terça-feira, setembro 14, 2004
Friedman vs Hayek e Mises (Mais Um Assalto)
A propósito da polémica que o De Direita tem mantido com O Intermitente e o Blasfémias queria recomendar a leitura de (mais) dois artigos de Mark Skousen.
O Primeiro ("Austrians vs. Monetarists:Who's Right About Hayek?") contém algumas considerações interessentes sobre a aplicação, o desenvolvimento e o ensino da Teoria Económica Austrica).
O Segundo ("Friedman Challenges Hayek") acerca da refutação do 2Austrian Bussiness Cicle" por Friedman.
Friedman rejects Austrian business cycle theory because the evidence seems to counter any relationship between a recession and a prior inflation. However, I believe Friedman uses the wrong data. In order to properly judge Mises -Hayek, one should correlate "easy credit" with economic activity, not past economic activity (expansion) with subsequent economic activity (contraction). An economic recovery or recession might change dramatically with a shift in monetary policy. For example, the Federal Reserve may not allow a deep recession to run its course, e.g., in 1982, when it injected massive new reserves into the banking system. Also, GDP is not a good indicator of investment activity, the main focus of the Mises-Hayek theory. GDP measures only final output, not the production of higher-order capital goods.
(...)
I offer two examples to elucidate the Mises- Hayek model. First, take the U.S. in the 1950s and early 1960s. Monetary inflation was relatively modest back then, and so was the business cycle. But monetary inflation grew much more rapidly in the late 1960s and 1970s, and so did the volatility of the economy. The expansions were greater and the contractions were more severe, just as Mises- Hayek would predict.
Look at Japan in the 1980s. If the Bank of Japan had adopted the Friedman monetarist rule (increasing the money supply at only 2-3 percent each year), the Austrians would predict only a mild inflationary build-up and subsequent recession. Unfortunately, the Bank of Japan engaged in an extremely liberal money policy, expanding the monetary base by 11 percent for four straight years and keeping interest rates artificially low. The result was (1) dramatic economic growth in the late 1980s, followed by (2) a crash and depression in the early 1990s. I fail to see how the data here contradicts Mises Hayek. In fact, Japanese economist Yoshio Suzuki confirmed the Austrian thesis recently: "As Hayek teaches us, easy money does not always raise the price of goods and services, but always creates an imbalance in the structure of the economy, particularly in the capital markets.... This is exactly what happened in Japan [in the 1980s]."4 He pointed out that Japanese consumer and wholesale prices were relatively stable during the late 1980s, but an unsustainable "bubble" in asset prices (stocks, real estate, art work, etc.) occurred.
A propósito. A quantidade de Universidades onde se (ainda) se lecionam os ensinamentos de Marx e Keynes deve ser tomado como sinónimo do seu sucesso (ie da sua aderência à realidade)?
posted by Miguel Noronha 9:21 da manhã
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