segunda-feira, 29 de junho de 2015

Keynesianismo vulgar

Brazilian Strategic Affairs Minister Roberto Mangabeira Unger attends a hearing of the Commission of Education of the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia, on 29 April 2015. Unger was a professor of philosophy at Harvard University and participated in the Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff governments. AFP PHOTO/EVARISTO SA (Photo credit should read EVARISTO SA/AFP/Getty Images)High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/071c3878-1c2e-11e5-a130-2e7db721f996.html#ixzz3eTTeTiyI

Dilma Rousseff adviser charts a path for Brazil

©AFP
The secretariat of strategic affairs in Brasília lies in a nondescript ministry building in the middle of the plano piloto — the aircraft-shaped street layout of Brazil’s modernist capital.
The job of its new minister, philosopher and Harvard law professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger, is to chart a long-term development plan for President Dilma Rousseff, whose palace lies a kilometre away in the “cockpit” of the plano piloto.
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It is not an easy task. Latin America’s largest economy is suffering increased turbulence from the end of the commodities super cycle and a credit-driven consumption boom. Economists forecast the economy will shrink nearly 1.5 per cent this year. Unemployment is increasing fast.
“The underlying frailty of the system that we built was its very low productivity,” said Mr Unger, one of Brazil’s best-known academics internationally who won tenure at Harvard Law School aged just 29 in 1976.
Mr Unger served in the same role under Ms Rousseff’s predecessor and mentor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva between 2007 and 2009. His return comes as Brazil’s left-leaning Workers party-led government is urgently seeking new direction.
In power for 13 years, the party won votes through its social programmes but today it is facing increasing protests. Brazil’s new middle classes are demanding better public services, especially in education and health, and a return to economic growth.
Most blame Ms Rousseff’s statist policies — including a prolonged budget stimulus and price controls, during her first term between 2011 and 2014 — for the depth of Brazil’s economic hangover.
“It turned out that counter-cyclical vulgar Keynesianism ... was a blunt and largely ineffective instrument,” Mr Unger said. “So we come to this day of reckoning.”

Lunch with the FT

Roberto Mangabeira Unger A radical philosopher who won Harvard tenure in 1976 when he was aged just 29, Unger has, since then, developed a reputation as a public intellectual unafraid to pick a fight.
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Although he has a staff of about 120 and oversight of the government’s premier research institute, Ipea, Mr Unger admits his role is mostly as an adviser.
“I really don’t have any power, just the power to propose and instigate,” he said.
With an atmosphere of near crisis prevailing in Brasília — Ms Rousseff’s popularity is rock bottom in the polls — he does not meet the president in person regularly but they communicate by email, he said. The crisis has made the administration more receptive to new ideas, more so than during the boom years.
The first step towards fixing the economy has been the government’s fiscal adjustment, in which finance minister Joaquim Levy and his team are trying to restore the budget to a primary surplus — the balance before interest payments — after it suffered its first deficit in a decade last year.
But here Mr Unger hinted at differences with Mr Levy’s economic team. The orthodox view was that the fiscal adjustment would revive financial confidence in Brazil and therefore investment and growth, he said. Ms Rousseff, however, believed it was not about financial confidence but about restoring the state’s ability to manoeuvre, he said.
“We think that the doctrine of financial confidence has never really worked anywhere ... look at Europe and there it is delivered to the combination of austerity and stagnation.”
In the third year of high school more than half of our students can barely read or understand a text - Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Beyond the fiscal adjustment, the longer-term task for Brazil was to develop the “supply side” of its economy by providing the mass of Brazilians with quality education and small businesses with credit, best business practices and access to high technology.
Traditionally, all of these have been the precinct of the rich and the powerful — even Brazil’s state-owned development bank, the BNDES, lends mainly to the largest conglomerates.
Mr Unger said the key problem was that most Brazilians remained stuck in jobs with “primitive” standards of productivity and disempowered by the “abysmal” quality of public education.
“In the third year of high school more than half of our students can barely read or understand a text,” he said.
Improving education would require replacing rote learning with an analytical approach. Mechanisms could be developed to allow the federal government to intervene in failing state education systems. Mr Unger said he wanted to step up the debate on education before Brazil decided on a new national curriculum next year.

