I use Samuelson's Nonsubstitution Theorem (1961) to argue that government policies in the United States traditionally reflected a low discount rate. The government's discount rate appears to have risen sharply in the last generation, showing the usefulness of Samuelson's theorem and the difficulties facing the United States in the future.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BarroRobertJ., “Government Spending, Interest Rates, Prices, and Budget Deficits in the United Kingdom, 1701–1918,”Journal of Monetary Economics, (September 1987),.
2.
Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin, 2004).
3.
DiamondPeterA.PeterR. Orszag, Saving Social Security: A Balanced Approach (Washington: Brookings Institution, 2004).
4.
DicksonP. G. M., The Financial Revolution in England (London: Macmillan, 1967).
5.
DornsbuschRudigerEdwardsSebastian (eds.), The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
6.
EllisJoseph, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York, Knopf, 2001).
7.
FlyerFredrickRosenSherwin, “The New Economics of Teachers and Education,”Journal of Labor Economics, 15, supplement (January 1997), S104–S139.
8.
→ GoldinClaudia, “The Human-Capital Century and American Leadership,”Journal of Economic History, 61 (June 2001), 263–92.
9.
→ GoldinClaudiaKatzLawrence, “The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women's Career and Marriage Decisions,”Journal of Political Economy, 110 (August 2002), 730–70.
10.
HabakkukH. J., American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962).
11.
HarleyKnickC., “International Competitiveness of the Antebellum American Cotton Textile Industry,”Journal of Economic History; 52 (September 1992), 559–84.
12.
→ IrwinDouglasA., “The Aftermath of Hamilton's ‘Report on Manufactures,”’Journal of Economic History, 64 (September 2004), 800–21.
13.
→ IrwinDouglasA.TeminPeter, “The Ante-Bellum Cotton Tariff Reconsidered,”Journal of Economic History, 61 (September 2001), 777–98.
14.
JonesRonaldW., “A Three-Factor Model in Theory, Trade, and History,” inTrade, Balance of Payments, and Growth, edited by JagdishN. Bhagwati (New York: Elsevier, 1991), pp. 3–21.
15.
→ JoskowPaulL., “Restructuring, Competition and Regulatory Reform in the U.S. Electricity Sector,”Journal of Economic Perspectives, 11 (Summer 1997), pp. 119–38.
SamuelsonPaulA., “A New Theorem on Nonsubstitution,” inMoney, Growth, and Methodology, edited by HegelandHugo (Lund: Gleerup, 1961), pp. 407–23.
23.
SchafermeyerRobertW.BrentR. Aspiin, “Hospital and Emergency Department Crowding in the United States,”Emergency Medicine, 15 (2003), 22–27.
24.
SyllaRichard, “U.S. Securities Markets and the Banking System, 1790–1840,”Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, 80 (3): 83–98 (May-June 1998).
25.
TeminPeter, “Labor Scarcity and the Problem of American Industrial Efficiency in the 1850's,”Journal of Economic History, 24 (September 1966), pp. 277–298.
26.
TeminPeter, The Jacksonian Economy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969).
27.
TeminPeter, “Teacher Quality and the Future of America,”Eastern Economic Journal, 28 (Summer 2002), 285–300.
28.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, DC: 1975).
29.
U.S. Department of the Treasury, The Reports of Alexander Hamilton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964).
30.
VietorRichardH., Contrived Competition: Regulation and Deregulation in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
