Conference Presentations by Constantinos Repapis
J.M. Keynes, F.A. Hayek and the Common Reader
Retirement, Migration and the Provision of Local Public Goods
This paper focuses on retiree mobility in a union of countries where agents pay their taxes in th... more This paper focuses on retiree mobility in a union of countries where agents pay their taxes in the first period of their lives and then migrate to their preferred area for retirement. A substantial literature shows that if migration is costless, and policy makers in each community maximize the welfare of their residents then decentralization is efficient as long as areas can give voluntary transfers to each other. This is called incentive equivalence. However in this model because the taxation decision is taken by the home government prior to moving and governments care only about the welfare of their nationals, free-riding occurs, and the taxation decision cannot be decentralized. Furthermore, we find that if national governments can impose small but non-trivial fixed migration costs that hinder retiree mobility, then they may be able to separate the interests of their nationals to those of foreign nationals even after the taxation decision has been taken centrally. We find that the ability of national governments to levy even small migration costs leads to complex strategic interactions between national governments with population distributions between areas that substantially deviate from the free mobility optimum.
Mainstream economics and social transformation: the case of moral hazard
This article builds on advances in social ontology to develop a new understanding of how mainstre... more This article builds on advances in social ontology to develop a new understanding of how mainstream economic modelling affects reality. We propose a new framework for analysing and describing how models intervene in the social sphere. This framework allows us to identify and articulate three key epistemic features of models as interventions: specificity, portability and formal precision. The second part of the article uses our framework to demonstrate how specificity, portability and formal precision explain the use of moral hazard models in a variety of different policy contexts, including worker compensation schemes, bank regulation and the euro-sovereign debt crisis.
G.C. Harcourt's book reviews and post-Keynesian theory
G.C. Harcourt has written over a hundred book reviews during the last fifty years. These are publ... more G.C. Harcourt has written over a hundred book reviews during the last fifty years. These are published in a number of journals and on widely different topics. In this article this literature is used in order to discuss three important issues. These are: (1) How did Harcourt engage with the developments in economic theory across the different schools in economics during this period? (2) What do these book reviews tell us about how Harcourt does economics? (3) Why is this reviewing activity such an important part of Harcourt's research activity, and what does this tell us about the structure of post-Keynesian economics? This article argues that book reviews as well as review articles are a constitutive element of how post-Keynesians do economics, as they organise different and occasionally disparate theoretical contributions into a coherent narrative that gives form and substance to their theoretical approach.
Hayek’s Business Cycle Theory during the 1930’s
Hayek’s business cycle theory in the thirties was pioneering both in developing the general equil... more Hayek’s business cycle theory in the thirties was pioneering both in developing the general equilibrium framework and in integrating capital with monetary theory. From published and unpublished work and correspondence a more complete picture of the evolution of Hayek’s thought emerges. This article traces how Hayek’s effort to produce a consistent business cycle theory led him to redevelop important parts of capital theory, and the theory of expectations. The inherent difficulties of combining ‘fixed’ with ‘circulating’ capital, and his evolving views on knowledge and expectations led him to abandon his project of developing a definitive version of Austrian business cycle theory.
Multi-period putty-semi-clay production and the business cycle
This paper develops a putty-semi-clay general equilibrium model of the business cycle, in which i... more This paper develops a putty-semi-clay general equilibrium model of the business cycle, in which investment takes several periods to mature into capital. Current research has developed both "putty-putty" and "putty-clay" vintage capital models for analyzing the effects of embodied productivity shocks. Here we propose a model which has a C.E.S. ex post production function that nests both approaches as the two extreme cases. We find that this model exhibits the empirically relevant link between changes in capacity and movements in employment and output. Furthermore, by introducing multi-period investment in the model we find that the model’s dynamic responses differ greatly between time-to-plan, time-to-build and investment first formulations. We argue that misapplying weights may lead to a wrongful dismissal of multi-period production.
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Conference Presentations by Constantinos Repapis