Say's Law of Markets: What Did It Mean and Why Should We Care?

When the Classical economists asserted the "impossibility of general overproduction," or what we now call Say's Law of Markets, they had in mind not periodic crises or business cycles but secular stagnation. Could the capitalist system absorb the constant increases in output without breakdown from limits inherent in the system? Say's Law supplied an affirmative answer to the question: with flexible prices, the system is forever tending to full employment, full-capacity equilibrium. The issue of what was meant by Say's Law has been hopelessly misunderstood in modern times, first by a Keynesian reading but more by a Walrasian reading of the doctrine.Business Cycles; Cycle; Employment; Full Employment; Prices; Stagnation

Target Zones in History and Theory: Lessons from an Austro-Hungarian Experiment (1896-1914)

The first known experiment with an exchange rate band took place in Austria- Hungary between 1896 and 1914. The rationale for introducing this policy rested on precisely those intuitions that the modern literature has emphasized: the band was designed to secure both exchange rate stability and monetary policy autonomy. However, unlike more recent experiences, such as the ERM, this policy was not undermined by credibility problems. The episode provides an ideal testing ground for some important ideas in modern macroeconomics: specifically, can formal rules, when faithfully adhered to, provide policy makers with some advantages such as short term autonomy? First, we find that a credible band has a "microeconomic" influence on exchange rate stability. By reducing uncertainty, a credible fluctuation band improves the quality of expectations, a channel that has been neglected in the modern literature. Second, we show that the standard test of the basic target zone model is flawed and develop an alternative methodology. We believe that these findings shed a new light on the economics of exchange rate bands

The Politics of Time on the Frontline: Street Level Bureaucracy, Professional Judgment, and Public Accountability

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Public Administration on 05/05/2015, available online: doi: 10.1080/01900692.2014.952823This article reports on a study carried out on the impact of quality assurance mechanisms on street-level bureaucrats in Northern England (teachers, nurses and social workers). A key aim of the research was to explore the ways in which these mechanisms negotiate the much older regulatory function of time. The findings suggest that these mechanisms contribute to forms of time compression across professional activities, time compression in turn having consequences for professional judgement. The study explores the mechanisms via which this occurs, while also examining the implications of the research for debates about democracy, political regulation, and public sector management