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On this page you can find my research and writings.
This work is about cultural economics, political economy, public choice, Austrian School capital and entrepreneurial theory, the distribution effects of economic policy-making and the history and methodology of economics. Much of my research combines among these categories.
There is also information about our book Artists and Markets in Music (Routledge 2024) and the North American Workshop on Cultural Economics.
Thank you.
Projects
This is the publisher Routledge Featured Author page we did for the December 2024 release of the paperback of Markets and Artists in Music (2024). I also wrote an Introduction to the paperbook version for the author's page to discuss findings about the covid era subsequent to the writing of the hardcopy and e-copies. This is the Routledge link to the paperback version, and this is a version of the Introduction which includes illustrations. November 2024.
I have written a draft paper is called "Artist Values and a Social Production Function for Music: Lessons from Covid". This research is for the Value Based Approach Workshop & Conference held at Wolfson College, Cambridge University in late September 2024. Here is the workshop program and here are my slides.
We find that artists (musicians) prefer a spontaneous order in order to realize serendipity and authenticity, that labor union members do worse economically and creatively than their peers during the covid intereventions, and that on-line music production has positive spillovers into live performance. We also confirm findings that formal education leads to social distinction and access to state funding in the arts. Finally, the migration from "Blue" states to "Red" states is accelerated with the covid era.
I help to coordinate the biennial North American Workshop on Cultural Economics, our next one will be in Washington, D.C. in late November 2024 at the Washington Hilton. The workshop is held in conjuction with the Association for Cultural Economics International and the Southern Economic Association. Here is the program.
This is my research for the workshop called "Distinction and Subsidy in the Arts: Case Study of the New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment." I show how the MOME film and television subsidies of about $750 million per year are a form of corporate welfare and excacerbate inequality. I use cultural sociology to hypothesize that social and cultural distinction created in art subsidy programs is more important than economic outcome. These are the slides for the presentation. November 2024.
This is our program for the workshop (April 2024)
I was asked to give a seminar presentation about Artists and Markets in Music with Erasmus University Rotterdam in April 2024. The Erasmus school of cultural economics focuses on a value-based approach to understanding artistic practice so it was good to give this reading to our book and get comments from the participants. The seminar relates to the musician's survey we created for the book to see how values relate to creativity and entrepreneurship, especially during the covid era lockdowns. Here are the slides and this is a video I prepared for the seminar called "Artist Values and a Production Function for Music".
The Elgar Encyclopedia of Financial Crises edited by Sarah Hsu was published in January 2024. I have two entries in this collection. The first is "Inequality created by active monetary policy," the second is "Austrian School monetary explanation for the business cycle".
After several years of research and presentation of the various stages of the research we have completed a draft paper about central bank monetary effects on asset prices, "Comparative Cantillon Effects in the Canadian and Australian Art Markets". We find that the price of fine art increases with easy money, exacerbating inequality as only the wealthy can afford asset investment like art, whereas the poor suffer consumer price inflation. My coauthers have created databases for thousands of art (paintings) prices at auction in Canada and Australia, and are specialists in the econometric techniques needed to advance this research.
We submitted the paper to a journal and received an excellent critical review and the paper is now under extensive revision. The research now includes analysis on art collector behaviour and the central banking transmission channel for new money to enter the art market. July 2024.
Our book Artists and Markets in Music: The Political Economy of Music During the Covid Era and Beyond (Routledge 2024) was published August 30, 2023. This link has the chapter abstracts and is for downloading ebook and individual chapters. This link is for the hardcover book itself from the publisher.
Here is the Amazon listing, hopefully a less expensive version will be made available by the publisher. See below for more information on the development of the book, which we began in 2020. This is a February 2024 poster prepared by the publisher as we begin to circulate the book for review.
This is something about Artists and Markets in Music for EconomistsTalkArt.org. September 2023.
Book review of Dekker and Morea (2023) Realizing the Values of Art: Making Space for Cultural Civil Society for the Fall 2023 online edition of the Independent Review. Here is the link to the Independent Review article. July 2023.
I presented research about the digital revolution in recorded music as an example of 'creative destruction' with the Association for Cultural Economics International at the University of Indiana in June 2023. We also discuss the effects of digitization on Reggae Sunsplash as a case study and show why strict enforcement of copyright might not be rational in certain cases. Here is the draft paper on SSRN and this is a 15 minute video presentation of the research on my "Cameron's Teaching Modules" YouTube channel.
Here is a draft paper called "Using the Classical Equation of Exchange and Cantillon Effects to Help Understand the Inequality Created by an Increasingly Active Central Bank Monetary Policy". The paper is also available on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). I show how the Federal Reserve has become ever more active in financial markets and federal debt monetization and how this increasing interventionism exacerbates economic inequality. April 2023. A revision of this paper became an entry for the Elgar Encyclopedia of Financial Crises. December 2023.
