In December 1819 Jean-Baptiste Say was one of a group of political economists and businesspeople who founded “Ecole Spéciale de Commerce et d’Industrie”, in Paris. Their practical experience and commitment to liberal ideas established a new type of academic model, pioneering the modern business school. Over the last 200 years the school has undergone a number of innovations, most notably with the merger in 1999 with EAP to form a multi-campus model operating throughout Europe. Combining a European identity with a global perspective, ESCP Europe now stands as a triple accredited and highly ranked establishment. JB Say held the first Chair in Economics, and 200 years later this colloquium uses his intellectual legacy as the host for an appraisal of his ideas and influence.
Attendance is strictly by invitation only. Suggestions/feedback welcome – please email me.
Menger, Carl, 1976, “The Theory of Money” (Chapter 8, in Principles of Economics, p.257-286)
Salerno, Joseph T., 1987, “The “True” Money Supply: A Measure of the Supply of the Medium of Exchange in the U.S. economy” Austrian Economics Newsletter, Ludwig von Mises Institute
Shostak, Frank, 2000, “The Mystery of the Money Supply Definition” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp.69-76
2. The Interest Rate and Intertemporal Coordination
Mises, Ludwig von, 1953 [1912], The Theory of Money and Credit Yale University Press (Excerpts: Chapter 19, pp.339-367)
Hayek, Friedrich A., 2008 [1931], Prices and Production Mises Institute (Excerpts: Lecture 2, pp. 223-252; Lecture 3, pp.253-276)
Sweeny, Joan and Richard James Sweeny. 1977, Monetary Theory and the Great Capitol Hill Baby Sitting Co-op Crisis: Comment, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Volume 9, Feb., pp. 886-89
3. The Gold Standard and the Great Depression
Rothbard, Murray, 2005 [1963], What has government done to our money? Mises Institute (Excerpts: pp.159-170)
Reed, Lawrence, 2005, “Great Myths of the Great Depression” Mackinac Center for Public Policy
White, Lawrence H. 2008, “Is the Gold Standard Still the Gold Standard among Monetary Systems?” Cato Institute Briefing Papers, No. 100
4. Deflation and Prosperity
Rothbard, Murray, 2005 [1962], The Case for a 100% Reserve Dollar Mises Institute (Excerpts: Chapter 10, pp.180-186)
Selgin, George, 1997, Less than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy Institute of Economic Affairs, Hobart Paper No. 132 (Excerpts: pp.9-41; 70-72)
5. Free Banking vs 100% reserves
Mises, Ludwig von, 1953 [1912], “Peel’s Act” in The Theory of Money and Credit Yale University Press (Excerpts: Chapter 20, pp. 368-373)
White, Lawrence H. 2009 [1984], Free Banking in Britain: Theory, Experience, and Debate, 1800-1845, Institute of Economic Affairs (Excerpts: Chapter 5, pp.89-135)
Selgin, George, 1997, Less than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy” Institute of Economic Affairs, Hobart Paper No. 132 (Excerpts: pp. 67-69)
De Soto, Jesus Heurta, 2006, Money, Bank Credit and Economic Cycles Mises Institute (Excerpts: Chapter 8, pp.675-714)
6. Central banking
Smith, Vera, 1990 [1936], The Rationale of Central Banking, Liberty Fund (Excerpts Chapter XII, pp.167-196)
Hayek, Friedrich A., 1990, Denationalisation of Money – The Argument Refined, Institute of Economic Affairs, Hobart Paper Special, No. 70 (Excerpts: pp.23-28, 46-55, 130-131)
Congdon, Tim, 2009, Central Banking in a Free Society, Institute of Economic Affairs, Hobart Paper No. 166 (Excerpts Chapter 1, pp.34-43; Chapter 8, pp.178-189)
7. Proposals for Reform
Salsman, Richard, 1990, Breaking the Banks, American Institute for Economic Research (Excerpts: Chapter IX, pp. 125-141)
De Soto, Jesus Heurta, 2006, Money, Bank Credit and Economic Cycles Mises Institute (Excerpts: Chapter 9, pp.736-787)
De Soto, Jesus Heurta, 2006, Money, Bank Credit and Economic Cycles Mises Institute (Excerpts: Chapter 9, pp.788-805)
The Macro Bootcamp is a short and intensive reading group that serves as a refresher for a graduate level class in contemporary macroeconomics. It aims to cover the seminal texts of the most prominent schools of thought, and act as a foundation for applications to current policy debates.
1. Advanced reading
Participants are advised to read the following book, which provides an excellent introduction to modern macroeconomics from a school-of-thought approach. The interviews at the end of the book in particular are worth attention:
Shafir, Eldar, Diamond, Peter, and Tversky, Amos. (1997) “Money Illusion,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 341-374
3. The podcast
Here is an audio version of my own lecture notes:
4. Further reading
The classic graduate text for macro is David Romer. It is the best treatment of the alternative growth models, and then has a chapter on each variable of national income accounting. Participants are advised to grapple with it after the bootcamp has taken place.
It is also a good idea to see how various Austrian, Keynesian and Monetarist ideas can be integrated into a heterodox narrative. See Arnold Kling’s “Lectures on Macroeconomics“.
The “one week paper” sounds ludicrous, so it’s important I make some important caveats:
The paper must not require any primary empirical research (i.e. there is no data collection or analysis involved).
The paper is an article, therefore you’re predominantly citing/drawing upon journal articles and not books.
