Evidence Part VI

 

Nature of workers. When economic theorists do permit worker behavior to vary, they almost always motivate employees solely by a desire to shirk. Positing a universal urge to loaf on the job combines with monitoring costs to animate the shirking … 
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Evidence Part V

Various forms of the input-outcome framework featured in GEM Project have been used extensively by psychologists and sociologists in studies designed to explicate behavior while engaged in tasks for pay. Named “exchange theory”, the general approach was developed in the … 
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Evidence Part IV

 

An early Daniel Yankelovich poll of business leaders asked the question: Does job dissatisfaction lead to high turnover, tardiness, loafing on the job, poor workmanship, and indifference to customers and clients? Of the 563 respondents, 94 percent thought that such … 
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Evidence Review Part III

One of the most most powerful indictments against consensus mainstream market-centric general-equilibrium modeling is that it does not accommodate pure wage rent (PWR). The descriptor “pure” distinguishes the concept from more familiar versions of wage rent, typically associated with labor … 
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Evidence Review Part II

This post continues to set the stage for our in-depth review of the evidence relevant to the GEM Project’s model class. Once generalized-exchange analysis is extended beyond its baseline,  optimization occurs over sequential periods of unchanged and variable reference standards … 
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Evidence Review Part I

Reviving stabilization-relevant macroeconomics, a principal objective of the GEM Project, requires innovative modeling that is both rooted in the neoclassical tenets of optimization and equilibrium and consistent with the broad range of relevant evidence, This Blog has focused on the … 
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An Exortation

 Exchange generalization has enabled construction, long overdue, of the first evidence-consistent rational-behavior theory of wage determination in more than a hundred years, finally moving our understanding of employee pay out of the 19th century. While having a useful explanation of … 
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An Insight from Robert Lucas

 

This Blog has been hard on Robert Lucas, the famous University of Chicago economist and leader of the anti-Keynesians in the late 20th century macro wars. His success in making market-centric general-equilibrium modeling a faith-based choice justifies censure. Policy-relevant macro … 
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Core of Usable Macroeconomics

Three principles.  The GEM Project identifies three principles that constitute the core of usable macro theory in highly specialized economies. The compact set supports stabilization and growth policymaking while still being fully microfounded by rational transactions organized by dynamic general … 
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Neil Irwin’s Shame, Part IV

As argued in earlier posts, Neil Irwin’s shame is rooted in the know-nothing approach that has long been one of Irwin’s hobby horses. He appears to derive satisfaction in reporting on mainstream economists’ struggling with some contemporaneous problem that he … 
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