I edited my project relating to how Karl Marx studied the French liberals of the early-19th century while formulating his historical materialism theory at mid-century. The difference is that the French liberals wrote that free man is the productive class and is exploited by the unproductive state. Marx's exploitation theory is that capitalists as a class exploit labor as a class. The working title of the paper is "Did Karl Marx Turn the Original Theory of Class Struggle?" January 2023. Subsequent reviewers of this paper in the discipline of the history of economic thought that I am missing the English classical political economists influence on Marx and they are right. But that would be a book and not a paper.
This draft paper was included in the New Economic Papers series on the history and philosophy of economics. February 2023.
I was invited to present a convocational address at Wesleyan College on October 18, 2022 called "Are Subsidies in the Arts Necessary?," research relating to our Musicians and Markets book project.
We held our 6th North American cultural economics workshop on November 20, 2022 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL USA. The workshop is held in conjunction with the Southern Economic Association. We had 20 researchers sharing their cultural economics projects and a dinner together sponsored by the Association of Cultural Economics International after the day-long workshop.
My paper for the workshop discusses research methods into the study of artist behavior and contains the preliminary results of our musician's survey during the covid era for our book Artists and Markets in Music which tests several propositions in cultural economics. The research also examines how using official statistics misses the nature of artist self-employment. These are the presentation slides and this is the presentation.
This is my paper proposal for the November 2021 Southern Economic Association meetings, "Complex Econogenic Harm: Identification as the first step towards redress," where I show the regressive redistributional effects of certain common and accepted economic policy interventions. Here is the draft paper and here is info about the session: "Economics, Policy and Morality". This is a recorded presentation of the paper.
I am interested in the life's work of political economist Wm Niskanen who was an idealist yet an engaged pragmatist. I wrote a paper called "The Curious Case of William Niskanen: A Case in Business Ethics?" for the Southern Economics Association (not) held in New Orleans November 21-23, 2020. The paper explores the evolution of the concept known as the "deadweight loss of government intervention" in supply and demand. I also look at Niskanen's relationship with Gordon Tullock and their influence towards identifying what is known today variously as rent-seeking or political and crony capitalism. This is the presentation in slides. September 2020. Here is a video of the paper presentation with one of my classes.
A colleague and I created a not-for-profit organization for a concert film preservation project, ReggaeSunsplashPreservationSociety.org. St. John's University has been helping us with this project by providing archive space and digitization equipment and services. We hosted a NYC Panel on July 1, 2020 which I moderated in order to formally thank the university for its help. We were going to host an event on campus until the lockdowns. The panel discusses creative destruction and innovation in the arts and includes DJ Kool Herc who was important in the development of Hip Hop.
This is the blog entry draft I wrote for EconomistsTalkArt.com, advanced upon the item below. July 2020. (Also see "Publications" page.)
I wrote a short communication paper for the Journal of Cultural Economics called "Report from Brooklyn on the political economy of art during coronavirus time," which discusses the protests taking place at the Brooklyn Museum during early voting in NYC from a political economy lens. June 2020.
"Financialization and the Firm: How Bailouts and the Tax Code May Create Corporatism in the USA", abstract proposal for the Journal of Institutional Economics. The special JOEI issue celebrates Frank Knight's introduction of the entrepreneur managing uncertainty into economic thinking in 1921, an advance upon the starting point of equilibrium. May 2020.
I had planned to participate in the 5th International Economic Philosophy Conference in Warsaw in June 2020. The topic for the session is Culture and Economics. My proposed paper is "The Image Feedback Loop: How Culture Can Help to Explain Changing Preferences and thus Institutions," here is the abstract. This is related to my work on Kenneth Boulding and public choice voter theory. (Not taking place because of covid mandates.)
Here is a book review for the Independent Review of Levy and Peart's Escape from Democracy: The Role of Experts and the Public in Public Policy (Cambridge University Press 2017). I studied with the authors during their Summer Institute for the History of Economic Thought and now have the opportunity to thank them by giving their excellent research some acknowledgment. Spring 2022.
This is a presentation I gave at the Summer Institute about how Karl Marx 'turned' the orginal class struggle of the French Liberals, which was 'productive man' being exploited by the unproductive state, not labor exploited by capital.
Paper for the Workshop on Cultural Economics at the Southern Economic Association meetings in Fort Lauderdale, November 23-25, 2019: "An Exploration into the Performing Arts and the Political Economy of Ticketing". We evaluate the differences between positive law and resultant regulatory capture versus a catallactic approach where competition brings value, especially along the entrepreneurial stages-of-production leading to a live (perishable) music event. These are the presentation slides. Many of these ideas have been incorporated into our book Artists and Markets in Music.
