Bent Hansen

Excess Demand, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Wages

I. A neoclassical macro theory for money wage changes, 2. — II. Neoclassical wage theory with spontaneous wage change and additional wage determinants, 3 — III. Vacancies and unemployment and excess demand, 5. — IV. The derivation of the Phillips relation, 8. — V. The form of the Phillips relation, 11. — VI. The cyclical characteristics of unemployment and vacancies, 17. — VII. Vacancies, unemployment, and equilibrium, 21.

A Theoretical Analysis of Smuggling

I. Smuggling and welfare, 173. — II. Exogenously specified objectives: target increase in importable production, 184. — III. Overinvoicing and underinvoicing of transactions, 186. — IV. Conclusions, 187.

Arab socialism in Egypt

Abstract The characteristic feature of ‘Arab socialism’, as practised in Egypt, is public ownership of the modern sectors, including finance and trade. Efficiency, in these sectors, and perhaps in agriculture, however, has suffered. Despite some improvement in distribution, following confiscation of larger businesses and rural estates, Egyptian society cannot be considered egalitarian. Egypts system of agrarian co-operatives is perhaps the only feature of Arab socialism worth imitating.

Interest Rates and Foreign Capital in Egypt Under British Occupation

My archival studies in Egyptian banks reveal that nominal interest rates charged by foreign financial capital in Egypt fell strongly as compared with European rates throughout the period 1882–1914. Interest differentials declined by 2 to 2 ½ percent. This is explained by the increasing confidence of European investors with British occupation and policies. To explain the large inflow of financial capital after 1900 a sharp decline in real interest rates, related to the upsurge of agricultural prices, is posited. The case offers interesting parallels to present-day problems of excessive indebtedness in Third World countries.

Agricultural Output and Consumption of Basic Foods in Egypt, 1886/87-1967/68

This paper reports the outcome of computations of indexes for total agricultural output and for apparent consumption of basic food: cereals and pulses in Egypt during the period 1886/87–1967/68.

The Profitability of the Suez Canal as a Private Enterprise, 1859–1956

On the basis of published accounts, internal rates of return and present values are computed for capital in general and for particular investors (French shareholders and the British and Egyptian governments) from construction to nationalization of the canal. Terminal values at the nationalization had to be imputed. Rates of return are compared with opportunity costs represented by the return on alternative investments. For capital generally, French shareholders, and the British government, rates of return were 8–9 percent against opportunity costs of 3–4 percent. For the Egyptian government, corresponding figures were 2–5 and 11 percent. American investment would not have been profitable.

The economics of the OECD: A comment

The question that the authors of this paper have tried to answer is both interesting and important. Analyzing past and present policies of member countries, forecasting future developments and giving advice on policies, serving as a kind of secretariat to the group of ten countries and engineering joint resolutions on international policy matters, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development has undoubtedly played a role in forming economic policy-making in the developed world. Those who feel that the only true progress in economic policy during the post-war period has been due to the increasing availability of primary and aggregated data would tend to emphasize that side of the activities of the OECD. It is a difficult task, however, to infer the basic thinking, the paradigms of an international organization, from its current publications. This is what the authors attempt to do. Not only may publications have been formulated as compromises between opinions of member countries or between conflicting views within the organization itself, it must also be recalled that such publications more often than not have to be relatively non-technical and, hence, cannot operate on a high level of rigor. The authors have, in addition to publications for which the organization is directly responsible, had access to widely circulated, unpublished material and monographs by consultants in which compromise and simplicity have not blurred the picture; but such sources may not express the views of the organization or may apply theories and techniques that its mandarins do not favor. Or consultants’ monographs may coincide with the views of the mandarins to such an extent that it becomes impossible to trace any changes in views of the organization after the appearance of a monograph. Consultants may be selected so as to support the views of the organization vis-a-vis member countries. Be that as it may, any attempt to distill the OECD paradigm from its publications should acknowledge the fact that considerable progress has been made in academic theorizing monetarist as well as Keynesian about economic policy matters during the twenty-odd years the organization has been active in its present style. It is not only the OECD that has adjusted to a changing environment, and its views at any time should in all fairness be evaluated against the background of what was then considered advanced academic thinking. Moreover, a “revealed paradigm” will disclose only what the organization,

Chapter 1 – A THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SMUGGLING

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a theoretical analysis of smuggling. It is commonly argued that smuggling must improve economic welfare since it constitutes (partial or total) evasion of the tariffs (or quantitative restrictions), which, for a small country, would signify a suboptimal policy. As smuggling merely represents, from a welfare point of view, yet another way in which exportable are transformed into importable, it must be represented as a smuggling transformation (or offer) curve. However, it is clear that this transformation curve must be less favorable than the terms of trade. With perfect competition in smuggling, both the foreign price (the terms of trade) and the domestic price are given to the individual smuggler. With monopoly in smuggling, however, several possibilities are open. In the monopolistic smuggling case, the smuggler is a nonresident whose profits, therefore, do not constitute welfare for the country that experiences smuggling. For nonprohibitive tariffs and constant costs smaller than the tariff-included price and perfect competition in smuggling, smuggling cannot be uniquely welfare-ranked vis-a-vis non-smuggling.