Rousseff hopes for domestic boost from US trip
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff
When China’s premier visited Brazil last month, the two sides announced a rash of extravagant infrastructure-related deals. By contrast, Brazil president Dilma Rousseff’s trip to Washington is expected to be lower key.
Continue reading
To boost Brazilian industry, particularly smaller companies, he was advocating the complete removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers on advanced capital goods. In agriculture, smaller producers should receive access to modern financial instruments, such as hedging, to enable them to better cope with risk.
Other changes would be more familiar — a flat rate value added tax to replace the current convoluted system and sorting out Brazil’s tangled environmental licensing procedures.
With little power, a key part of his role is what he calls having a “voice”. He eventually left Mr Lula da Silva’s government because, with an election looming at the time, he felt he was not being heard.
This time again the challenge is how to make a nation engage in a debate over its longer-term future when the short term is looking bad.
“The most common error in politics is to mistake the urgent for the important,” he said.
Mais

terça-feira, 23 de junho de 2015

EU - velocidade de M1 1960-2015

Mais

As vantagens de livre mercados e livre comércio

Razeen Sally’s restated case for a truly free market





By Channa Fernandopulle
Sri Lanka is a nation with a historic affinity towards leftist politics. This legacy has been entrenched even in our nation’s Constitution through the phrase “Democratic Socialist Republic”. However as our nation strives towards greater development and an escape from the infamous middle-income trap that has arguably plagued even the most successful contemporary global economies, important questions are being raised over the models and ideologies adopted by policy makers and their relevance in the highly complex and volatile global marketplace.
Speaking at a recent forum organised by the Sri Lankan chapter of the Bastiat Society – an international organisation which promotes open, principled wealth creation through trade and a respect for individual freedom – prominent academic and visiting Associate Professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore Razeen Sally delivered an erudite lecture on the development of capitalism in Asia, trade liberalisation, the role of Government intervention in economics, the questionable contribution of giant multinational corporations to innovation, current interpretations around the problem of inequality, the implications of such knowledge for Sri Lanka’s own development story and even described a Buddhist perspective of the market economy.
- See more at: http://www.ft.lk/article/436255/Razeen-Sally%E2%80%99s-restated-case-for-a-truly-free-market#sthash.VJKKr6sM.dpuf