I chaired a panel at the workshop about comparative cultural institutions and discusssed an Australian paper about the artist as street performer.
I wrote a chapter for a book Ten years after the global crisis: Next steps. My research here is about labor market structure and interventions and comparisons with the Great Depression of the1930s in the United States. The similarities are that after each episode of massive state-intervention the effect was structural "under-employment" as indicated by the Labor Force Participation Rate. June 2019. We also see increased structural unemployment after the covid era interventions. June 2024.
Here is my paper for the History of Economics Society (HES) meetings at Columbia University June 20-23, 2019. I explore social order emerged and reinforced by non-logical voter behaviour based on the ideas contained in Kenneth Boulding's The Image (1956).
My discussant on this paper, Julien Grandjean, and I are working together to further this research to include a comparison of Boulding's and Kenneth Down's early formulations of economic rationality as applied to democracy, and, the fragility of democracy as found in these early 'public choice' models.
At the HES I also discussed a paper on the political economy of George Orwell.
This is the paper for the Global Business Research Symposium (GBRS) in Valencia, Spain June 3-5, 2019. The paper is on monopoly theory, method and measurement, creative destruction and distribution under the 'new' economy, for example which special interest groups are slowing down the adaptation of platforms and digital currency. It is also a survey of some headline cases in anti-trust and follows recent work highlighting the harm that rent-seeking and regulatory-capture can do to individual well-being under political capitalism. This is the presentation.
I reviewed T. G. Drape's "Remapping Global Business from the Reshaping of Trade" at the GBRS, which is about using internet technology to faciliate customs clearances and the importance of air transportation in the international value-chain. There is also some interesting information on the difficulties in measurement for the "new" economy, here is my critique.
I presented with an interdisciplinary roundtable sponsored by the Academic Center for Equity and Inclusion at St. John's University during research month. My topic is "Complex Econogenic Harm: How Economic Policy Can Harm the Worse-Off in Society with Examples from Today". This is the program details. April 2019.
I also mentored a poster with Joe Pellrine who helped us create a film archive on campus as part of our Reggae Sunsplash Preservation Society. We are creating new AV digitization methodologies while making live concert performances by reggae's foundational artists available to scholars and the general public. April 2019.
For the 14th Annual Global Business Research Symposium in Valencia, Spain in June 2019, I researched competition theory and regulatory practice, "When is a Monopoly not a Monopolist? A Case-Study on Ticketmaster". This work evolved into a chapter for our book project (Routledge 2024).
I presented some of my work on art-statism, based on fiscal sociology and an aesthetics-based theory of endogenous preference-formation, for the Public Choice Society meeting, March 14-16, 2019, Louisville, Kentucky. Here is the draft paper and the presentation.
Proposal for presenting our work on preserving the analog concert film created during the Reggae Sunsplash Festival (1978 - 1994) at the Popular Culture Association meetings, April 2019 in Washington, DC. These are the panels for the music area of the PCA. Our webpage is ReggaeSunsplashPreservationSociety.org. This is my presentation.
This is my proposal for the London School of Economics 4th Interwar Economic History Workshop, 10-11th December 2018. The paper is about how the public works and the public art of the New Deal in the 1930s help to inculcate a larger role for the federal state in US society during the inter-war years, which has continued and is increasing through today.
These are updated slides relating to my presentation at the GBRS in Ireland in 2017 (see below) on the "New Economy versus Vested Interests" (eg how the political class and their cronies attempt to supress competition which might lose their privelage), updated for use in the classroom, Fall 2018.
I made a presentation based on this abstract for a paper called "No, We don't 'Owe it to Ourselves': Contribution towards a critique of conventional macroeconomic wisdom, and why actually-existing public debt and monetary policy is regressive policy" at the Libertarian Scholars Conference, NYC, October 20, 2018. Here is the paper. Here are the presentation slides.
I indicated an interest in becoming a National Endowment for the Humanties (NEH) Summer Scholar during the month of July 2018 to discuss the Enlightment philosophical moment (or, classical liberalism) at the University of Chicago for three weeks. Here is the narrative relating to the application. April 2018.
This is my paper for the Association of Cultural Economics International meetings in Melbourne, Australia in June 2018. It is part of my larger work on "art-statism" using the Federal Art Poject in 1930s America as a case study to show how this art called for a larger role for the federal state in society in the form of specific programs. Here is the presentation.
I proposed a chapter on "art-statism" for the volume, Monument Culture: International Perspectives on the Future of Monuments in a Changing World, edited by Laura A. Macaluso. December 2017.
My research on "Cantillon effects" (which describes how money supply increases create asset bubbles) continues, here is my motivation for this research. I presented initial findings in this area to the Eastern Economic Association meetings in NYC in 2011. This is a link to my book Economics for Everyone, 2nd Edition, the latter part of the book discusses Cantillon effects and the housing boom leading to the Great Recession.
