Cascudos do Bhagwati em Stiglitz e Joan Robinson

É sempre bom e saudável ouvir um bom economista criticando o jabá dos seus colegas de profissão. Jagdish Bhagwati bate bem nos marxistas Stiglitz e Joan Robinson. Sobre Stiglitz ele diz: "Stiglitz made a much-cited claim that the current crisis was for capitalism (and markets) the equivalent of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Now, we know that all analogies are imperfect, but this one is particularly dicey. When the Berlin Wall collapsed, we saw the bankruptcy of both authoritarian politics and an economics of extensive, almost universal, ownership of the means of production and central planning. We saw a wasteland. When Wall Street and Main Street were shaken by crisis, however, we witnessed merely a pause in prosperity, not a devastation of it". E sobre a velhinha mal humorada de Cambridge, Joan Robinson, Bhagwati conta uma estorinha bem reveladora: "Some will object that economies have at times registered high growth rates for long periods despite bad economic policies. But we must ask: are such growth rates sustainable? I tell the story about how my radical Cambridge teacher, Joan Robinson, was once observed many years ago agreeing with the mainstream Yale developmental economist Gus Ranis on the subject of Korea’s phenomenal growth. The paradox was resolved when it turned out that she was talking about North Korea and he about South Korea. Now, more than three decades later, we know who was right. In a similar vein, Soviet growth rates were high for a long period, thanks to exceptionally high investment rates and despite the horrendous absence of incentives and embrace of autarky".