There is a simpler explanation for unemployment in depressions, one that dispenses with irrationality. A worker who, rather than being paid a flat wage, is paid a percentage of his firm's income would be unlikely to complain when his wage dropped in a depression; he would know that his wage was variable, and he would plan his life accordingly. But if paid a fixed wage, he is likely to count on it as a steady source of income. Since depressions are rare and have unpredictable consequences, he will not have been able to protect himself from the consequences of a depression-induced cut in his wage. He is going to be upset to find that he is working as hard or harder but being paid less, and he will not be reassured by being given a lecture on deflation and purchasing power, because he will not understand or believe it. And whereas wage cuts make the entire work force unhappy, layoffs make just the laid-off workers unhappy, and since they are no longer on the premises they do not demoralize the remaining work force by their unhappy presence. The employer, for this and other reasons--such as wanting to economize on benefits and overhead and induce the remaining workers to work harder lest they be laid off too--is likely to prefer laying off workers to cutting wages. (Unemployment insurance is a factor as well.)
This explanation for unemployment in depressions is consistent with Akerlof and Shiller in giving weight to cognitive and emotional factors (workers do not understand deflation, unhappy workers can demoralize the workplace), but it avoids jargon and condescension and the fascination with irrationality. Yet it may be too simple to please an academic economist. One reason why Keynes fell into disfavor among academic economists, and why Akerlof and Shiller want to dress him in the garb of a behavioral economist, is that although he was a brilliant economist and remains a hero of liberal economists, he was not a formal or systematic thinker. He belonged to the era before economists insisted on mathematizing the discipline. The General Theory is beautifully written--and full of loose ends and puzzling omissions. Keynes was a self-taught economist and a part-time academic. He had a rich and varied non-academic life as a government official and adviser, journalist, speculator, academic administrator, and member of the Cambridge Apostles and the Bloomsbury group. Having observed how people, including himself, behaved in the real world, he was unself-conscious about incorporating into economic theory such unsystematized and untheorized concepts as "animal spirits" (and its opposite, "liquidity preference"--the desire to hoard cash rather than spend or invest it).
The complexity of a modern economy has defeated efforts to create mathematical models that would enable depressions to be predicted and would provide guidance on how to prevent them or, failing that, to recover from them. The insights of behavioral economics have not done the trick, either. Shiller is to be commended for spotting bubbles, but few if any other behavioral economists noticed them; and he and Akerlof offer no concrete proposals for how we might recover from the current depression and prevent a future one. They want credit loosened, but so does everyone else--so did Keynes, who criticized our government for tightening credit in the early stages of the Great Depression.
We will discover soon enough whether the measures taken by the Obama administration are reviving the animal spirits of producers and consumers. The intentions are good. But the lack of focus, the partisan squabbling, the dizzying policy oscillations, the delays in execution, and the harassment of bankers are bad. By increasing the uncertainty of the business environment, these things are dampening the animal spirits--the courage to reason and act in the face of an uncertain future. Seventy-three years after the publication of The General Theory, it may still be our best guide to recovery from our present distress, not least because of its common-sense psychology.There is a simpler explanation for unemployment in depressions, one that dispenses with irrationality. A worker who, rather than being paid a flat wage, is paid a percentage of his firm's income would be unlikely to complain when his wage dropped in a depression; he would know that his wage was variable, and he would plan his life accordingly. But if paid a fixed wage, he is likely to count on it as a steady source of income. Since depressions are rare and have unpredictable consequences, he will not have been able to protect himself from the consequences of a depression-induced cut in his wage. He is going to be upset to find that he is working as hard or harder but being paid less, and he will not be reassured by being given a lecture on deflation and purchasing power, because he will not understand or believe it. And whereas wage cuts make the entire work force unhappy, layoffs make just the laid-off workers unhappy, and since they are no longer on the premises they do not demoralize the remaining work force by their unhappy presence. The employer, for this and other reasons--such as wanting to economize on benefits and overhead and induce the remaining workers to work harder lest they be laid off too--is likely to prefer laying off workers to cutting wages. (Unemployment insurance is a factor as well.)
This explanation for unemployment in depressions is consistent with Akerlof and Shiller in giving weight to cognitive and emotional factors (workers do not understand deflation, unhappy workers can demoralize the workplace), but it avoids jargon and condescension and the fascination with irrationality. Yet it may be too simple to please an academic economist. One reason why Keynes fell into disfavor among academic economists, and why Akerlof and Shiller want to dress him in the garb of a behavioral economist, is that although he was a brilliant economist and remains a hero of liberal economists, he was not a formal or systematic thinker. He belonged to the era before economists insisted on mathematizing the discipline. The General Theory is beautifully written--and full of loose ends and puzzling omissions. Keynes was a self-taught economist and a part-time academic. He had a rich and varied non-academic life as a government official and adviser, journalist, speculator, academic administrator, and member of the Cambridge Apostles and the Bloomsbury group. Having observed how people, including himself, behaved in the real world, he was unself-conscious about incorporating into economic theory such unsystematized and untheorized concepts as "animal spirits" (and its opposite, "liquidity preference"--the desire to hoard cash rather than spend or invest it).
The complexity of a modern economy has defeated efforts to create mathematical models that would enable depressions to be predicted and would provide guidance on how to prevent them or, failing that, to recover from them. The insights of behavioral economics have not done the trick, either. Shiller is to be commended for spotting bubbles, but few if any other behavioral economists noticed them; and he and Akerlof offer no concrete proposals for how we might recover from the current depression and prevent a future one. They want credit loosened, but so does everyone else--so did Keynes, who criticized our government for tightening credit in the early stages of the Great Depression.
We will discover soon enough whether the measures taken by the Obama administration are reviving the animal spirits of producers and consumers. The intentions are good. But the lack of focus, the partisan squabbling, the dizzying policy oscillations, the delays in execution, and the harassment of bankers are bad. By increasing the uncertainty of the business environment, these things are dampening the animal spirits--the courage to reason and act in the face of an uncertain future. Seventy-three years after the publication of The General Theory, it may still be our best guide to recovery from our present distress, not least because of its common-sense psychology.
Monday, April 06, 2009
Richard Posner on Rationality and Economics
Someone I know told me to read Richard Posner's review of Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, in The New Republic. An excerpt:
