Ping-Pong and Political Economy

During the two decades prior to the financial crisis, most people – including most politicians – assumed that the market was supreme. Now the intellectual pendulum may be swinging back to the belief that state action can mop up markets’ messes – just as veneration of the state in the 1930’s followed market worship in the 1920’s.

PRINCETON – For the last century, economic-policy debate has been locked in orbit around the respective roles and virtues of the state and the market. Does the market control the state, in the sense that it sets a limit on governments’ ability to borrow? Or does the state take charge when the market fails to perform socially necessary functions – such as fighting wars or maintaining full employment?

This old debate is at the core of today’s profound divisions over how Europe should respond to its debt crisis. The same question is dividing American politics in the lead-up to November’s presidential and congressional elections.

During the two decades prior to the financial crisis, most people – including most politicians – assumed that the market was supreme. Now the intellectual pendulum may be swinging back to the belief that state action can mop up markets’ messes – just as veneration of the state in the 1930’s followed market worship in the 1920’s.

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