famous economist defends exploitation (bit long)

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue May 8 08:38:34 PDT 2001


Daniel Davies wrote:


>Fair question; I don't read the AER, but the last Journal of
>Finance had the following articles (see below). I count about
>25% apologetics, with most of the worst articles giving
>fair-enough clues straight up, like the presence of the words
>"International Monetary Fund" in the guy's affiliation. The
>rest of it is mainly technical papers on known inefficiencies
>in the operation of stock markets. So, given that stock
>markets are part of the reality that these guys live in, I
>don't think that they can be called apologists merely for
>writing about them.

But what a waste of goddam time they are. They almost never ask whether stock markets contribute to socially optimal capital allocations; they're almost all written to make the lives of rentiers and their hired hands more profitable. The stuff that central bank economists write is almost always far more useful than what appears in the prestige econ & finance journals.

Doug



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