Here is my paper on "art-statism" for the Fourth North American Workshop on Cultural Economics in Montreal in November 2017. The title of the paper is "A Theory of Art with Instrumental Value to the State, with Applied Case-Studies from the New Deal Art Production in the USA." Here are the presentation slides.
An editor has asked that I submit an updated version of my research into Veblen, which I presented to the Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economic Thought, University of Richmond (VA USA). The paper is called, "Re-reading Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) in the 21st Century", and uses 'culturomics' (word usage over time) to evaluate the influence of Thorstein Veblen's concept of conspicuous consumption on both popular culture and economic theory. A video of the presentation is available here. July 2017.
I presented this paper called "The Actually-Existing Welfare State in the USA and One Possible Transformation to a Basic Income" at the 16th Annual North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress in NYC in June 2017. Here is the presentation in slides. The paper is also available through the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network portal.
You can find my earlier book chapter measuring the US welfare-state, and the gains in economic efficiency and fairness to be gained by replacing the welfare-state with a Basic Income, in Basic Income and the Free Market (2013) in the "publications" section of this website. I produced a Brooklyn Free Speech cable access television show on the Basic Income based on these ideas using more recent data than the book. March 2017.
This is the abstract for a paper about the new economy (the "app economy") versus the vested interests (government tax authorities, labor unions, hotel and taxi lobbies, central banks) and is called "Marketing as Information in the App Economy: Theory and Challenges for Creative Destruction and Technological Progress." (November 2016). This is the TEDx presentation I prepared relatedly to present on campus called "The 'App Economy' versus Vested Interests." May 2017.
I presented this paper on the new economy based on the economics of industrial organization at the Global Business Research Symposium (GBRS) at the University College Cork in Ireland in July 2017. Here is the slide presentation. I also discussed "Students' Views of the Market System and the Role of the Federal Government in the Economy" by Glanz and "The Dynamics of Entrepreneurial Networks in Small Family Businesses" by Wale-Oshinowo & Lebura at the conference. Here are the presentation slides for Glanz and here for Wale-Oshinowo & Lebura. I won a best discussant award for my review of Wale-Shinowo & Lebura.
This is my paper on "econogenic harm" looking at how experts (economists in this case) can cause psychological harm through the unintended consequences of disretionary policy actions. I presented the paper with the GBRS in Rome, Italy in June 2016. (I am editing it for potential publication, with an emphasis on critique of accepted wisdom - in this case Keynesian economics and trade protectionism- based on Socratic philosophy, October 2017).
I also discussed two papers in Rome, one (presentation slides) on industrial organization and corporate finance by Bruyaka and Caner, another on healthcare industry management theory by Smaldone and Vainieri, and based on the Italian economy's single-payer system.
In this paper I show how government-sponsored student loan programs raise the cost of tuition and explain the negative effect on small business and entrepreneurship of student debt-creation. (June 2016).
In May 2015 I presented a paper to the Global Business Research Symposium conference in Istanbul on Reducing Obstacles to Economic Growth in Istanbul. The paper is entitled "Reform of a Modern Welfare State through a Basic Income to Re-Start Higher Levels of Economic Growth." Here is the slide presentation.
Also at the Istanbul conference I won a best discussant award for critiquing "Is Organizational Citizenship Behaviour Voluntary or Obligatory," by Ozlem Yilmaz and Aslihan Guzin Selcuk (where link to presentations?) . This was good a good chance to study virue ethics.
Here is a paper I presented at the 9th Annual Global Business Research Symposium (Krakow, Poland, May 2014) on Preventing Future Crises. The work is entitled "Alliance Economics and U.S. Overseas Military Presence", where I suggest "user fees" so that our allies don't free ride on the US taxpayer and so too to create competition (allocative efficiency) in the provisioning of national defense. This work won a best paper award. Note that this common-defense alliance cost-sharing proposal is several years ahead of the current Trunp's administration talking abut allies "paying their share," this paper actually quantifies US military costs overseas rather than just political posturing.
Also in Poland I discussed Young Back Choi's paper "Wither North Korea."
Research proposal on recent economic history about the Great Recession, showing "intervention effects" creating the housing bubble being the 1998 policy of the Federal Housing Administration to have half of US housing mortgages being "0% down" loans. This, coupled with an expansionary monetary policy by the Fed, creates the bubble. Then, with unauditable Fannie Mae financial statements as a proposed intervention (trigger) for explaining the housing-value downturn, along with a contractionary monetary policy beginning in 2006, this "popped" the housing bubble. This is part of my larger research on Cantillon effects.
