetary issuance (inflation tax), causing the crowding‐out effect and, together with other policies such as expropriation and price controls, collapsed the demand for money, triggering hyperinflation. The lessons of Chile clarify the fiscal trigger of the inflation, stagnation, and widespread poverty that has affected Latin American countries in recent decades.
The aim of this theoretical research is to analyze the state of retail distribution nowadays, reviewing the dynamics of action that contribute to the move from a linear to an incipient circular retail model. The framework is based on the Retail Wheel Spins Theory and the Retail Life Cycle (RLC), with an extra review of Bauman's liquid metaphor. We consider two questions. Firstly, are offline retailers ready to disappear as online commerce and digital marketing aggressively break into the retail industry? Secondly, could commercial spaces (in the fifth stage in the evolution of retail and territory) be in the decline stage in the RLC in the near future or can a circular connection take place? Thus, a desk research methodology based on secondary documentary material and sources issued leads to an interpretive analysis that reveals ten trends (e.g., solid retail vs. liquid retail; glocal retail; food sovereignty) and a wide diversity of changes that could involve offline stores recovering territory and entering a circular phase. Our findings suggest that digitalized physical stores are flourishing and our reflections augur changes in pace and the closure of the linear business cycle to recover territory, the city, its local market, and its symbolism, as well as a liquid business steeped in omnichannel formats developing an incipient circular movement. Conclusions indicate that it is possible to perceive a timid change back to territory and retail spaces which, along with phygitalization, will coexist with the digital world.
The Austrian school economics and neo-Marxist theories both have been reviving in recent years. However, the current academic discussion lacks a debate between two schools of economics with diametrically opposed views. This paper is the first and an initial Austrian challenge to Neo-Marxist scholars Nieto and Mateo's argumentation that cyber-communism and the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency are consistent to enhance economic development. Their argument focuses on two issues: (a) the existence of circular reasoning in the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency, and (b) dynamic efficiency and full economic development could be strongly promoted in a socialist system through new information and communication technologies (ICT) and the democratization of all economic life. While cyber-communism refers to cyber-planning without private property rights through ICT, dynamic efficiency refers to the entrepreneurs' creative and coordinative natures. In this paper, first, we argue that the hypothesis that dynamic efficiency and cyber-communism is not compatible. Contrary to the above cyber-communist criteria, the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency argues that to impede private property rights is to remove the most powerful entrepreneurial incentive to create and coordinate profit opportunities. Second, we argue that the cyber-communism system is inconsistent with economic development. In this regard, we explain how the institutional environment can cultivate or stifle dynamic efficiency and economic development. Having briefly outlined the central argument of Nieto and Mateo, we examine the institutional arrangement supporting cyber-communism. After that, we evaluate the implications of cyber-communism in the dynamic efficiency process. It becomes manifest that Nieto and Mateo's accounts are too general to recognize the complexity of how economic development works.
This paper provides a theoretical framework to explore how the support policies for renewable energies can promote rent-seeking incentives in private firms. We develop a political economy of rent-seeking that considers the link between the regulatory decisions of political agents and the potential scope of socially wasteful pursuits. We argue that systematic public support schemes bring rent-seeking as a perception shared by entrepreneurs that influencing political allocations of resources is an essential and potentially preferable source of private profit than other for-profit economic avenues. As evidence of our claims, the framework is applied to the case of Spain to illustrate the economic effects of support policies on the production and distribution of renewable energy. We find rent-seeking behavior in Spain's renewable energy industry, and precisely that: (i) political regulations have induced market concentration and rent-seeking in renewable energy firms, (ii) these firms have required increasing regulations and premiums to survive, and (iii) energy consumers are forced to pay rent-seeking through increasingly expensive electricity bills. The analysis reveals some challenges and opportunities to drive efficient market-based policies to strengthen entrepreneurial competition and curb rent-seeking behavior. These insights have relevant proposals for the Spanish energy industry in complying with the EU Green Deal through a sustainable transition and comprehensive growth.
