Mäng mullidega

Mäng mullidega: Erik Terk „Tulevikuga tegelemisest: raske mäng kolme palliga” EPL 19.XI 09

Terk maalib ühe “raske” võimaliku tulevikumängu näite järgmise „pallina“:

„Näiteks kliima soojenemise tõttu võivad mitte väga kauges tulevikus kontinentidevahelised veoseid teenindavad laevad hakata sõitma Põhja-Jäämerel, ja suured kaubavood võivad hakata liikuma lõunasse Soome kaudu. Eestil võib osutuda perspektiivseks hakata rajama otseraudteed Tallinnast Pärnu kaudu Kesk-Euroopasse.”

Kuid kuidas selle asjaga ikka teaduspõhiselt on: 1) vist suure tõenäosusega kaasneks Põhja-Jäämere ülesse sulatamise korral „mitte väga kauges tulevikus” eesti ala vee alla vajumine, ja 2) kas teaduspõhiselt Eesti (suure tähega) kui sõltumatu riik (mis ise nt otsustab hakata siin rajama midagi perspektiivset) ei kao meie praeguse mull-majanduspoliitika jätkumisel juba mitte üsna nähtavas tulevikus, sest mitmed rahvuslikud majanduskatastroofid irvitavad avalikult Eesti Kodu akendest ja ustest juba ammu sisse.

Terk väga õigesti vihjab meie praeguse majandus-poliitika ühele suuremale mullile: „Kui näiteks omal ajal püstitas juhtiv valitsuspartei loosungi viia Eesti Euroopa viie jõukama riigi hulka, siis ei häirinud selle juures mitte niivõrd ambitsioonikus, vaid see, et sellist juttu aeti jätkusuutlikuks kasvuks kõlbmatu majandusstruktuuri ja buumi-aegse strateegiavaba majanduspoliitika raames.”

Terk on siin muidugi ka kõvasti roosat värvi peale tõmmanud: 1) nt „omal ajal” juhtiv valitsuspartei 2) „loosungi” aga mitte platvormi nimetamisega ning 3) „strateegiavaba” ei olnud see midagi ja see raudne ebakompetentne katastroofide strateegia töötab siiani ning 4) mitte pelgalt majanduspoliitika vaid kogu majandussüsteem vajab kiiret reguleerimist.

Kuid mis oleks mõttekad pallid ja mänguväljakud, seda tõsiteaduslikult, Eesti jätkusuutlikuks kasvuks praegu põletavalt tähtsad: 1) nii Keynes’i kui Friedman’i järgi ning nendele järgnenud kümnete majandusnobelistide järgi eriti – üle keskmisest/normaalsest kõrgema töötuse probleem on raudselt riigi esmane probleem, on rahvusliku jätkusuutmatuse indikaator ja seda eriti meil praegu (räige etnilise lõhestatuse, spetsialistide pagemise, tohutu välisvõlgnevuse tingimustes jne) 2) teaduse seisukohalt jätkusuutmatu maksusüsteem, täielikult tasakaalutu (kapitalitulud praktilisel maksustamata) ei ole mitte ainult „häiriv” (Terk) vaid rahvuslikult traagiline (nt regressiivsusega kaasneva majandusliku ebavõrdsuse suurendamisega, seda eriti kõrge töötuse puhul – rahvuslik koostöökapital haihtub) ning 3) kõlvatu poliitmäng mistahes haisulise väliskapitali ligimeelitamisele maksumaksja arvel, samal ajal kui rahvuslik kapital lekib siit maksustamata kujul kaduma kahtlastes riikides jne, muudab Eesti peatselt pooletera riigiks ning edasi lumpen- sulaseks.

Need on nt kolm esmalt põletavat palli – teaduspõhiselt. Muide, Eurostatis on mõnekümne öko-sotsio-eko indikaatoriline riikidevaheline jätkusuutlikkuse/suutmatuse statistika – esmalt see kurb pilt tuleks meil kõigepealt taolistes analüüsides ette võtta, ja analüüsides seda suurte kalibreeritud kaasaegsete tasakaalumudelite abil, mitte vananenud meetodiliste fragmentaarsete stsenaariumiteketega populistlikult heietades ning õblukese kvaliteedilist rahvuslikku teadmusruumi veelgi enam saastates – muidu Eesti tulevikule hüvasti.