Paper in Draft "Did Marx 'Turn' the Original Theory of the Class Struggle?" presented to the Panels on Marxian Theory and Philosophy at the EEA 2011 February 2011 (see below under Completed Projects for the presentation).
Paper in draft, "How Flexible was the Works Progress Administration in Responding to Unemployment during the Great Depression?," for an independent study with Teresa Ghiralducci at the New School. The research is on the employment trends during the Great Depression and how the US government performed as a long-term employer-of-last-resort (the only time this has happened in American history), May 2010. I want to revise this paper to focus on the decentralized management of the WPA, to help explain why the WPA was flexible enough to follow the unemployment patterns when agreggated nationally.
Paper in draft entitled "Karl Marx and the Origins of the Social Theory of Class Struggle" compares Marx's thought with that of the Radical free-market French political economists who preceeded Marx in a theory of the class struggle and historical progression. The paper, written for Duncan Foley's Advanced Political Economy course at the New School for Social Research, shows that Marx knew about and respected the work of these theorists and traces a historiograpy of Marx's relationship to their work. December 2009.
My Marx class struggle origin work was also presented in an earlier form at the Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economic Thought at the University of Richmond in June 2010. Here is youtube video of the presentation. This work was revised for the Eastern Economic Association conference 2011 (see above) where I focus more on the context of the French writers.
Book review for independent study on "Public Art in the Great Depression" with cultural sociologist Elzbieta Matynia at the New School for Social Research. The book reviewed is Labor's Canvas: American Working-Class History and the WPA Art of the 1930s, by Laura Hapke (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) and covers the economic and social relations of the Great Depression in the USA in addition to an analysis of the US government-funded Federal Art Project. March 2009. An abbreviated version was published by the Economic History Network, May 2009 (see publications section of this homepage). The larger research in this area is the political economy of art and I will be writing a survey article on this topic forthcoming as part of my dissertation work.
This paper is a longer version of my publication in the Journal of African Development called "Aid and Liberty in West Africa during the Cold War and Post-Cold War Periods, 1975 - 2005" (see publications page). I have been working on which uses measures of political and civil rights, freely-elected leadership and fiscal accountability (the lack of unproductive public debt) as proxies for human liberty and which shows how aid and liberty negatively correlated during and after the Cold War. This research was originally presented to the Global Studies Association conference in NYC in June 2008. Revisions to the work were then presented to the Africa Finance and Economics Association at the American Economic Associaton meetings in January 2009 in San Francisco.
Term paper, "Towards a Research Method into the Federal Art Project, 1935-1943 from the Perspective of Cultural Economics" written for the New School for Social Research seminar on Historical Methods and Sources taught by Professor Paul Ross, Spring 2008. This research explores the art created during the Great Depression, the value of this art and the artist to society, and the collective memory of the Depression on the 75th Anniversary of the Federal Art Project. April 2008.
Draft paper called "A Theory of memory's role in a decent human life." The paper uses Scitovsky's The Joyless Economy: An Inquiry into Human Satisfaction and Consumer Dissatisfaction as a point of departure and combines a critique of economic's use of utility theory and psychology to create a conjecture that a decent human life is possible when trade-offs between new experiences and social relations are accorded differing subjective weights over a person's life. February 2008.
Research proposal (used as basis for consultation with several colleagues interested in the research program) for using agent-based modeling to analyze Austrian School capital theory. Agent-based modeling is an alternative to mainstream models (which use a representative agent and an inter-temporal equilibrium approach and thus abstract too far from subjective reality for some economists) and allows the assignment of individual and unique preferences to economic actors in an economy. September 2007 (updated March 2008).
Working paper attempting to better explain and provide grounds for further research on the Austrian School capital and business cycle theories through the use of heuristics and mathematical formalization, January 2008. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the New School for Social Research - University of Massachusetts (Amherst) economics graduate student workshop in November 2007.
Presentation on the Austrian School of Economics prepared for the New School Seminar on Economic Theory and Modeling taught by Duncan Foley. Austrian School economics assumes an open-ended, evolutionary, freely-associating society organized around individuals meeting and trading in a decentralized manner as a basis for the distribution of resources and the development of institutions in society. November 2007.
Working paper on the philosophy of history called the "Laws of Motion for Political Manipulation of Public Memory". This work is related to my participation at the New School for Social Research program in Krakow, Poland during the summer of 2007. The paper presents a model to illustrate how culture 'thins' when collective memory is manipulated for political ends. September 2007.
Draft paper on the history of economic thought about David Ricardo's experience as a bond trader and how this affected the methodolgy in his Principles classic of 1817. Ricardo is seen by many as the bridge between Adam Smith and Karl Marx. This research in progress shows that Ricardo may have missed the opportunity to model the entrepreneur into society. The lack of theorizing business risk into economics removed the entrepreneur (the decentralized economic actor who does not seek government monopoly rents) from successor mainstream economics and perhaps modeled a class division which was anachronistic. November 2006.
