Feel free to comment on this funny post on the more serious issue of North Korea, if you like. I find recent developments disconcerting, not for the U.S. directly so much as for the South. Economists generally get skittish if they feel reason to doubt that they're dealing with a rational actor, and that's the source of my doubt in this case.
"Rational" is a very low bar - both in economics (it does not mean we're dealing with perfect calculators) and in this case. Kim Jong Il was rational in the sense that we had a sort of kabuki with him that followed its own logic, and under those circumstances saber-rattling was just part of the game of pursuing concessions. That may be the case here too. What worries me is that there seems to be a unique level of escalation by a leader that is under a lot more pressure. This might meander into a new kabuki, but with 50 million living in a modern democracy to the south and about half that essentially being held hostage in the north I reserve the right to be nervous until it does.
Posts
I agree with you that the pictureis funny, like you, I find North Korea's recent actions to be disconcerting. However...
ReplyDelete"Rational" is a very low bar - both in economics (it does not mean we're dealing with perfect calculators) and in this case. Kim Jong Il was rational in the sense that we had a sort of kabuki with him that followed its own logic, and under those circumstances saber-rattling was just part of the game of pursuing concessions.
Must we define rationality within the S.E.U. axioms defined by Bruno de Finetti, F.P. Ramsey, and L.J. Savage?
Itzhak Gilboa, an Israeli scholar, has been arguing since the 1980ies that "rationality" under the terms of S.E.U. decision theory is at best a limited case. See this recent article that Gilboa published in the philosophy journal Synthese.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-011-0034-2
(And Daniel, just so that you don't jump to the conclusion that Itzhak Gilboa is some heterodox crank, he isn't. He has published in outlets that would be considered "mainstream", and what you have once mentioned as the "creative mainstream". You can find articles written by him in the Journal of Mathematical Economics, the Journal of Economic Theory, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Games and Economic Behaviour, Economic Theory, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, and the International Economic Review.
I'd be the last to criticize heterodox economists for being heterodox!
DeleteNow, I'll still try to assess whether they're good economists - and sometimes they're not of course (IMO... it's the only opinion I have, after all!). But heterodoxy is certainly not a mark against an economist in and of itself.
The saber-rattling of the DPRK is blown out of proportion by the media. There never was an official peace declaration, and North Korea only warned that in case of hostilities it will defend in force - it did not declare the war on South Korea per se.
ReplyDeleteAnd even what's left is just saber-rattling. The DPRK didn't even mobilize its border guards to prepare for the war.