Request for help

by John Q on March 11, 2005

Although I read quite a bit, one thing I always have difficulty with is suggesting good readings on topics, or knowing who originally proposed some idea. I think this has something to do with the fact that I tend to flit from one topic to another, picking up ideas but rarely doing a proper review of the literature. In any case, I’ve been asked to suggest some readings and so I thought I’d pass this request on to any readers who can help me[1]. What I’d like is either an original/early source for various concepts or a more recent summary discussion, ideally one accessible to an intelligent general reader. Anyone with useful suggestions gets an acknowledgement in my forthcoming Oxford Handbook chapter which is, literally, priceless.

Here’s my list of terms

* Crowding out
* Twin deficits hypothesis
* Shadow price
* Golden rule (for budgeting in UK and elsewhere)
* Globalisation
* Crony capitalism

Thanks in advance for any help

fn1. There is a piece of blog jargon for what I’m doing here, but I refuse to even mention it. As Belle said on this point a while back, if we keep going this way, we might as well just change the word “post” to “smegma” and have done with it.

{ 14 comments }

1

Kieran Healy 03.11.05 at 11:25 pm

Crowding out:

* Titmuss, R. (1970): The Gift Relationship, London, Allen & Unwin.

* Deci, E. L. (1971). Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 18, 105-115.

* Solow, R. (1971): “Blood and Thunder”, Yale Law Journal, 80(2), 170-83.

* Arrow, K.J. (1972): “Gifts and Exchanges”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(2), 343-62.

* Frey, B., F. Oberholzer-Gee & R. Eichenberger (1997): “The Old Lady Visits Your Backyard: a tale of morals and markets”, Journal of Political Economy, 104 (6), 1297-1313.

* Frey, B. & F. Oberholzer-Gee (1997): “The Cost of Price Incentives: an Empirical Analysis of Motivation Crowding-Out”, American Economic Review, 87 (4), 746-755.

* Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 627-668.

* Frey, B. & R. Jegen (2001): “Motivation Crowding Theory”, Journal of Economic Surveys, 15, 589-611.

2

John Quiggin 03.11.05 at 11:37 pm

I didn’t realise there was such a big literature on motivation crowding out. I had an amateur go at this point a while back, but as usual, dozens have been there before me. Thanks, Kieran.

In this context, though, what I want is the argument that budget deficits crowd out private investment (i think this use predates the use in relation to motivation).

3

glory 03.12.05 at 1:09 am

kantorovich & koopmans won a nobel prize for linear programming and ‘shadow prices’ in 1975. here’s an intro, kantorovich’s lecture and
koopmans’ lecture [pdf].

on globalisation, alan greenspan (believe it or not) did an adequate (if tendentious) job just the other day :D — “the extension of the division of labor and specialization beyond national borders” — and should fit the bill as a more recent summary discussion.

cheers!

4

P O'Neill 03.12.05 at 12:56 pm

One issue with the shadow price discussion is how much you want to get into the calculus interpretation of the shadow price. Avinash Dixit’s Optimisation Theory book (I think in 2nd edition now) has some nice discussion in the early chapters on the multiplier/shadow price concepts, but he is using more calculus for it all than might be appropriate for a general audience.

5

ach53 03.12.05 at 3:09 pm

I’ve heard shadow prices and the household model attributed to Chayanov, but I’m not sure if he’s the first to come up with the idea of shadow prices.

