Young Economist Research Articles

Money and Empire as a Contribution to the Literature on Keynes. A Problem of Interpretation

ABSTRACT John Maynard Keynes is frequently mentioned in Money and Empire, where he stands out for his book on the Indian gold exchange standard and his highly informative and perceptive account of the crisis of 1914. Based on de Cecco's book, one may be induced to think that, before WWI, Keynes was an economist deeply involved in the public life of his country and the administration of the Empire. However, this contrasts with the young economist's image that has crystallised in the literature on Keynes. In the attempt to solve this contradiction, it is possible to show that the conventional image of the young Keynes is far from satisfactory. Moreover, even though Money and Empire is not altogether reliable in presenting Keynes's ideas, this old book by Marcello de Cecco may still have a significant contribution to give in the literature on Keynes.

Top graduate programmes in economics: Historical evolution and recent evidence

AbstractThe first part of the paper provides a novel overview narrative of the historical evolution of PhD programmes in economics from 1880, drawing on multiple sources. The second part is empirical, and, also novel in terms of the data constructed. It attempts to bring the narrative up to date by looking at the cohorts of winners of the main young economist awards in economics in the US and Europe over the last twenty years or so and to chart at which universities they obtained their doctorates and undergraduate degrees. The total number of young (at the time of the award) economists so involved exceeds 350.The evolution of the American‐style PhD programme of today is traced to the emigration of European economists to the US from Nazi‐occupied Europe in the 1930s, and its subsequent spread first to Britain and then Continental Europe documented. What is new in the last twenty years or so is the emergence of many Top‐50 economics departments in Europe, with corresponding highly regarded PhD programmes. However, in relation to the recent elite young award‐winning economists the position in terms of PhD education of Harvard and MIT particularly remains largely unchallenged, in both the US and Europe.

How Arthur Smithies Was Lost to Australia

This paper discusses the case of the young Australian economist, Arthur Smithies, and how he left his homeland to begin a stellar career in North America. In offering insights into the sociology of the interwar Australian economics profession, the paper suggests that even if Smithies had been offered a professorial chair at one of Australia’s universities, he was still ambitious enough to look to America, to Michigan and beyond there to Harvard, in the pursuit of his career. While Harvard is where Smithies spent the bulk of his academic career, he did not entirely forget his homeland and its economic discourse.

Keynes Goes Nuclear: Thomas Schelling and the Macroeconomic Origins of Strategic Stability

Among the most important ideas in Cold War nuclear strategy and arms control was that of “stability”—the notion that by protecting weapons for use in retaliation, the superpowers would be less likely to fight a thermonuclear war. Conventional wisdom among strategists and historians of strategy has long held that stability was inherent to the logic of rational nuclear deterrence. This essay shows the conventional wisdom to be mistaken. It examines the technical practice of Thomas Schelling, who introduced the stability idea in a classic 1958 paper. Celebrated as a game theorist, Schelling was actually trained as a Keynesian macroeconomic modeler during the second half of the 1940s. In 1958, he used Keynesian techniques to frame deterrence as a stable system of dynamic adjustment, akin to the stable macroeconomic system he had modeled as a young economist. Among Schelling's fellow strategists, stability quickly became popular as a rationalization for their preferred nuclear deployment policies.

Mexico: Walls or Doors?