In 1690, Alonso de Leon arrived in East Texas to establish two missions among the Asinai. He was accompanied by Fr. Fontcuberta, Fr. Casanas, Fr. Bordoy, Fr. Massanet, and Brother Antonio. Fr. Massanet returned to Mexico to inform the Viceroy about the trip, and came back to East Texas with Teran de Los Rios in August 1691. Fr. Fontcuberta died in February 1691 of an epidemic that, according to Fr. Casanas, killed about 3,000 natives in the area. Fr. Casanas who died in New Mexico in 1696, left us the first intimate view of the Caddoan-speaking groups in East Texas. Casanas Relacion was written in spurts and delivered to Teran de los Rios in August 1691. The Teran expedition brought to the Asinai Fr. Hidalgo who stayed about two years. In 1716, Fr. Hidalgo returned to Texas with Fr. Espinosa. While in the Asinai Province, the social conditions, the environment for learning and the interests of the three friars were quite different. We have found little archival material from Hidalgo, and Espinosa s style and education provide a disengaged narrative that loses flavor and re-uses some of the material provided by the other friars. The arrival of the Spaniards did not match native expectations. The Asinai wanted a Spanish community composed of families that would live side-by-side with them and would provide a measure of protection and prestige, as well as trade opportunities. Instead they got seven single males: four friars and three soldiers. Casanas grappled with a new language and its dialects, unfamiliar social and religious practices, a major epidemic in 1691 that deeply affected the relationship between Europeans and Natives, and very poor harvests in 1691 and 1692. His Relacion, which serves as a colonial baseline, was created while learning, attempting to proselytize and surviving. Casanas Relacion is constructed from several kinds of knowledge: what he saw, experienced, and was told. Casanas did not travel beyond the Asinai Province, nor could he: most of the time there were only two other friars and three soldiers, and between February and August 1691 Casanas was left with one companion and two soldiers. At first, Casanas was at Mission San Francisco de los Tejas because he only established Mission Santisimo Nombre de Maria (hereafter shown as S.N. de Maria) in October 1690. From 1690 through 1691 he probably remained at S. N. de Maria where he was met by Teran on August 4. 1691. Unlike Hidalgo and Espinosa, most of the information related by Casanas concerns the political and religious structure and the practices of the people in the Asinai Province. In this article I will concentrate on two issues: first, what can we learn about the location of the nations belonging to the Asinai Province using the archival materials from these friars, and second what cosmological and religious changes occurred between the period of Casanas and Hidalgo, and the period of Hidalgo and Espinosa. I should add that all the evidence to be presented, except for obvious exceptions. is based completely on the archival materials mentioned.
The Austrian school economics and neo-Marxist theories both have been reviving in recent years. However, the current academic discussion lacks a debate between two schools of economics with diametrically opposed views. This paper is the first and an initial Austrian challenge to NeoMarxist scholars Nieto and Mateo's argumentation that cyber-communism and the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency are consistent to enhance economic development. Their argument focuses on two issues: (a) the existence of circular reasoning in the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency, and (b) dynamic efficiency and full economic development could be strongly promoted in a socialist system through new information and communication technologies (ICT) and the democratization of all economic life. While cyber-communism refers to cyber-planning without private property rights through ICT, dynamic efficiency refers to the entrepreneurs' creative and coordinative natures. In this paper, first, we argue that the hypothesis that dynamic efficiency and cyber-communism is not compatible. Contrary to the above cyber-communist criteria, the Austrian theory of dynamic efficiency argues that to impede private property rights is to remove the most powerful entrepreneurial incentive to create and coordinate profit opportunities, the entrepreneurial incentives to create and coordinate profit opportunities are removed to identify human problems and the ability and willingness to solve them. Second, we argue that the cyber-communism system is inconsistent with economic development. In this regard, we explain how the institutional environment can cultivate or stifle dynamic efficiency and economic development. Having briefly outlined the central argument of Nieto and Mateo, we examine the institutional arrangement supporting cyber-communism. After that, we evaluate the implications of cyber-communism in the dynamic efficiency process. It becomes manifest that Nieto and Mateo's accounts are too general to recognize the complexity of how economic development works.
