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CHAPTER 9: SO WHAT’S NEW?
To claim originality in any field is rash. It is safer to say that some things in this book
are new as far as 1 know. | know at least what I can’t remember reading elsewhere. |
am more confident in judging what will surprise in the sense of conflict with what is
taught today. There we need only keep up with the current conversation. Judging
originality with confidence means having read everything before.
My surprises were not all new, and my novelties (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 holds by money managers reveal prices as clearly as trades do, and
my hawks-and-doves analogy inferring from this that index funds should
outperform managed ones when aggregate AUM held by money managers, not
trades by them, exceeds a critical percentage of the market to be determined. There
may also be both surprise and novelty in my suggestion of monetary policy by
establishment of real dollars as legal tender. In my wannabe biologist role, I just
may have been first to the point out the gaffe in the math of Hamilton’s rule.
Free growth theory takes Mill a little farther by ruling out growth by thrift at the
collective scale. It should prove a major surprise to lawmakers, who incentivize
thrift in the name of growth, and a milder one to economists already prepared by
the insights of Solow. My possible originality here was in the simultaneous rates
equations | derived to test them, and the test itself accessing data for market-valued
capital as well as consumption from the Piketty-Zucman website. My definitions of
market-valued net investment and net output, substituting for the book-valued
versions used in national accounts, were essential for testing. I suppose these rank
as novelties but not surprises.
Chapter 9: So What ‘s New? 3/17/16 1
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