Re: Offlist Q. About Tobin Tax

[pdavidso <pdavidso@xxxxxxx>]

>===== Original Message From Ben Day <day@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> =====
>Hi Paul - I'm a lurker & occasional participant on the PKT list. I was
>curious if you knew of any serious rejoinders to your grains of sand
>article on the tobin tax proposal since it's been published. I've been
>looking for responses, in text, from Tobin, or Eichengreen, or any of the
>other central proponents, but haven't come up with much. I recall you
>mentioning in a post long ago that James Tobin made conessions of some sort
>to you personally, when you presented the paper or a version of it at a
>conference. But, of course, one hopes for public concessions - or barring
>this, public defenses - when trying to get a sense of where the debate
stands.
>


First as far as I am aware there has been no published acknowledgment or
rebuttal regardinjg my Tobin tax paper that appeared in the ECONOMIC JOURNAL
approximately 5 years ago.  (The Editor of the EJ apparently gave Tobin,
Eichengreen and Wypsolz a chance to reply but they apparently did not take up
the ediotr's offer,)

At a conference in Rome before the Tobin tax paper was actually published I
presented a variant of the paper and Tobin who was also a participant in the
Conference admitted, from the audience, that my argument was correct.

Over the years I have found that the Mainstream's  important persons' (who are
often personal acquaintances if not good friends) response to my analysis is
to admit the validity of my argument in private (letter, conversation, etc,)
but ignore it in publication format.

Thus the letter from Bob Solow on my nonergodic uncertainty  paper, Tobin's
rersponse at the Rome conference, Tobin's ignoring my 1968 ECONOMETRICA paper
on his capital accumulation model, etc. [Solow once begged out of being a
discussant of my BROOKINGS PAPER on oil -- in the 1970s-- after he received a
copy of the paper and found it attacked his paper on markets optimally
allocating nonrenewable energy resources.]

This strategy seems too work -- for by ignoring my analyusis in print, no one
of the less intelligent  (mindless) followers of the Establishment elite need
worry about the validity of the trash tht continues to fill the AER, Etc.

Paul

Paul Davidson
Editor, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics
University of Tennessee
SMC 523
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0550
phone # (865)974-4221; fax #(561)737-8262;
email pdavidson@xxxxxxx
http://econ.bus.utk.edu/davidsonextra/Davidson.html