domingo, 21 de junho de 2015

A função do economista

Mythbusters

by Don Boudreaux on June 21, 2015
Reflecting on Russ’s most-recent post, along with yesterday’s Quotation of the Day (by Hayek on the proper aims of economics), leads me to this conclusion: economics’s chief role is to bust myths.  Economists are at their best when they are myth busters.  No other function that economists can possibly serve, as economists, comes close to myth busting in importance – importance both for promoting better public understanding of the way economies work and for improving public policies.  (The latter happy outcome is achieved overwhelmingly through whatever bad public policies economic understanding might help to quash or, at least, modify.)
Economics does not allow for specific predictions; the social world is far too complicated for that.  In real-world economies ceteris is too seldom paribus (and even when it is, this situation is often impossible to detect).  The closest that sound economics allows us to get to justifiable predictive statements is that it improves our ability to make sensible “if-then” statements – statements that, using sound judgment, improve our ability to understand the complex world we inhabit.
But as a myth-busting tool, economics is unsurpassed.  Perhaps no other science or system of thought has ever busted as many myths as has economics.  Yet also: perhaps no other myth-busting enterprise fails as consistently as does economics at convincing large number of people that the myths it busts are in fact busted myths.  Acceptance of these myths is constantly reinforced by a combination of (1) innocent economic ignorance (fed, in part, by the above-mentioned great complexity of modern society), (2) not-so-innocent powerful political forces, and (3) a regrettable failure among economists, especially over the past half-century, to engage the public using plain language.
Here’s a list of just some general, widely believed myths that sound economics has busted:
– the myth that the amount of wealth in the world is fixed (and, hence, that Jones’s gains from trade must have come at the expense of Smith or some Smiths);
– the myth that a higher population of human beings means lower average living standards for human beings;
– the myth that poverty (rather than wealth) has causes;
– the myth that Jones’s successful pursuit of self-interest necessarily harms – or, at the very least, does nothing to help – Smith or some Smiths;
– the myth that mutually consensual trade that occurs across political borders differs in some essential way from mutually consensual trade that occurs within political borders;
– the myth that international trade is a “competition” among nations;
– the myth that prices are arbitrary obstacles established by sellers, and which can be forcibly lowered in order to benefit buyers at the expense only of sellers; (put differently, the myth that a government policy of forcing the prices of goods and services down makes goods and services more accessible and less costly for buyers);
– the myth that wages are arbitrary stipends granted by employers to workers, and which can be forcibly raised in order to benefit sellers of labor (workers) either at no one’s expense or only at the expense of those who purchase labor either directly or indirectly;
– the myth that profits are an unjust and socially pointless (or even harmful) theft of property or value by entrepreneurs and business owners from workers, other suppliers, and consumers;
– the myth that the only, or even the main, costs that people endure in a modern economy are costs expressed in money prices;
– the myth that sustained inflations are caused by rising prices or by higher costs;
– the myth that money is wealth and that wealth is money;
– the myth that there are only a fixed number of jobs for humans to profitably perform;
– the myth that government officials generally have, relative to actors in private-property markets, superior incentives and knowledge to act to promote widespread economic prosperity;
– the myth that raising tax rates necessarily increases government revenues (and, likewise, that lowering tax rates necessarily decreases government revenues);
– the myth that violations of the rights of private-property owners harm only, or even just mostly, those people whose private-property rights are violated;
– the myth that workable, productive, and sustainable complex social orders must be the result of human design (or that human design can improve the workability, productivity, and sustainability of complex social orders).
The above list is only partial.  Each mentions a proposition that is widely believed by non-economists but that most (or, in some cases, at least many) economists correctly understand to be false.
Mais

Estagflação

A economia brasileira atual representa um caso clássico de estagflação mostrando como uma política econômica de enfraquecimento das forças produtivas junto com expansão monetária provoca estagnação e recessão junto com inflação de preços. 

sábado, 20 de junho de 2015

Economia de Mises

Introduction: The Economist as System Builder: Ludwig Von Mises and the Architect of Economic Science and Political Economy


Peter J. Boettke


George Mason University - Department of Economics

Peter T. Leeson


George Mason University - Department of Economics

2006

Boettke, Peter J. and Leeson, Peter T., eds. 2006. The Legacy of Ludwig von Mises Volume 1: Theory. Northampton: Edward Elgar, pp. xi-xx.

Abstract:     
In this introduction sketch the architecture of Mises' economics and political economy. Mises' overarching program is one of examining exchange (economic science) and the institutions within which exchange takes place (political economy). In recent years the economics profession has moved considerably in the direction that Mises pointed to some 50 years ago. The increasing recognition of the role for private property and entrepreneurship in securing economic development as well as the acknowledgement of the failure of central planning point to an important opportunity for a renaissance of Misesian political economy, with its emphasis on social cooperation, market process, and spontaneous order.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 11
Keywords: Ludwig von Mises, political economy, praxeology
JEL Classification: B31, B41, B53, P5
Open PDF in Browser Download This Paper

