Epstein Secrets

vailable for business to borrow and invest. But business lacked the “animal spirits” to take such a risk ina slump. We saw the same story after 2008. Keynes’ proposal was for government to do the borrowing and investing instead. That’s part of the “fiscal policy” I described in Chapter 1. Here we tend to

saving is invested, as I use the word, but finds different returns. Saving under the mattress is investment at zero return, and drops output just as Keynes said. Investment at the current average return keeps output unchanged. That’s what Keynes meant. But investment at lower returns lowers output, and c

capital indeed grows more productive with age, or depreciates all at once, seem implausible in each case and cannot begin to explain enough. I think Becker hinted at the answer in 1964. Becker pointed out that job training at the Chapter 2: Fast Forward 1/06/16 14 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_010954 employers’ exp

d their market value in return, as if on the books of a firm. Chapter 6: Parallels with the Firm 2/4/16 21 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011055 Marshall’s pupil Keynes was thoroughly a marginalist, as are economists in general today and as am I. One of the features of his General Theory of 1936 was a kind of double-

t the human capital of children. But Farr deserves credit for pointing out that human capital in general capitalizes pay less invested consumption. Keynes’ teacher Alfred Marshall agreed with Farr in 1990’. As I read this passage, Marshall interpreted maintenance consumption as investment. So did B. F.

of Frank Knight a generation before Schultz. Only the rest is what Schultz called pure consumption eliminated from the economy in satisfying tastes. Becker added in 1964 that this investment must be expected to be recovered with interest, at least when paid by employers in job training. Schultz had also

ht also be surprised at my choice of benchmarks in verse and economics. Masefield and Mill? A consensus might have picked T. S. Elliot, say, and Lord Keynes. Masefield and Mill are likelier to be remembered as old-fashioned fuddy-duddies already outmoded when they wrote. But that’s me. I am Don Quixote. N

b paragraph on growth. The candidates for third seem well behind. Maybe Jevons or John Rae or Leon Walras. Time has not been kind to the teachings of Keynes. I would now rank his teacher Alfred Marshall higher. I like Myrdal’s magnificent ex ante - ex post distinction. Boehm Bawerk and the Austrian school

if such) where not all surprises. A few ideas met both descriptions. They pay rule, and the equally heretical Y rule, probably count as both although Becker came within a step of getting there first. Depreciation theory is likely to be both. Other possible candidates might include my observation that hold