Tag Archives: Time inconsistency

Die Volkswirtschaft 1–2 2017, December 21, 2016. HTML, PDF. Banning inside money creation would be unnecessary, insufficient, not enforceable, and besides the point. The way forward is to grant everyone access to central bank reserves and let investors choose between reserves and deposits.

On his blog, Dani Rodrik argues that the fact that an international rule is negotiated and accepted by a democratically elected government does not inherently make that rule democratically legitimate. Rodrik distinguishes two types of international commitments. On the one hand, there are commitments that help to overcome time-inconsistency problems. [For example, the government] would like to commit to free trade or to fiscal balance, but realizes that over time it will give in to...

Finanz und Wirtschaft, July 20, 2016. PDF. In a perfect world, monetary and fiscal policy are coordinated. In the real world with its political frictions they are not. So much on helicopter money.

The Economist reports about cyber thieves “outsmarting” a smart contract. Well, what does that mean? Engaging with a code that runs in all states of the world is to engage with a complete contract. How can one outsmart a complete contract? Previous post on smart contracts and commitment.

In the FT, Richard Waters reports about the advent of the automated company. The DAO — an acronym of decentralised autonomous organisation, the name given to such entities — has been set up to invest in other businesses, making it a form of investor-directed venture capital fund. … The organisation is governed by a set of so-called smart contracts which run on the Ethereum blockchain, a public ledger designed to make its operations transparent and enforceable. In other words, the code...