Category Archives: Science and Explanation

Aggregate Functional “Costs”; The Single Paragraph for Consideration Today [#56]

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[11/16/19] There is a sense in which one may speak of the fraction of basic outlay that moves to basic income as the “costs” of basic production. It is true that that sense is not at all an accountant’s sense of costs; … But however remote from the accountant’s meaning of the term “costs,” it remains that there is an aggregate and functional sense in which the fraction… is an index of costs.  For the greater the fraction that basic income is of total income (or total outlay), the less the remainder which constitutes the aggregate possibility of profit.  But what limits profit may be termed costs.  Hence we propose ….to speak of c’O’ and c”O” as costs of production, having warned the reader that the costs in question are aggregate and functional costs… . [CWL 15 156-57] [#56]

 

 

Diagram of Rates of Flow 2

Diagram of Rates of Flow

 

The Creative Key Transition (McShane); The Single Paragraph for Consideration Today [#55]

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[11/19/19] Taking into account past and future values does not constitute the creative key transition to Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics.  Those familiar with elementary statics and dynamics will appreciate the shift in thinking involved in passing from (static) equilibrium analysis … to an analysis where attention is focused on second-order differential equations, on d2θ/dt2, d2x/dt2, d2y/dt2, on the primary relativities of a range of related forces, central, friction, whatever.  Particular secondary boundary conditions in Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics, past and future pricings and quantities, are relatively insignificant for the analysis of the primary relativity immanent in, and applicable to, every instance of the process. What is significant is the Leibnitz-Newtonian shift of context. [paraphrase in part of McShane, 1980, 127] [#55] (Click here for previous “Single Paragraphs”)

A Note on Disagreeing with Einstein and the Determinists, on Avoiding a Vicious Circle, and on the Need for Precise Analytical Distinctions

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Economic process – like other world processes – has an immanent intelligibility consisting of primary relativities which can be applied to the coincidental secondary determinations which occur throughout time in a non-systematic manifold. Economic process is constituted  by schemes of recurrence under the dominance of abstract principles and laws; nevertheless, the actual concrete workings of the economic schemes of recurrence are shot through and throughout time with indeterminancy.  So, it is a fact that prediction is impossible in the general case, since the concrete patterns of events occurring throughout time are a non-systematic aggregate. Thus, the point-to-line and higher correspondences are based upon the indeterminacy of the relation between current surplus products and the ultimate later basic products that eventually exit the dynamic process and enter into the standard of living.

An event in an economic scheme of recurrence has a diverging series of conditions. Continue reading →

Fundamental Disorientations at the Federal Reserve Bank and the National Bureau of Economic Research

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We have arranged this Topic into four parts:

  • Part I: The Disorientations of Macroeconomists
  • Part II: Principles and Precepts of Analysis
  • Part III: A New Textbook, Lonergan’s Macroeconomic Dynamics: A Textbook in Circulation Analysis
  • Part IV Comments on The Federal Reserve’s Current Framework For Monetary Policy: A Review and Assessment, by Janice C. Eberly, James H. Stock, and Jonathan H Wright.

Part I: The Disorientations of Macroeconomists

One cannot help but admire and be grateful to the Federal Reserve Bank for its Flow of Funds matrices and the National Bureau of Economic Research for its GDP tables.  Great information, well done!  However, the Fed, the NBER, and the proponents of the DSGE methodology suffer from fundamental disorientations. The NBER’s descriptive, commonsense, national-income accounting must integrate the Fed’s data on credit and to be recast to provide an explanatory systematization of interdependent flows of products and money.  Devotees must reorient themselves.  (Continue reading)

Prediction is Impossible in the General Case

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In his book, FREEFALL (2009, Penguin Books), Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979), states that economics is a predictive science. Now, one must distinguish between predicting a) planetary motion in its scheme of recurrence, and b) this afternoon’s weather vs. next month’s weather, or this afternoon’s prices and quantities vs. next year’s prices and quantities, all subject to to conditions diverging in space and time.   Continue reading)

 

 

Letter to The Bureau of Economic Analysis

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The Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics Collaborative

Website: Bernard Lonergan’s Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics

https://functionalmacroeconomics.com

functionalmacroeconomics@gmail.com

 

Brian C. Moyer, Director

Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)

4600 Silver Hill Road

Washington, DC 20233

Dear Mr. Moyer,

Presently the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) publishes three general versions of the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA).

  1. Gross Domestic Product, Current $
  2. Gross Domestic Income by Type of Income; National Income by Type of Income; and, National Income by Sector …; Current $)
  3. Gross Value Added by Sector; Current $)

Would it be possible for the BEA staff to develop a fourth which would be explanatory of the production-and-exchange process? Continue reading →