Date posted: June 19, 2015  

Suggested Citation

Boettke, Peter J. and Leeson, Peter T., Introduction: The Economist as System Builder: Ludwig Von Mises and the Architect of Economic Science and Political Economy (2006). Boettke, Peter J. and Leeson, Peter T., eds. 2006. The Legacy of Ludwig von Mises Volume 1: Theory. Northampton: Edward Elgar, pp. xi-xx.. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2619432

sexta-feira, 19 de junho de 2015

Economia brasileira

Tratamos a economia brasileira como se estivesse doente; quem está doente é o governo, diz Castro

Fundador do Movimento Brasil Eficiente afirma que economia nacional precisa de transformação, não de um mero ajuste fiscal
Redação TV Cultura 

Video documentário de Antony Mueller sobre o comunismo

Análise documentária do comunismo desde o Manifesto Comunista até hoje com ênfase em aspectos negligenciados nas apresentações convencionais. Contem referencias aos documentos recentemente liberados
youtube.com
Assista:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiGQcRaOPS0&feature=youtu.be&hd=1

quinta-feira, 18 de junho de 2015

A orígem da corrupção

Milton Friedman - O que torna um país corrupto? 

Para ativar as legendas, clique no botão esquerdo ao lado da engrenagem.

O professor Friedman explica como algumas leis tornam o comportamento imoral lucrativo.

Mais

Brasil e China - comércio internacional

  • Em 1978, a China representava 1% do comércio internacional e o Brasil, 1,5%. Hoje, China representa 10% e Brasil, 1,5% (OMC) ‪#‎NegóciodaChina

quarta-feira, 17 de junho de 2015

"Nova Matriz Econômica"

O trágico legado da "Nova Matriz Econômica" - um resumo cronológico
"O Brasil está conseguindo o raro feito de extrair opiniões quase unânimes mundo afora. São poucos, pouquíssimos, os economistas que ousam discordar de que o país entrou em um ciclo de desenvolvimento sustentado. E mais: são ainda mais raros aqueles que duvidam da capacidade de o Brasil se tornar uma das maiores potências econômicas do planeta em um par de dezenas de anos."
O trecho acima foi extraído de uma reportagem da edição de 29 de dezembro de 2010 da revista IstoÉ, a mesma que, em outra edição daquele mesmo ano, afirmou que já éramos uma potência.
Dentre os "poucos, pouquíssimos, economistas que ousam discordar de que o país entrou em um ciclo de desenvolvimento sustentado" certamente estavam os economistas deste site, que ainda em 2010 alertavam que tudo era infundado.
E onde estamos hoje?

segunda-feira, 15 de junho de 2015

Peak Oil

Oilprice.comPeak Oil: Myth Or Coming Reality? By Gaurav Agnihotri  In 1956, a geoscientist named M. King Hubbert formulated a theory which suggested that U.S. oil production would eventually reach a point at which the rate of oil production would stop growing. After production hit that peak, it would enter terminal decline. The resulting production profile would resemble a bell curve and the point of maximum production would be identified as Peak Oil, a point of no return.  Mais

quinta-feira, 11 de junho de 2015

Capitalismo americano em crise

  • O economista italiano Luigi Zingales está no centro do liberalismo econômico dos Estados Unidos. Professor da Universidade de Chicago, ele acredita que o capitalismo americano enfrenta uma crise. As medidas adotadas pelos últimos governos dos EUA beneficiaram empresas e grupos específicos, o que resultou em uma série de distorções econômicas. "O risco dessa visão é a corrupção institucional que ela causa, além da perda de habilidade que o sistema tem para crescer e beneficiar a todos."
  • Mais

terça-feira, 9 de junho de 2015

Capitalismo

Este vídeo irá mostrar por que tudo que você pensa sobre o capitalismo está errado

No vídeo abaixo, o acadêmico sueco Hans Rosling e seu filho Ola, fundadores da Gapminder Foundation, explicam de que forma a humanidade vem evoluindo e como nasceu o desafio de ajudar a transformar o planeta num lugar menos ignorante a seu próprio respeito. Se você quer ajudá-los nessa épica jornada, não deixe de compartilhar esse vídeo.

