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linked to their injury performance. Statistical studies indicate that in the absence of the workers' compensation
system, workplace death rates would rise by 27 per cent. This estimate assumes, however, that workers' com-
pensation would not be replaced by tort liability or higher market wage premiums. The strong performance of
workers' compensation, particularly when contrasted with the command-and-control approach of OSHA regula-
tion, has led many economists to suggest that an injury tax be instituted as an alternative to the current regula-
tory standards.
The main implication of economists' analysis of job safety is that financial incentives matter. The remain-
ing task for society is to establish a reasonable balance in our quest for appropriate levels of workplace health
and safety.
KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS
By Alan S. Blinder
Keynesian economics is a theory of total spending in the economy (called aggregate demand) and of its ef-
fects on output and inflation. Although the term is used (and abused) to describe many things, six principal ten-
ets seem central to Keynesianism. The first three describe how the economy works.
1. A Keynesian believes that aggregate demand is influenced by a host of economic decisions – both public
and private – and sometimes behaves erratically. The public decisions include, most prominently, those on mone-
tary and fiscal (i.e. spending and tax) policy. Some decades ago, economists heatedly debated the relative
strengths of monetary and fiscal policy, with some Keynesians arguing that monetary policy is powerless, and
some monetarists arguing that fiscal policy is powerless. Both of these are essentially dead issues today. Nearly all
Keynesians and monetarists now believe that both fiscal and monetary policy affect aggregate demand. A few
economists, however, believe in what is called debt neutrality – the doctrine that substitutions of government
borrowing for taxes have no effects on total demand.
2. According to Keynesian theory, changes in aggregate demand, whether anticipated or unanticipated,
have their greatest short-run impact on real output and employment, not on prices. This idea is portrayed, for
example, in Phillips curves that show inflation changing only slowly when unemployment changes. Keynesians
believe the short run lasts long enough to matter. They often quote Keynes's famous statement "In the long run,
we are all dead" to make the point.
Anticipated monetary policy (that is, policies that people expect in advance) can produce real effects on
output and employment only if some prices are rigid – if nominal wages (wages in dollars, not in real purchas-
ing power), for example, do not adjust instantly. Otherwise, an injection of new money would change all prices
by the same percentage. So Keynesian models generally either assume or try to explain rigid prices or wages.
Rationalizing rigid prices is hard to do because, according to standard microeconomic theory, real supplies and
demands do not change if all nominal prices rise or fall proportionally.
But Keynesians believe that, because prices are somewhat rigid, fluctuations in any component of spending
– consumption, investment, or government expenditures – cause output to fluctuate. If government spending
increases, for example, and all other components of spending remain constant, then output will increase.
Keynesian models of economic activity also include a so-called multiplier effect. That is, output increases by a
multiple of the original change in spending that caused it. Thus, a $10 billion increase in government spending
could cause total output to rise by $15 billion (a multiplier of 1,5) or by $5 billion (a multiplier of 0,5). Contrary
to what many people believe, Keynesian analysis does not require that the multiplier exceed 1,0. For Keynesian
economics to work, however, the multiplier must be greater than zero.
3. Keynesians believe that prices and, especially, wages respond slowly to changes in supply and demand,
resulting in shortages and surpluses, especially of labor. Even though monetarists are more confident than
Keynesians in the ability of markets to adjust to changes in supply and demand, many monetarists accept the
Keynesian position on this matter. Milton Friedman, for example, the most prominent monetarist, has written:
"Under any conceivable institutional arrangements, and certainly under those that now prevail in the United
States, there is only a limited amount of flexibility in prices and wages". In current parlance, that would cer-
tainly be called a Keynesian position.
No policy prescriptions follow from these three beliefs alone. And many economists who do not call them-
selves Keynesian – including most monetarists – would, nevertheless, accept the entire list. What distinguishes
Keynesians from other economists is their belief in the following three tenets about economic policy.
4. Keynesians do not think that the typical level of unemployment is ideal – partly because unemployment
is subject to the caprice of aggregate demand, and partly because they believe that prices adjust only gradually.
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