Category: Books and culture

Would Bacon’s Hamlet be Hamlet?

John Quiggin36 Comments

In the course of an interesting piece by Richard Dorment in the NY Review of Books on the authenticity or otherwise of works by Andy Warhol, I came across a striking passage

The single most important thing you can say about a work of art is that it is real, that the artist to whom it is attributed made it. Until you are certain that a work of art is authentic, it is impossible to say much else that is meaningful about it.

Is this a reasonable claim about art in general? How important is authentic attribution in, say, literature or music?
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An odd numbering scheme

John Quiggin21 Comments

Keith Windschuttle has been in the news again lately, making claims of inaccuracy against the film ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ which were then roundly refuted by the filmmakers, pointing to documentary evidence apparently undiscovered by the ace historian. When even the Oz describes Windy as having been ‘dispatched to the fence’ he clearly has a problem. Having claimed that the girls in the film were removed from their families because they were having sex with white men, he now says his case is unaffected by the discovery that they were actually removed because they were promised as brides for black men. WIndschuttle describes this as “standing by” his statements, a locution I also heard recently from the Queensland government after the economists statement demolishing their case for asset sales. Apparently it means “while I have no credible response to make, I’m not going to retract, let alone change my mind”.

What’s really interesting to me is that all this publicity is in aid of the forthcoming Volume 3 of Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Australian History which caused such a stir when Volume 1 was released in 2002. Three volumes in nearly a decade looks like slow, but steady work, the kind of history Windschuttle supports.

That is, of course, except for the minor detail that there is no Volume 2. Originally Volume 2, due in 2003, was supposed to be the big one, which would refute Henry Reynolds claims about violence on the Queensland frontier, while volume 3, promised for 2004, was going to be about WA. Although promises kept being made, Vol 2 never came out, and in 2008, the “stolen generations” book was announce as Volume 2. It seemed that the Queensland and WA projects had been abandoned.

The new numbering scheme, eccentric as it is, at least implies a promise of a Volume 2 in which Windschuttle will finally put up or be morally obliged to shut up (not that he will of course).

Bookblogging: Implications of trickle down

John Quiggin104 Comments

Another section of my book-in-progress, this time on the implications of trickle-down. I’m getting lots out of the comments, even if I don’t respond to everything, so please keep them coming.

One thing that would be really useful to me is references to publications (probably popular, rather than journal articles) by prominent academic economists that clearly espouse some of the implications of trickle-down discussed here. More than most of the ideas I’m criticising, trickle-down economics tends to be a background assumption rather than something which comes out into the open, and I want to avoid the suggestion that I’m attacking a straw zombie here.
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Bookblogging: Trickle down Part 1

John Quiggin14 Comments

I’m pushing hard now to finalise a draft of my book-in-progress,

It’s currently titled Zombie Economics:Undead Ideas that Threaten the World Economy. The title is pretty much locked in, but the subtitle is still open for change if anyone has any suggestions. You can read the first few chapters (not quite an up-to-date draft) at wikidot.

The chapter I’m working on now is Trickle-Down Economics, which seems a fairly soft target after the challenge of presenting a critique of the “micro foundations” approach to macroeconomics. But, there are still plenty of difficulties starting with the point that, of course, no-one espouses Trickle-Down Economics under that name. On the other hand, while the view that pro-rich policies will benefit everyone in the long run is widely held, I don’t know of a good general term that describes it.

Anyway here’s the opening section. As always, comments and criticism much appreciated.

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Bookblogging: What next for macroeconomics ?

John Quiggin86 Comments

It’s been slow going, but I’ve finally finished the draft chapter of my book-in-progress that looks forward to a new research program for macroeconomics, an absurdly ambitious task, but one that needs to be tackled. Of course, what I’ve written isn’t fundamentally new – it’s a distillation of points that Old Keynesians, post-Keynesians and some behavioral economists have been putting forward for a while. But I hope I’ve got some positive contribution to make. More than ever, comments are much appreciated.

Update In response to comments, mostly at Crooked Timber, I’ve fairly substantially revised the section on “avoiding stagflation”. While I don’t back away from the points I made previously, I took for granted some things that I’d mentioned in other places in the book. The result made for a fairly unbalanced treatment with an excessive focus on the role of labor militancy. I’ve now tried to put this into proper context. I don’t expect that will satisfy everybody, but this is closer to what I meant to say all along.End update
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A snippet on representative agents

John Quiggin13 Comments

In response to some comments, I’ve written a little bit about the representative agent assumption in Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Models. I argue that, given the underlying DSGE assumptions, you won’t get very much extra by including heterogeneous agents.

But, I intend to say in the “Where next” section, it seems likely that heterogeneous and boundedly rational individuals, interacting in imperfect and incomplete markets will generate ’emergent’ macro outcomes that are not obvious from the micro foundations. Of course, this is going to be a prospectus for a theory, not the theory itself.

In the meantime, comments on my snippet would be much appreciated.

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What went wrong with New Keynesian macro ?

John Quiggin17 Comments

More bookblogging! It’s all economics here at CT these days, but normal programming will doubtless resume soon.

Most of what I’ve written in the book so far has been pretty easy. I’ve never believed the Efficient Markets Hypothesis or New Classical Macro and it’s easy enough to point out how the occurrence of a massive financial crisis leading to a prolonged macroeconomic crisis discredits them both.

I’m coming now to one of the most challenging section of my book, where I look at why the New Keynesian program (with which I have a lot of sympathy) and ask why New Keynesians (most obviously Ben Bernanke) didn’t, for the most part, see the crisis coming or offer much in response that would have been new to Keynes himself. Within the broad Keynesian camp, the people who foresaw some sort of crisis were the old-fashioned types, most notably Nouriel Roubini (and much less notably, me) who were concerned about trade imbalances, inadequate savings, and hypertrophic growth of the financial sector. Even this group didn’t foresee the way the crisis would actually develop, but that, I think is asking too much – every crisis is different.

My answer, broadly speaking is that the New Keynesians had plenty of useful insights but that the conventions of micro-based macroeconomics prevented them from forming the basis of a progressive research program.

Comments will be appreciated even more than usual. I really want to get this right, or as close as possible
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