It’s also interesting to think of shadow prices in relation to the Everquest economy, the labor-leisure trade-off priced by ebay items…

6

Kevin Donoghue 03.12.05 at 4:48 pm

On crowding out: this article traces the origins of the “Treasury View” which Churchill deployed against Keynes:

http://www.nsu.ac.jp/econ/staff/komine/hope/Peden0.pdf

7

Giles 03.12.05 at 5:00 pm

First use of the term (although I suspect it isn’t the first

Friends in Need,” Time Magazine, August 24, 1981 on the Philippines and Marcos

Review Article on Phillipnes:-

Review: Oligarchs and Cronies in the Philippine State: The Politics of Patrimonial Plunder Paul D. Hutchcroft World Politics > Vol. 43, No. 3 (Apr., 1991), pp. 414-450
Politics of Plunder: The Philippines under Marcos. by Belinda A. Aquino
Unequal Alliance: The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Philippines. by Robin Broad
The Philippine State and the Marcos Regime: The Politics of Export. by Gary Hawes
Filipino Politics: Development and Decay. by David Wurfel

Article (on Asian Crisis)
Economic crisis in East Asia: the clash of capitalisms
C Johnson Camb. J. Econ., Nov 1998; 22: 653 – 661.

Crony Capitalism: American Style Ullmann, Owen, International Economy, vol. 13, no. 4, July-Aug. 1999, pp. 6-11

Crony capitalism American-style by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Global Policy Feb 2002

8

Ryan Gage 03.12.05 at 7:03 pm

Globalisation:

You really should start with Brink Lindsey’s book. The early chapters will lead you to all sorts of sources.

Others:

On early mentions of globality by Durkheim and Hobhouse, see page 21 of Scholte, J.A. (1993) _The International Relations of Social Change_, Buckingham: Open University Press.

On int’l econ before WW1, see Eichengreen, Barry (1992) _Golden Fetters_, New York, OUP; as well as Lewis, W. Arthur (1978) _Growth And Fluctuations 1870-1913_, London, Allen and Unwin.

In 1926 the Fabians in London had a conference/lecture series titled ‘The Shrinking World’, which you can find an account of starting at p. 97 in Toynbee, A. (1948) _Civilisation on Trial_, Oxford, OUP.

You could also look at Marx’s ideas of transnational/supraterritorial capitalism, which are threaded throughout his work.

9

radek 03.13.05 at 3:49 am

The New School, as always on history of economic ideas, has a pretty good overview on crowding out (though not much of it):
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/essays/keynes/deficit.htm
(Note the “Defictis don’t matter. Abba Lerner showed us” view)

10

Tom Geraghty 03.13.05 at 4:32 am

The New School also has a page that looks relevant to “shadow prices.”
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/essays/get/waldsys.htm#inequalities

R. Dorfman, P.A. Samuelson and R.M. Solow (1958) Linear Programming and Economic Analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill, I would imagine has a good discussion of the concept.

11

Daniel 03.13.05 at 2:04 pm

Michael Ellman’s “Soviet Planning Today” is a nice off-the-wall ref. for “shadow prices”; Kantorovich and the rest of the Soviet Academy mob who invented linear programming had to come up with all sorts of inventive circumlocutions to avoid describing the slack factors in a linear model in a way which made them sound like prices.

12

radek 03.13.05 at 7:49 pm

that’s “which didn’t made them sound like prices”, right? The term he used was “objectively determined evaluations” which I guess was more Marxist sounding.
There’s a little bit on this at the New School too, under the discussion of the Wald System,
at:
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/essays/get/waldsys.htm
about a third way through, right after the discussion of the “complementary slackness condition”.

13

radek 03.13.05 at 8:00 pm

Hmmm, Tom’s message wasn’t there a second ago when I wrote mine. Anyway, in general and slightly OT, I’d just like to state that one can waste a whole day reading the New School HET website in a prolonged fit of intellectual goofing off. It’s really really good stuff, even if they are damned Post Keynsians.
http://homepage.newschool.edu/het/

14

Daniel Bachman 03.16.05 at 2:16 pm

On the twin deficits, try the U.S. Economic Report of the President from 1984 (if I remember the year correctly). The next year, after Martin Feldstein had left the Council of Economic Advisors, the Report featured a chapter that contradicted the previous year’s thesis!
I believe Feldstein also outlined the twin deficits idea in a Foreign Affairs article about the same time. Sorry I don’t have the exact reference.

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