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Most central banks follow either an implicit or explicit inflation target. Many leading economists promote an active role for central banks in pursuit of that target. In this article it is shown how that strategy does not necessarily lead to a neutral monetary policy and, therefore, to the smooth working of markets in the long run. Accordingly, it proposes a nominal income rule that removes monetary disturbances from the economy.

This paper deals with money’s epistemic relevance in society. Money presents theoretical difficulties for neoclassical economics, which treats it as a cost-reducing tool, leading to a socially neutral, aseptic view on money. Drawing from complexity and social theory I provide a socio-epistemic rationalization for money’s irreplaceable role. Building upon Ingham’s Money Is a Social Relation, I argue that money generates a new orderly system of complex social relations that in turn engenders knowledge as an emergent social and ontological phenomenon irreducible to the fragmented knowledge held by members of society. I show that ultimately money cannot be separated from economic knowledge and market rationality. This paper provides sociological and ontological accounts for the emergence of knowledge crucial to coordinate societies, thus extending recent explorations of the ontology of money.

This paper builds on the Ostroms’ oeuvre to suggest that the binary Samuelsonian taxonomy of goods – or the ‘sterile dichotomy’, as Elinor Ostrom calls it – cannot serve as a reliable guide for public policy. Using the Ostroms’ insights on co-production, institutional matching, and polycentricity, we argue that the ‘inherent’ nature of goods and their specific taxonomy are not static and definitive concepts but are instead contestable and dynamic features that are institutionally contingent. We explore four crucial mechanisms and/or contexts, not altogether unrelated, whereby the nature of goods becomes contestable and malleable: namely, (1) technological and geographical factors, (2) coproduction and entrepreneurial ingenuity, (3) bundling and unbundling of services, and (4) ideologies and regime shifts. This exercise has twofold purposes. First, we generalize the notion that there is nothing ‘inherent’ in the nature of goods and services and that they are fluid, heterogeneous, and malleable concepts. Second, we contribute to the debate on the provision of public goods and the role of civil society by highlighting the need for institutional malleability and diversity adaptive to changing technology, contexts, and institutional conditions.

The financial crisis brought about a higher degree of monetary policy unpredictability. To anchor expectations and promote nominal stability, there is a need for predictable monetary rules or stable constitutions. This paper’s purpose is to define the general expectational properties that monetary constitutions should possess to work as coordination devices. I use Buchanan’s predictability criterion, as well as the expectational monetary transmission mechanism, to propose that monetary constitutions should be considered stable as long as they contain dynamics allowing self-reinforcing expectations of monetary neutrality. Self-reinforcement of expectations is an integral property of monetary constitutions for them to be agents of coordination and therefore stable. I find that these expectational properties are consistent with the stability properties established in the constitutional literature.

This paper uses robust political economy to assess whether free banking or central banking can better use its institutional structures to minimize macroeconomic disequilibrium. Robust frameworks leverage their incentives, reward structures, and epistemic resources to achieve monetary policy objectives. We relax the assumptions of political pressure, self-interest, and the degree of decision makers’ knowledge to see which arrangements are more robust.

Based on Goodhart’s (1988)The Evolution of Central Banks, I examine both the theoretical arguments and the historical evidence that could sustain the case for the natural emergence of central banks. I criticize Goodhart’s theoretical claim that central banks evolve naturally, by showing that they are far from being uniquely capable of supplying essential banking services. I review historical evidence showing that Goodhart’s historical generalizations are inconsistent with the developments of the vast majority of central banks. History also shows that crucial banking services have tended to be successfully provided by other means, except when governments prevented their development. Finally, I consider whether central banks, if not essential, are at least preferable to alternative arrangements.

The current global crisis has placed every democratic political system in a critical situation. Because of this, studies on Democracy and political forms have recovered the prominence that they once had in Political Science. One issue that is inevitably essential when studying the quality and effort of a democratic regime is the condition of its political elite. This article questions the relationship between the academic level of the legislative political elite and the economic, social and political situation in which it governs. Initially, the article intended to open a line of research that could help us to find an answer and thereby improve the quality of existing democracies

Drawing on the ideas of economist Frank Knight, this essay shows that within the institutional framework of socialism, economic agents must face an amount of unmitigated pure uncertainty that under capitalism is either completely absent or significantly reduced by profit-seeking entrepreneurs.