PIB real per capita


quinta-feira, 4 de junho de 2015

Preço do petróleo 2015

Mais

"Real" or "mathematical" economics

Romer's disagreement with Lucas and Prescott, then, might actually be about what economics should be. Like a physicist, chemist, or biologist, Romer wants to do economics of the real world. The others -- along with their colleagues in the more rarefied theoretical heights of economics -- want to do “mathematical economics,” which they see as the study of a certain class of abstract mathematical models. If you were looking for advice on how to get out of a deep recession, whom would you call?
Mais

segunda-feira, 1 de junho de 2015

Greve das federais - minha contribuição

Minha contribuição para a greve é esta exposição e refutação da teoria econômica marxista. Uma moderna crítica da economia política marxista.
“Economia política marxista - exposição e refutação” por Antony Mueller
Assista:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzfzzQYWUZQ

Repensandos macroeconomia

LINKS
http://www.imf.org/external/np/seminars/eng/2015/macro3/

http://blogs.ft.com/gavyndavies/2015/05/31/has-the-rethinking-of-macro-economic-policy-been-successful/?

http://www.voxeu.org/sites/default/files/Vox_secular_stagnation.pdf

http://blogs.ft.com/gavyndavies/2015/04/12/who-is-right-about-the-equilibrium-interest-rate/

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2014/wp1457.pdf





Secretaria DEE da UFS

Segue horários de funcionamento a partir de Quarta-Feira (03/06):
  • Segundas e Quartas no período da manhã;
  • Terças e Quintas no período da tarde.

Repensando a teoria macroeconômica

Has the rethinking of macroeconomic policy been successful?


The great financial crash of 2008 was expected to lead to a fundamental re-thinking of macro-economics, perhaps leading to a profound shift in the mainstream approach to fiscal, monetary and international policy. That is what happened after the 1929 crash and the Great Depression, though it was not until 1936 that the outline of the new orthodoxy appeared in the shape of Keynes’ General Theory. It was another decade or more before a simplified version of Keynes was routinely taught in American university economics classes. The wheels of intellectual change, though profound in retrospect, can grind fairly slowly.
Seven years after 2008 crash, there is relatively little sign of a major transformation in the mainstream macro-economic theory that is used, for example, by most central banks. The “DSGE” (mainly New Keynesian) framework remains the basic workhorse, even though it singularly failed to predict the crash. Economists have been busy adding a more realistic financial sector to the structure of the model [1], but labour and product markets, the heart of the productive economy, remain largely untouched.
What about macro-economic policy? Here major changes have already been implemented, notably in banking regulation, macro-prudential policy and most importantly the use of the central bank balance sheet as an independent instrument of monetary policy. In these areas, policy-makers have acted well in advance of macro-economic researchers, who have been struggling to catch up.
The IMF has tracked this process well, and it has just held its third post-2008 conference on Rethinking Macro Policy under the leadership of chief economist Olivier Blanchard. Olivier has summarised the conference (here and here) but so far it has it not been much discussed by macro investors.
I have therefore taken the liberty of organising Olivier’s summary and the conference material into the three tables below. Although highly simplified, the tables represent a snapshot of the current “state of the art” in macro policy, at least as seen by today’s mainstream luminaries of the subject.
The far right hand column in each table is devoted to Blanchard’s own views, since his status at the IMF probably makes him “team captain” of mainstream policy economists at present. (Unorthodox economists are another set entirely, and were largely unrepresented at the IMF conference, which does not imply that they are insignificant [2].)
First, the state of the economy and fiscal policy. An important debate is on whether Lawrence Summers is right to warn about secular stagnation, and if so, why? There is certainly no consensus on this. Most central bankers say that they disagree with Summers (agreeing instead with Ken Rogoff that stagnation will disappear once debt deleveraging is over), but that may be because they do not want to face the policy consequences of him being proved right. Blanchard and the IMF research department seem more favourably disposed towards Summers, as are the bond markets, which are pricing in much lower than normal equilibrium real rates of interest. A major adjustment in market rates would become necessary if Summers is wrong.
This debate is closely linked to the future role of fiscal policy in managing demand. If Summers is right, then the equilibrium real interest rate may be substantially below zero, and any future downturn in demand may need to be addressed by fiscal policy, not monetary policy.
Some Keynesian economists, like Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong, want this to happen anyway, and are not worried about a rise in public debt. Others, like the IMF, are somewhat sympathetic to this Keynesian view, but would prefer public debt to be brought down gradually. The latter is probably the mainstream view at present, but there is broad agreement that more public infrastructure spending is desirable, even if funded by extra public debt issued at very low real interest rates.
The most important issue, however, is left largely undiscussed in the IMF conference. Whatever economists may think, politicians seem to be far more convinced that a reduction in public debt is essential and, as in the 1950s, they appear willing to “repress” returns on outstanding public debt to achieve this. What would happen to the fiscal stance if faced with another recession is unknown.