Paper, "A General Theory on the Hierarchy of Political and Economic Orders" about civic community and the nation-state, disaggregating political and economic structure into personalized and depersonalized relationships and showing that a differing concept of the State is needed for each hierarchical structure, presented to the Athens Institute for Education and Research. August 2007.
Completed Projects
In Agust 2015 I completed a Dual PhD in economics and historical studies from the New School for Social Research in New York. Here is the dissertation. We also during this process created a new field in the economics department, "cultural economics," one of the first in the United States.
Here is a paper related to my dissertation work on 'art statism' that I presented to the University of Maryland history graduate student conference in February 2014. This the presentation.
Paper "Austrian Economics, Regime Uncertainty and the New Normal" for the Global Recovery: Visions of Change and Stability business and economics conference in Valencia, Spain, May 2013. Here is the presentation.
I also discussed two papers. One discussion is on a paper by Dorata & Phillips, about public school district governance policy, effects on local real estate taxes and decentralized school competition, the second by Olson & Phillips, is on the financial performance of For-Profit versus Not-For-Profit universities, and, the political economy of not-for-profits with concommitant distribution effects.
This is the bibliography in cultural economics that I put together with my advisor, and here are my answers to the cultural economics field exam. April 2013.
Article about how the tax code and central bank creates absentee ownership, debt creation and periodic financial crisis in the USA. February 2012.
Essays I wrote in preparation for the Phd field exam in the history of economic thought. One on how economists have addressed economies of scale since the time of Marshall, one on Wicksell and Keynes and the monetary explanation for the business-cycle, and one about Smith, Ricardo and Keynes on the precursor mercantilists. 2012.
Presentation, "Did Marx 'Turn' the Original Theory of the Class Struggle?" for the Panels on Marxian Theory and Philosophy at the EEA 2011 February 2011. The original class struggle as formulated by French Enlightenment thinkers during the Restoration (circa 1815 - l830) was Free Man (productive labor) versus the State (the exploiting/appropriator class). The Restoration liberals were radicals who were against both the Empire and the Monarchy and who wrote on class struggle and exploitation 30 years before Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto. I trace the parallels between the thought of the French radicals and Marx's scientific socialism and use the published writings and personal correspondance of Marx and Engels to show the French writers' influence. I would like further comments and criticisms on this paper in hopes of publishing it as work on history of economic thought.
Discussed Xiao Jiang's paper "Hegel and Marx on the State and Civil Society" panels on Marx Theory and Philosophy and discussed David Plath "Resale Price Maintenance by Japanese Newspapers", at the "Easterns", NYC February 2011.
Abstract of paper proposed for the Association of Cultural Economics International conference in Kyoto in June 2012 on universalism-symbolism, comparing the value of the US dollar ($) with that of the Andy Warhol dollars ($) as played out historically since the Warhol prints in 1982. December 2011.
Paper on the economics of museums, specifically how they can play a role in cultural education and improve societal welfare by increasing the number of people who can enjoy fine art as an experience good. This follows from the ideas of Tibor Scitovsky who believes that we consume too much for comfort and not enough of the finer things in life as we are risk averse to the new. An earlier draft was presented at the Association for Cultural Economics International biennial conference in Copenhagen June 2010.
Discussed at the cultural economics conference (ACEI 2010) "Specialist bookshop or souvenir shop: The consumption behavior of museum shop visitors of an Austrian federal art museum" by Buber, Knassmuller and Schmidt on the economics of art museum stores, June 2010, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Presentation, "Cantillon Effects in the Market for Art", for the Eastern Economic Association meetings, February 2011 in New York. I use time-series econometrics to analyze quantity of money effects on the price of art in the London Art market, 1830 to 2007. Findings are that an increase in money supply effects assets prices during the same time interval as output prices and that the effects on asset prices are more longer-lasting, which might help explain asset bubbles in times of 'quantitave easing' by central banks. Here is the data, which divides the analysis into the Classical Gold Standard period (1830-1913) and the post-war central banking period (1946-2007): art-1, art-2. Findings also show that Cantillon effects are more statistically significant during the post-war central-banking period of history than during than pre-central bank gold standard.
Overview of the Political Economy of Cultural Economics in the United States. Describes how cultural economics views the differing roles for government in the promotion of the arts, both in theory and how arts policy is practiced today. Written for presentation at a Milano graduate course on cultural policy, April 2010.
Paper "The Untenable Structuralism in Marx's Economics" shows that Marx's economics, developed as part of Marx and Engels' system of scientifc socialism, incorporates a fatal flaw in its structuralism (not least of which is a division in microconomic and macroeconomic logic). Presented at the Eastern Economic Association meetings in Philadelphia in February 2010. I also discussed Hyun Woong Park's "A Critique of Overdetermination Marxism" at the Easterns, which in-turn reviewed post-modernism in the social sciences in general.
