Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

Unhelpful Abstractions and the Standard View

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Abstract

It is not fruitful to puzzle over the question whether economists and others ‘favor’ or ‘lean’ toward the regulatory or welfare state; that is an unhelpful and confusing question, one that orients people in the wrong way. It is better to begin by emphasizing that the first should be designed to handle market failures, and that the second should be designed to respond to economic deprivation and unjustified inequality.