This case is about the economy of Mexico as of 2018, and particularly the challenges it faces with respect to managing its currency and inflation, the renegotiation of NAFTA, and long-term growth. The case updates students on the current economic situation in Mexico, helps students weigh the economic pros and cons of protectionism via the classic tariff supply-and-demand diagram, and encourages students to apply to Mexico previous lessons on growth, stability, and stabilization. It is designed to be used in the latter half of a first-year MBA course on international economics as an application of earlier key concepts and models (e.g., the Solow growth model, open economy IS/LM model, and balance of payments). However, while the case presupposes some knowledge of macroeconomic data, it is written to be standalone and thus could also be employed in an advanced undergraduate or master's level course on international macroeconomics or finance. Excerpt UVA-GEM-0166 Rev. Feb. 14, 2019 Mexico: Walls or Doors? In August 2018, Agustin Carstens traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to speak at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Economic Policy Symposium, one of the world's leading annual forums on international macroeconomic policy. On December 1, 2017, Carstens had become the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bank for central banks, after leaving his position as governor of Mexico's central bank, the Banco de Mexico. Carstens was likely proud of his service to Mexico, having risen through the ranks of the bank as a young economist in the 1990s before becoming the country's minister of finance in 2006 and head of the central bank in 2010. The Mexican economy he had left was very different than the one in the 1990s, a period defined by skyrocketing inflation (Exhibit 1), staggering government bond yields (Exhibit2), and a crushing, deep recession (Exhibit 3) in the wake of capital outflows (Exhibit 4) and the December 1994 Mexican peso crisis. In contrast, much of the 2000s and 2010s had seemed almost ordinary: Carstens presided over moderate inflation (Exhibit 1) and stable real economic growth (Exhibit 3). However, as Carstens reflected on his eight months at his new job in Switzerland, he must have wondered if his country's economy was, like him, at a turning point. Inflation had risen to almost 7% in late 2017, a 17-year high (Exhibit1). The current account balance had been consistently negative, and the Mexican government had been running budget deficits for years (Exhibit 5). And while the Mexican economy was growing, it wasn't experiencing explosive BRIC-style growth despite lagging behind Brazil and Argentina in GDP per capita (Exhibit6). . . .

Economics in shorts, that is the Children's University of Economics and the Academy of Young Economist

Economics in shorts, that is the Children's University of Economics and the Academy of Young Economist

Political and economics patterns of countries development and their social policy to improve the stratification of society

In this work, an attempt is made to find the ideological and chronologic connection between the studies of the problem of inequality of profits of population by Nobel Laureate in economics, Semen Kuznets, a young French economist Thomas Piketti, and other modern scientists, and by previous experiments of the prominent Ukrainian economist Mykhajlo Tugan-Baranovsky and his direct Russian students Nikolai Kondratieff and Pitirim Sorokin, who first examined the problems of social policy of the State aimed at overcoming the crisis. Sorokin was the first scientist in the world who in details investigated the dynamics of changes in social and cultural stratification and mobility of society. As a result, our research hypothesis is about the sixth empiric accuracy of Kondratieff’s K-wave, in which the descending (downward) componentincreased the economic contradictions of society, which exploded in social disasters and wars in its upward component, marked by Kondratieff in the second empiric accuracy. It should be noted that at this time the inequality in profits is being increased between developed countries and developing countries, which today include the countries of the CIS; and above all in Ukraine and Russia there is an explosive military-political situation that really threatens the safety not only of these countries, but also of the world.Article received 24.03.2016

Алтернативи на икономическото развитие на България

From September 30 to October 2, 2015 at Grifid Hotel Bolero, resort. "Alternatives to Economic Development in the XXI Century. The Academic Forum was organized by the Economics 2000 Club, the Institute of Economic Studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Varna University of Management. Until 1990, the organiser of the School was the Young Economist's Club at the Institute of Economics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), and then - its successor, the Economics 2000 Club. In this connection, the event is also connected with the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Economics 2000 Club as an independent non-governmental organization.

The improbable econometric connection - Schumpeter and Frisch at the midnight of the century

When Joseph Schumpeter and Ragnar Frisch first met in the autumn of 1927 at Harvard, both the ensuing personal friendship and the intense academic and institutional cooperation were highly unlikely. Schumpeter, who was by then preparing to leave Germany for his American life-long exile, was twelve years older than Frisch and had a previous intense career as the most frequently quoted economist in the first decades of the century, only to be shadowed later by the glittering triumph of Keynes’s ‘General Theory’. Comparatively, Frisch was just a young economist with no publications. Furthermore, Frisch invited his colleague to the most daring adventure: to create econometrics as the tool to reconstruct economics as a mathematically based social science. Surprisingly, Schumpeter, who was totally innocent of mathematics, embarked and enthusiastically supported the construction and workings of the Econometric Society, which would become the Olympus of economics since those frightful years of what a novelist called the “midnight of the century”. This paper presents some evidence on this improbable econometric connection.

Focus on Authors

Focus on Authors

“Marvellous Intellectual Feasts”: Arthur Lewis at the London School of Economics, 1933–48

This article is concerned with the decade and a half spent by the development economist Arthur Lewis at the London School of Economics between 1933 and 1948. It discusses the intellectual traditions of the institution that Lewis joined and the various influences on the young economist. His research and teaching roles in London and Cambridge are covered, together with his work for the Fabian Society and his links with the anti-imperialist movements centered in London in the 1930s and 1940s. The aim of the essay is to shed light on this highly significant but little-known period in the career of the foremost development economist.

