Knowledge that Transforms

The book Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them, by Joshua Greene, invites the reader to give a new look at the foundation of ethics and, by implication, to policy. Its specific strength is the systematic integration of new methods from neuroscience into a very old debate. Having something new and substantial to add in an investigation that has been at the center of the philosophical debate in Western civilization for twenty-five centuries is remarkable. While I invite everyone to read and enjoy this wonderful book, I take here the opportunity to invite economists to take the challenge. We are particularly interested in the question, “Is there a specific contribution that economics can give to this debate?” I believe there is and this insight is now in danger of being lost. This is my attempt to indicate where the research should look now. Maybe it is not too late. (JEL D12, D63, D87, Z13)

In The Curse of Cash, Rogoff (2016) makes two arguments. (i) Large denominations of currency are primarily used for illegal activity. Therefore, eliminating them would have benefits that far outweigh the costs in terms of lost seigniorage. (ii) The zero lower bound (ZLB) on the interest rate implied by the possibility of holding large amounts of currency is a costly constraint on central-bank policy. The best way to eliminate the ZLB is to eliminate all but small denominations of currency, ten dollars and lower, and to have those be in the form of coins. The style of the book, no models and no symbols, works fairly well for (i), but not so well for (ii). For (ii), the author is unclear about a crucial matter: what fiscal policy accompanies alternative interest-rate settings chosen by the central bank? ( JEL E26, E42, E43, E52, E58, E62)

I review The End of Alchemy by Mervyn King, published by W. W. Norton and Company in 2016. I discuss King’s proposed regulatory reform, the “pawnbroker for all seasons” (PFAS), and I compare it to an alternative solution developed in my own work. I argue that unregulated trade in the financial markets will not, in general, lead to Pareto-optimal allocations. As a consequence, solutions like the PFAS that correct problems with existing institutions are likely to be circumvented by the development of new ones. (JEL D81, D82, E44, G01, G18, G28, L51)

We survey the literature on estimating risk preferences using field data. We concentrate our attention on studies in which risk preferences are the focal object and estimating their structure is the core enterprise. We review a number of models of risk preferences—including both expected utility (EU) theory and non-EU models—that have been estimated using field data, and we highlight issues related to identification and estimation of such models using field data. We then survey the literature, giving separate treatment to research that uses individual-level data (e.g., property-insurance data) and research that uses aggregate data (e.g., betting-market data). We conclude by discussing directions for future research. ( JEL C51, D11, D81, D82, D83, G22, I13)

Bruce M. S. Campbell's The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World is a significant contribution to the growing literature that traces the roots of Europe's economic rise to the climatic and population shocks of the late medieval period. This review essay discusses the empirical, historical, and theoretical support for Campbell's view while highlighting that it struggles to explain why these positive effects were limited to Europe. It then hypothesizes that Europe's differential response to this shock reflected prior institutional advantages and provides some preliminary empirical evidence in support of this hypothesis. The essay concludes by examining Campbell's claim that these shocks contributed to Atlantic Europe's rise prior to the colonial period. ( JEL I15, J11, J13, N13, N33, Q54)

The importance of evolutionary forces for comparative economic performance across societies has been the focus of a vibrant literature, highlighting the roles played by the Neolithic Revolution and the prehistoric "out of Africa" migration of anatomically modern humans in generating worldwide variations in the composition of human traits. This essay provides an overview of the literature on the macrogenoeconomics of comparative development, underscoring the significance of evolutionary processes and of human population diversity in generating differential paths of economic development across societies. Furthermore, it examines the contribution of a recent hypothesis set forth by Nicholas Wade, regarding the evolutionary origins of comparative development, to this important line of research.

This essay reviews Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, which triggered a huge controversy that virally spread on the Internet and in various journals. We will evaluate MacLean’s almost biographical account of James Buchanan, which portrays the 1986 Nobel Prize laureate as the mastermind behind today’s attacks, by the foot soldiers of the radical right, on American democracy. This essay develops three main points. One, MacLean’s general narrative puts too much emphasis on Buchanan and largely neglects the many other important characters who contributed to the intellectual criticism of government intervention. Two, MacLean’s account is marred by many misunderstandings about public choice theory, for instance about the role that simple majority rule plays in constitutional economics. Third, in the midst of abundant archival material, her historical narrative is, at best, sketchy, and is replete with significantly flawed arguments, misplaced citations, and dubious conjectures. Overall, MacLean tends to overinterpret certain aspects in Buchanan’s life and thought, while she overlooks others that are equally important in understanding his work and influence. In particular, we stress that Buchanan was, first and foremost, a scholar, not a political activist, who gave significant attention to ethical considerations in his analysis of markets. ( JEL A11, B21, B31, D72, K00, N42)

This timely volume (Global Tax Fairness, edited by Thomas Pogge and Krishen Mehta) on the proper taxation of multinational enterprises argues that several feasible, near-term reforms could substantially narrow the scope for tax avoidance by closing information gaps, and it proposes more ambitious, long-term reforms that pursue coordination on the design, not just the enforcement, of tax policy. The editors construct an impassioned normative case that (legal) avoidance violates fairness because its negative effects fall especially hard on the world's poor, but their case could be bolstered by an appeal to the classical benefit-based logic behind the central aim of the reforms they recommend. (JEL D63, F23, H25, H87, K34).

I review William N. Goetzmann’s Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible. This magnificent book offers insightful coverage of more than 5,000 years of human history under the theme of “how finance made civilization possible.” I reinterpret its main hypotheses in the context of recent economic research on finance and development, and also compare them with other economic historians’ views. I suggest that further examinations of the historical facts in the book could guide us in rethinking financial regulation. ( JEL E42, E44, G00, N20)

This essay reviews Michel De Vroey’s important new book on the history of macroeconomics, which extends to business cycles an earlier book by the same author on the history of involuntary unemployment. The review also offers a broader nontechnical survey of the issues and models that make up modern macroeconomics, including a reckoning of what we have learned since John Maynard Keynes and of the discoveries that still lie ahead. ( JEL B22, B41, E12, E13, E32)