Some Newbie Questions

[John_James]

Welcome to the Mises Forum! Be sure to check the newbie thread for forum tips and how-tos.

@Porphyrogenitus

I’ve read and am using a lot of the Mises research refuting “public goods theory,” but are there any good papers that also tackle so-called “collective action problems”? (I know this is largely tied into “public goods” but I’m looking in particular for stuff that addresses this aspect directly).

I’m actually not sure of any off the top of my head, but definitely check out the links section of the “public goods” article at the Mises Wiki.

I’ve heard from a number of people that there are “lots of studies” that demonstrate “austerity” works (I know, the term “austerity” is inadequate but lets use it as shorthand). About a year ago I even saw a link to a recent EU study (2008, IIRC) with such a finding. But I didn’t keep track of the link then. Can someone point me to links of such studies?

Again you’ve got some challenging requests. I’m not sure I’ve seen any empirical studies focusing on that hypothesis, but you can probably find writeups and mentions of some in LvMI literature.

Navigate to mises.org and run a search for “austerity” and see what you find.

Related to the above, in a recent online video talk RPM paraphrased Krugman as pointing to WWII as an example of Keynsian stimulus working (something I know he’s done) but then replying to critics who found that the multiplier was small that “duh, of course it was small, there was wage and price controls so we wouldn’t expect it to be large.” Does anyone know a) which study or studies showed the multiplier to be small and b) where Krugman said/wrote something to that effect?

! Really specific requests. Again I would think the best place to start is that search above. Murphy has written quite a bit on Krugman so you may find a link or mention to the Krugman work in question. (You might also run a search on Murphy’s blog.)

In the same video RPM paraphrased Krugman as saying that it was hard to create a model where monetary stimulus worked and fiscal stimulus didn’t. Could someone point me to where he said that?

Again, see above. Also, which video is it you’re talking about?