Paper, "An Empirical Application of the Austrian School's 'Stages of Production'". This paper builds upon some previous work on attempting to apply Austrian School capital theory to the modern welfare state, using early Austrian School capital theory to help understand economic development in the United States. Presented at the New School for Social Research - University of Massachusetts, Amherst joint graduate workshop in economics, New York, October 2009.
Short essay comparing and contrasting economic analytical methods of Marx, the neoclassicals, Keynesians and the Austrian School, written for the final exam for the seminar in Advanced Political Economy at the New School under Duncan Foley. November 2009.
Presentation as discussant of paper by Park, Oh and Bowles, "Veblen effects, political representation and work hours: theory and estimates" at the New School for Social Research - UMass (Amherst) economics workshop, New York, October 2009. The review also covers the differing concepts of wage-determiniation in labor economics.
Brief overview of the Cambridge Capital Controversy in the 1960s between Cambridge (UK) and Cambridge, MA on the debate over how the value of capital in a society should be conceptualized and how then capital is combined with labor for production. I wrote this upon request from one of my tutorees at Brooklyn College, so thought I would post it as well. October 2009.
Term paper, "The Works Progress Administration (1935-1943): Social Safety Net, Central Planning or Political Pragmatism?," for the New School for Social Research Seminar in Historiography and Historical Method taught by Oz Frankel, Fall 2008. Paper reviews the historiography of the New Deal, which has shown that the public works built under the WPA in the 1930s helped to change American culture, and the nature of American federalism, into a society accepting of a larger role for the federal government explicitly manifested in "Keynesian economics". Paper was presented at the History of Economics Society conference in Denver, CO in June 2009.
Term Paper, "The Foundations of an Activist Fiscal Policy in the United States: The Great Engineer and Public Works in the 1920s" written for the Historical Foundations of Political Economy course at the New School for Social Research taught by Gary Mongiovi. Paper presents Commerce Secretary (and later President) Hoover's creation of public works planning in the USA, shows the first use of the 'multiplier' concept in fiscal policy, and additionaly is revisionist in that it makes clear that Hoover was not a "Do Nothing" President. March 2009.
Essay on the "marginal revolution" in economics showing the similarities and differences between Jevons, Menger and Walras. Paper uses Veblen's critique of marginalism as point-of-entry. In summary Walras' was of his time in creating a "grand theory of everything" based on mathematics, whereas Jevons and Menger wanted to see a more subtle and less universal approach to the modelling of economic actors in society. Menger too was unique in that he valued the entrepreneur as 'productive'. March 2009.
Essay on the German Historical and American Institutionalist schools of economics during the late 1800s and early 1900s and which makes the case that these schools are related in both analytical and pre-analytical (normative) visions in that both schools denied the precursor 'free market' methodology in economic analysis. March 2009.
Paper, which is a critique of Woody Holton's "Did Democracy Cause the Recession that Led to the Constitution?", written for presentation at the New School Historiography Seminar. The paper summarizes the historiography around the economic and social relations of those present at the founding of the United States and critiques the view that the United States constitution is "elitist" by bringing in an analysis of the rule of law. September 2008.
Essay, submitted to Foundation for Economic Education contest on how the work of Adam Smith is still relevant for today's epochal globalization. July 2008.
Paper, "Heuristic on a theory of social science with time and transformation." The paper combines the thought of Sewell, Hayek, Veblen and Marx to define, using simple mathematics as a logical device, a temporal and transformational social science involving human agency and structure. In addition the paper applies time and transformation to a non-dualist ontolgical social science based on social relations. June 2008.
Book review, Arms, War and Terrorism in the Global Economy: Economic Analyses and Civilian Alternatives, Wolfram Elsner, editor (Transaction Publishers, 2007). April 2008. Currently being reviewed by Defence and Peace Economics.
Term paper, "The Value Difference in Art Economics" written for and presented to the New School for Social Research seminar in Economic Methodology taught by Will Milberg, Spring 2008. The paper proposes that the research program in cultural economics is about the difference in value between art and other economic goods in society and presents a survey of cultural economics, especially as it relates to art as a public good. April 2008.
Essay on "The parodoxes of individualism" written for Edward Nell's Seminar on Transformational Growth at the New School for Social Research critiques the notion of a dichotomy between the general will and the common good, using the list of "fallacies of composition" in Paul J. Samuelson's Economics as a basis for analysis. March 2008.
Essay on "Scarcity versus Reproduction as a Foundation for Economic Value" written for Seminar on Transformational Growth discusses the differences between classical and neo-classical models of economic dynamics in society. March 2008.