The paper fits into an area that you have already published on, and the topic is something you have been thinking about for a long time and have already collected material
You have a publication lined up, so that you know the journal/edited volume it will appear in, you know the editor’s requirements, and you know the audience.
If the above apply, the one week paper is feasible. Here’s the schedule:
Monday Gather the large pile of existing material that you have been keeping over the last few months/years. Print out references and articles that you’ve been keeping (e.g. draft emails, filed emails, blog posts, RSS feeds – however you “keep” articles to follow up on later). Conduct primary desk research to assemble your literature review. Take the key references, and go through their citations. Bust Google scholar, JStor, and whatever other databases you use. Print, print, print.
Tuesday Get the cafetiere on the go, find a comfortable chair, and READ. Go through the printouts and read everything. Annotate as much as possible – both in terms of comments and general thoughts.
Wednesday The aim now is to settle on the structure of the paper. Do *not* switch on your computer. Collate the printed material, lay it out on the floor, and formulate the key sections. Use a blank piece of A4 to write out the structure of the paper. Label the INTRO, Sections 1, 2…, CONC. on the printouts, and pile them up (loosely) into sections. The paper should now be laid out in front of you.
Thursday Have a lie in. Think about the paper as you drift in and out of sleep. Then, start writing. Consider the writing process to be similar to an oil painting. Create a base layer in terms of the structure: i.e. create the sections within the word document. Then begin populating each section by taking the pile of papers and working through them methodically.
Friday Keep writing. I find I’m at my peak from 10pm – 2am, so I try not to feel as though I’m slipping behind if I’ve not made much progress before lunch.
Saturday Write.
Sunday I don’t have a printer at home, but at this point you should print out the draft. Go to the pub, get a decent pint of lager and make corrections. Come home and revise the draft (crossing through each annotation with a thick black marker once it’s been adopted). Ensure spelling/grammar/formatting is sensible. Save a PDF version. Upload onto SSRN if you want broder feedback. Submit. Relax.
One of the most common criticisms of the Austrian-school of economics is that it is stuck in the past. For me this inexcusably ignores some excellent work that has been done “post revival” (i.e. since 1974). Indeed my own research on monetary theory is grounded in the following books, which – read together – demonstrate the relevance of Austrian ideas for a progressive research programme:
O’Driscoll, Gerald and Rizzo, Mario, 1985. The Economics of Time and Ignorance, Routledge
Cowen, Tyler, 1997. Risk and Business Cycles: New and Old Austrian Perspectives, Routledge
Lewin, Peter, 1999. Capital in Disequilibrium: The Role of Capital in a Changing World, Routledge
Horwitz, Steve, 2000. Microfoundations and Macroeconomics, Routledge
Garrison, Roger, 2001. Time and Money: The Macroeconomics of Capital Structure, Routledge
Note that they have all been published as part of the “Foundations of the Market Economy” series edited by Mario Rizzo and Larry White through Routledge. This is testimony to the influence of the NYU programme and the power of the SDAE as a professional organisation. A thorough reading of these books provides an excellent understanding of the unique contributions of the Austrian school, but one that is embedded within the state of the professional debate. More importantly, they are bursting with ideas to take this research forward, and beg to be applied to the current economic climate. They provide fertile pathways for the future of the Austrian-school.
This article intends to walk through a process for collecting and presenting data. It will include some basic commands in Excel and Powerpoint. The slide deck below provides a step-by-step guide. You should follow it in order to complete the set tasks.
A lot has been written on the financial crisis, but here are my recommendations for those seeking to understand the causes of what went wrong.
The 2010 documentary, Inside Job is well made, and features interviews with very important figures in the crisis. The trailer is here:
My criticism of it is that it focuses too much on the immediate manifestation of the problem (conflicts of interest between Wall Street and Federal agencies) and not enough attention to the underlying causes that generated the easy money, relaxed lending standards, and regime uncertainty. As an anti-capitalist rant it’s effective and fun, but as an economic explanation it is overly simplistic and incomplete.*
This is a tangent, but I was utterly engrossed by this 6 hour interview with Matthew Cox, who took advantage of lax lending requirements in the build up to the global financial crisis and created a fascinating career as a mortgage broker conman:
There has been a lot of discussion about who did or didn’t predict the financial crisis. You can read my survey of these claims, as well as my own public statements prior to the crash, here:
“The proximate cause of the crisis was an explosion of indebtedness, much of it associated with sharp rises in the real prices of property. A significant part of the explanation for this debt explosion was reliance on household debt for sustaining consumption, especially in the US, since the real incomes of so many were stagnating.39 Behind this were even more profound changes, including the entry of China into the world economy, the liberalization of the financial system, and undue reliance on a monetary policy that targeted only inflation. Ultimately, the financial crisis was the consequence of huge (and insufficiently understood) shifts in the world economy transmitted via a grossly undercapitalized and underregulated financial system.” (Wolf, M., 2023, The crisis of democratic capitalism, Allen Lane, p. 99)
2015 “The financial crisis in the United Kingdom. Uncertainty, calculation and error” in Boettke, Peter J., and Coyne, Christopher J., (Eds) The Oxford Handbook of Austrian Economics, Oxford University Press
* Note that around the 11 minute mark, Matt Damon says: “In September 2008 the bankruptcy of US investment bank Lehman Brothers and the collapse of the world’s largest insurance company, AIG, triggered a global financial crisis”. But the graphic used to accompany the subsequent stock market crash has “bailout defeated” as first main bullet point!
