Thomas K. Rymes

Some Theoretical Problems in Accounting for Sustainnable Consumption

Are we using up exhaustible resources at an unsustainable pace? Will economic growth eventually grind to a standstill because of mounting degradation of the environment? If National Accountants could provide acceptable measures of the economic depletion of exhaustible natural resources and the economic degradation of our natural world, these, added to those for economic depreciation and deducted from Gross Product, would yield measures of Net Product which might show whether or not we have been experiencing sustainable consumption.(See Ahmad, el Serafy and Lutz 1989)

On the Coyne-Rasminsky Directive and Responsibility for Monetary Policy in Canada

A commonplace is that central banks should be made more independent of democratic political processes. A variant of this major theme is that central bankers should have autonomy over monetary policy, such autonomy being restricted ultimately, of course, to preserve democratic control, by the device of directives issued by their political masters. I investigate here the Canadian variant, the Coyne-Rasminsky Directive. The Directive, though said to be originally designed to strengthen democratic control over the Bank of Canada, has had the opposite effect. It is not just an instrument to enhance the autonomy of the Bank of Canada, it is in fact a device to enhance the autocracy of the Bank, an outcome which is the general product of the attempt to replace discretion with rules in the conduct of monetary policy in a modern democratic state.

On 'Money' in ISLM and AD/AS Models

Hicks’s ISLM model interpretation of Keynes’s theory2 is subject to much controversy.3 In this paper, we focus upon the ‘real balance’ effect and its role in ISLM and AD/AS analyses.4 We shall argue that ISLM and AD/AS require ‘nominal anchors’. We live in a world where, increasingly, the “money“ in the ISLM and AD/AS model no longer exists (as Keynes imperfectly understood in his Treatise on Money). There are no longer any nominal anchors, rather they have been replaced by discretionary policy. As Professor Ferris nicely sums up our position, we argue that central banks are fundamentals.