Second, monetary policy and financial regulation.
The pre-2008 mainstream view of traditional monetary policy, involving inflation targeting, enforced by variations in short rates, seems to have survived largely intact. There is relatively little support for running policy solely according to the Taylor Rule. But there is great uncertainty about how far central bank balance sheets should be reduced, and whether they should retain an independent role in monetary policy in future. These shifting sands obviously leave open the possibility that balance sheets will never be returned to pre-2008 norms. The question of how to deal with a deflation threat, if it should return, was largely ignored, which is odd.
On regulation, there is widespread agreement that macro-prudential policy weapons are desirable, but little agreement on what they should be, or how they should be deployed. Nevertheless, in an impressive act of faith by policy-makers, they have now been rolled out in almost all international jurisdictions.
There is rising concern that the shadow banking system should be regulated, so investors in financial sector assets should watch this space closely.

Third, international economic policy.
There has been a decisive shift away from a belief in complete freedom of capital movements, notably towards emerging economies. There is also a tendency to see managed floats as the most suitable form of exchange rate management. But the discussion on the need for co-operation between central banks when setting domestic monetary policy – a very live issue ahead of Federal Reserve tightening – was inconclusive. The central banks need more clarity from international economists on this topic.

In conclusion, what should we expect from macro-policy makers in future, assuming the economic back-drop remains relatively benign? Probably, more of the same: broadly stable central bank balance sheets, very slow declines in public debt ratios and a gradual return to using interest rates as the main weapon of monetary policy. A more rapid return to pre-2008 norms for fiscal and central bank balance sheets is somewhat unlikely.
It is worth stressing that the current mainstream debate is largely focused on how macro policy should be designed in periods, as now, when inflation and unemployment are both broadly “acceptable”, and when there is no obvious emergency at hand.
The much more serious challenge of how policy should adjust in the event of another crisis – a renewed recession; a major outbreak of deflation; a permanent slowdown in productivity growth; a political crisis over rising inequality; or a financial disruption, such as a Chinese debt implosion or a break-up in the euro – were not much addressed at the recent IMF gathering.
In the not-very-unlikely event of any of these threats manifesting themselves, there is no obvious “play-book” being presented by mainstream macro-economists to future policy makers. As in 2008, policy-makers would have to fend for themselves, but with far fewer options available to them.
———————————————————————————————————
Footnotes
[1] See for example this new IMF model, and comments by the always excellent Simon Wren Lewis and listen to Wouter den Haan.
[2] Fortunately, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and the Cambridge-INET Institute fill part of this omission.
Fonte:
http://blogs.ft.com/gavyndavies/2015/05/31/has-the-rethinking-of-macro-economic-policy-been-successful/?