Focus on Authors

Focus on Authors

Book Reviews

Yoram Bauman of University of Washington Program on the Environment and www.standupeconomist.com reviews “Something for Nothing: A Novel” by Michael W. Klein. The EconLit abstract of the reviewed work begins: Presents a fictional account of a young economics professor at a small college. Provides an instructive fictional guide for the young economist and an entertaining story for those interested in questions of balancing career and life, success and integrity, and loyalty and desire. Klein is William L. Clayton Professor of International Economic Affairs at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. No index.

Focus on Authors

Focus on Authors

Keynes and India, 1909–1913: a study on foreign investment policy

Keynes's work on India before the First World War concentrated on analysis of the gold exchange standard and the stabilization of the rupee external value. Indian monetary arrangements were framed into a plan for foreign investment, implemented by the India Office in London. This policy, which was a typical example of public control over investments, occasioned Keynes's first job as an applied economist. Although neglected by Keynesian scholarship, this learning by doing experience is likely to have played a significant role in the young economist's training and education.

Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects

Several months ago a young economist asked me if I could recommend a good book explaining global climate change. At the time, I couldn't think of anything appropriate for a nonscientist. Jonathan Cowie's new book can now meet this need and is especially appropriate for someone interested in human systems. As Cowie explains in his introduction, Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects is written to be accessible to undergraduates, scientists outside of the life sciences, specialists reading outside of their field, and policy makers and analysts interested in climate change and its relevance to society. In this regard, he succeeds very well.

Ragnar Frisch's business cycle approach: The genesis of the propagation and impulse model*

Business cycle analysis was at the centre of attention in economics during Ragnar Frisch's formative years as a young economist. Frisch was concerned about the inability of modern economies to prevent economic fluctuations from playing havoc with the livelihood of millions. After first studying and improving methods for analysing time series data, Frisch focused on the nature of a proper theoretical explanation of economic fluctuations. Thus, Frisch's interest was not so much business cycle analysis in the substantive sense, but the appropriate methods for analysing and explaining cycles. He is best known for the model he presented in his ‘Propagation and Impulse’ essay in the Festschrift for Gustav Cassel. Due to Frisch's incomplete publication of his work his essay may have been interpreted with too much emphasis on the content and properties of the macroeconomic model Frisch presented. His real message was to demonstrate his overall paradigm for macro analysis in economics. This article looks in more detail at Frisch's methodology and the genesis of the propagation and impulse model. The presentation is non-technical and includes some biographical details.

Enrico Moretti receives IZA Young Labor Economist Award

Enrico Moretti receives IZA Young Labor Economist Award

Piero Sraffa: emigration and scientific activity (1921 – 45)*

In this paper we shall be considering the interweave of scientific and biographical aspects of Piero Sraffa's life, specifically with regard to the correlation between those moments in which his condition as an emigrant assumed particular relevance and three turning points of his scientific activity: his decision to undertake a career as an academic economist, which we guess was taken approximately in the Spring of 1923; his discovery of the equations to be developed in the systems presented in 1960 in his book, most probably in November 1927; and his decision to assume the editorship of the writings of David Ricardo, approximately in February 1930. We have chosen to confine our research to the period between Piero Sraffa's first sojourn abroad as a young economist and the Second World War.

AR(1) MODELS, UNIT ROOTS, AND ADJUSTED PROFILE LIKELIHOOD

An unobserved components and a conventional first-order autoregressive (AR) model with constant are analyzed with the adjusted profile likelihood of Cox and Reid (1987, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 49, 1–39; 1993, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 55, 467–71). Both the unobserved components model and the Cox–Reid adjustment can provide more accurate estimates of an AR coefficient of unity. The unobserved components model yields more powerful unit-root tests. In general the most powerful test utilizes the adjustment. Under the unobserved components model the adjusted statistics follow the asymptotic distributions better than the unadjusted.The basis of this research is my D. Phil. thesis (1997) for the University of Oxford. I am grateful to David Hendry for supervision and to Pentti Saikkonen for most helpful advice. I appreciate also the CBRT Young Economist Award with which I was honored after presenting a previous version at the 1998 erc/METU International Conference on Economics. I remain responsible for any errors. Financial support by the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation and Academy of Finland is gratefully acknowledged.