Description
Springer Ideology And The Evolution Of Vital Institutions Guilds The Gold Standard And Modern International Cooperation 2001 Edition by Earl A. Thompson Charles R. Hickson
In this book Thompson and Hickson strongly challenge the standard interpretation of the basis of growth and viability of dominant wealthy nations. Briefly efforts of the economically wealthy and the government leaders to increase their wealth and protect it from aggressors internal and external are cast in a new evolutionary light. The challenge is to the idea that societies leading intellectual formulators of political and social policy have been helpful. Their alternative and persuasive interpretation is that the rise and survival of wealthier nations has been achieved because of an `effective democracy'. The authors explain why an effective democratic state must avoid `narrow short-sighted' rational appearing concessions to a sequence of aggressors. In short the Thompson-Hickson interpretation of the rise of wealthy dominant nations does not rely on advice of superior intellectual advisors but instead rests on the pragmatic almost ad hoc actions of democratic legislators. Table of contents : Foreword; A. Alchian.Preface. Acknowledgements. Prologue. 1. Overview. Appendix A.1. Potential Cooperation Underdevelopment Traps and the Economic Efficiency of Democracy. 2. The Efficiency Problem the Distribution Problem and a Possible Solution. Appendix A.2. The Social Optimality of Narrowly Rational Behavior in Nonconflictual Interactions. 3. A New Interpretation of Guilds Tariffs and Laissez Faire. 4. On the Gold Standard: Why Depressions Have Been a Necessary Evil or How the Economics of Keynes Dethroned Europe. 5. On Modern International Cooperation: Exchange Controls Hyperinflation and Costly Social Revolution as Efficient National Responses to Externally Imposed Trade Liberalization. Appendix A.5. Statistical Procedures. 6. Summary Policy Implications and a Final Test. B-Appendices (Previously published). References for the Text and A-Appendices. Index.