Paper for New School for Social Research Seminar on Economic Methodology evaluating the methodolgical approach of "Property Rights and Time Preference" by Robert F. Mulligan (Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Spring 2007). February 2008.
Paper, "Critique of Walrasian Equilibrium in the Edgeworth Box" which is about mainstream equilbrium economics and illustrates the historically-dependent 'trading path' model of Duncan Foley in juxtaposition to the ahistorical 'one price' theorem as commonly seen to be Leon Walras' contribution to economic science through today. September 2007.
Essay on the oftentimes overlooked shared duality of limited resources in both classical and neo-classical economics. Written for Duncan Foley's Advanced Microeconomics course at the New School, October 2007.
Presentation to the New School for Social Research Krakow Program on Isaiah Berlin's concept of nationalism as originally formulated with the addition of modern examples. July 2007.
Presentation to the International Consortium of Associations for Pluralism in Economics of "Questioning Developing Orthdoxy" written with economic sociologist Matthias Thiemann (see publications link for the paper). May 2007.
Paper, "A Critique of International Development based on the Institutional Analysis of Thorstein Veblen," written in honor of the 150th anniversary of Veblen's birth. Paper applies Veblen's writings on institutions of the early 1900s to the development industry of the early 2000s and shows, again, the prescience of his prognoses. January 2007.
Essay on "Economics and Liberty", runner-up for Vernon Smith Award May 2006 at George Mason University.
Paper for macroeconomics class at George Mason University which is a brief summary and critique of Keynes and Keynesian economics. April 2006.
Some Non-Academic Writings and other Works
Music Review of Pocket Monster performing at the NYC marathon in Novermber 2024.
ESG-DEI Investment: What is it? October 2022. Written upon consultation.
Link to the Hardfire TV shows I have been producing lately for Brooklyn public television. September 2016- on-going.
Recommendations for reform of macro-economic policies in the USA to minimize business cycles and cronyism and increase standards of living, June 2012.
Article "The New Class Struggle" for the October 2010 Serf City on the dialectic between the public sector labor-unions and the rest of society. Note that the cover article in the Economist magazine January 8, 2011 is on this same topic.
Review of Guinevere Nell's Rediscovering Fire: Basic Economic Lessons from the Soviet Experiment (2010) for Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com
Hardfire television show on why central banking leads to bailouts, why the monetary and financial reforms do not address the policy problems in the USA which were the cause the of the financial crisis and why denationalization of the money may offer a better solution.
Letter to the editor, New York Review of Books, on the root causes of the Great Recession in historical and institutional context, March 2010.
Article written for the New York libertarian newspaper Serf City, "MTA - Be Wise and Privatize," about the unsustainable debt and increasing costs of the subway system and what to do about it. March 2010.
Another article written for the New York libertarian newspaper Serf City, "The New York Fiscal Crisis and Needed Reform," May 2009.
Letter to the editor, New York Review of Books, commenting on Benjamin M. Friedman's "The Failure of the Economy & the Economists" in the May 28, 2009 edition, specifically about "animal spirits" and the incentives created by government policy, the latter which have created private gain and socialized risk.
This is a Hardfire television show I did with Dr. Steve Finger in May 2009 about the Great Depression in the 1930s in the USA and how it relates (but mostly doesn't) to today's economic conditions. Here are the graphics which accompanied the show. This show also available on amazon.com's video on demand series.
Random observations, "Parables of Economics in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). March 2009.
Article written for Serf City, "Is Environmental Quality a Luxury Good?," February 2009.
Discussion paper prepared for the Hardfire Brooklyn Cable Access Television show arguing for a "Liquidationist" reponse to deal with the current financial crisis. The liquiditionists lost the policy debate in the 1930s and some believe that this is what prolonged the Great Depression, October 2008.
Discussion paper prepared for Hardfire about a proposal to fund government without taxes. Here is the television show itself in streaming-video. May 2008.
Essay on "State-Money" submitted to Fifth Estate magazine. April 2008.
Notes prepared for Hardfire show about the economic and paternalistic (welfare state) roles for government. November 2007.
Letter to Editors, New York Review of Books on Robert Solow's review of Duncan K. Foley's Adam's Fallacy. My letter questions Solow's proposition that economics is lacking a moral base for distributional issues, citing the Austrian School of Economics emphasis on property rights (the right to the fruits of one's labor) and freedom to contract as a key to societal organization. January 2007.
Essay, "The Unintended Consequences of Drug Prohibition, Rent Control and Minimum Wage on the Urban Underclass" submitted for contest on civil liberties sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies. December 2006.
Short paper on consumption, waste and worker alienation in US society. September 2006.
Paper about International Development Institutions, the global economy and economic incentives called "The Protestors are Half-Right". July 2006.
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