The Everyday Economist

Gabriel Mihalache has criticized the views of myself and others on radical uncertainty as follows:

Some people wrongly interpreted Caplan’s point as being one about markets, so they jumped at a chance to criticize a set of complete, contingent markets, but a) this is not about markets, but rather about agents; and b) neoclassical economics can be done with incomplete markets or no markets at all!

Contingent claim markets are used in models of representative agents, so I am not sure where this criticism quite fits. The problem that I have with contingent claim markets and the use of representative agents in general equilibrium theory is far too expansive for a blog post. Similarly, I do not want to get bogged down with other elements of GE theory.

First, I would point out that the world is non-ergodic (to use a term of Doug North, Paul Davidson, and others). As the quote from Keynes in my previous post as well as the work of Schumpeter on creative destruction indicates that there is no probability distribution that exists for invention, innovation, etc. Similarly, as Doug North points out, economists treat uncertainty (as defined in the Knightian sense of the word) as though it is a rare case, when in fact, “it has been the underlying condition responsible for the evolving structure of human organization throughout history and pre-history” (Understanding the Process of Economic Change, Douglass C. North, p. 14).

Thus, ignoring the misuse of uncertainty in the general equilibrium framework, let’s use the classical example of risk and uncertainty from microeconomics. An actuarially fair insurance premium would be such that:

Premium = p*L

where p is the probability of the event and L is the loss. (We can expand this to include a risk premium, but it would not embolden our analysis). Of course, in reality, there are cases where both p and L are unknown. Suppose, for example, one wanted to purchase insurance against the risk of the price of a given commodity falling over an extended period of time. What is the likely price of that commodity 5 years hence? 3 years? 1 year? 3 months? What is the probability that the price will fall? As Keynes would say, “About these matter there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability…”

I am in no way trying to argue that models or risk and uncertainty should be abandoned. They are clearly useful in cases in which the probabilities and potential losses are explicitly known. However, we would do well to recognize that the world is not ergodic and that always and everywhere modeling it as such is an impediment to our understanding of complex human interaction.

John Tamny considers Bill Gates’ notion of ‘kind’ capitalism to be a misnomer:

Instead, capitalism is better than kind for engendering a form of ruthless benevolence whereby capital is constantly being directed away from the businesses and entrepreneurs who fail to give people what they want, and redirected toward those who are. With profit paramount in capitalist systems, capital rarely lies dormant such that its overseers can use it in ways inimical to the interests of the rich and poor alike.

[...]

Furthermore, [Greg] Clark writes that when we look at how the rich live, “their current lifestyle predicts powerfully how we will all eventually live if economic growth continues.” Sure enough, this writer experienced the shock of seeing a wealthy Beverly Hills resident talking into a bulky hand-held cell phone in the mid-‘80s, but by the new millennium cell phones were ubiquitous; the only thing remarkable about them in recent years having to do with those not in possession of one.Some, including Gates, might point to the wealth gap wrought by capitalism as a problem in and of itself, but returning to the proliferation of cell phones, capitalism is an engine that rewards profits; the profits frequently resulting from mass production of goods marketable to a broad spectrum of economic classes.

Tamny sounds downright Shumpetarian

Brad DeLong reviews Prophet of Innovation.

Also, for those interested in the biography, Russ Roberts recently interviewed the author in an EconTalk podcast.

My latest essay over at TCS Daily discusses the use of income inequality as a measure of prosperity:

Debates about income inequality continue to come to the forefront. Dani Rodrik recently claimed on his blog that market fundamentalists view “recent trends in wealth and income inequality through pink eye glasses.” Similarly, Paul Krugman has written an entire book on inequality and even claims there has been a return to the Gilded Age. These claims are clearly lacking as they are framed through a false dilemma and are predicated on a weak measure of prosperity.