November 19, 2009 Posted by Ülo Ennuste | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Vastutustundetu häma ja vassimine jätkub – PM. ee 13.XI 0910:56. – Siim Kallas: „Kelle mure on eurole üleminek?”

A) Siim Kallas: „Ajakirja The Economist novembri alguse numbris ilmus tähelepanuväärne artikkel «The Estonian Exception» («Eesti erand»). Ilmumise fakt on eelkõige ise märkimisväärne, kuna see ajakiri on maailmas eriline – tal pole õieti võistlejat. Kõik otsustajad jälgivad tähelepanelikult, mis seal kirjutatakse.” – taevane arm, miks siis Euroopa Komisjoni asepresident ise ei võiks seda ajalehte tähelepanelikult jälgida nt: 1) selle iganädalaste prognooside järgi jätkub meil tõesti erandina murettekitavalt 2010 majanduslangus 3% ringis kuigi EL27 juba tänavu langusest väljub, ehk Eesti on üks murettekitavamaid poolesaja The Economisti tähelepanu vääriva riigi hulgas, edasi, töötus juulis oli meil seal 17% ehk rahvusvaheliselt eriti traagiline 2) nimetet „erandi” artikli tuum oli siiski ilmselt vihjes sellele, et nt erinevalt lätlastest meie võimurid ning kröösused ei tunnista olukorra traagilisust ja ülbitsevad naabrite arvel veel peale selle.

B) „ … peaaegu üheaegselt avaldati ka Rahvusvahelise Valuutafondi heasoovlik arvamus Eesti rahanduse seisust ja Euroopa Komisjoni ettevaatlik, kuid lubav prognoos Eesti majanduse lähituleviku kohta.” – 1) IMFi arvamuses oli vihjatud Eesti väga suurt välisvõlga (EP statistika järgi üle 280 miljardi krooni, IMF järgi ilmselt rohkem) ja märgitud muretekitavalt et see koorem hakkab majanduse taastamist pidurdama 2) aga Komisjoni prognoosi väitel Eesti on tuleval aastal üks väheseid liikmesriike mis jätkuvalt languskursil ning seejuures isegi ei taipa ka selleks ajaks juba oluliselt vähenenud reaalset majanduspotentsiaali ikkagi veel täielikult ära kasutada.

C) „Kui palju kasu saab Eesti sellest üleminekust ja sellega seotud majandusliku usaldusväärsuse kasvust, on tagantjärele võimalik kaunis suure täpsusega välja arvutada.” – 1) juba 2005 oli selge, et hargmaised pangad kaotaksid 2007 üleminekust vähemalt pool miljardit krooni hõlptulu aastas (Sõrg 2005 TTÜ majandustead toimetised) ja 2) seega võib hinnata et seoses inflatsiooni tõstmisega (mis muusika oli see pankadele) 2011 üleminekust kaotavad pangad juba miljardi või paar aastas ning selle järgi olid/on pangaanalüütikute nokad ka siiani seatud (vt algust nt ÄP 2005 nov Ü. Kaasiku häma: inflatsioon 2007 üleminekut ei takista, Sõrg ei näi sellel ajal inflatsioonist veel midagi teadvat).

D) „Eesti kroon on oma töö teinud ja on seda hästi teinud. On võimaldanud majandusel tegutseda raudkindlas rahakeskkonnas, ilma kursiüllatusteta, ilma täiendavate kuludeta rahaühikuga seotud riskide maandamiseks. Nüüd on vaja uut usaldusväärset keskkonda ja selleks on muidugi euroala.” – 1) kroon oleks oma töö tõesti hästi teinud kui valitsustel oleks terakenegi makroökonoomilist kompetentsi olnud: valuutakomisjoniga ei klapi kokku inflatsiooni tõstmine eelarve täitmiseks, ja mis veelgi hullem, ületäitmiseks, sest see hävitab väljaveo, veelgi vähem sobib kokku absurdse jätkusuutmatu regressioonilise maksusüsteemiga (0-kasumimaksuga) 2) nüüdseks on kroonisüsteemi oskamatu kasutamise tulemuseks traagiline rekordilise 100 000 pikaajalise töötu produtseerimise piiri ületamine „uhkusega” (nüüd välisinvestor näeb meid), ja tohutu välisvõlg rahvuslikult kaelas, seda eeskätt osavalt kaela sokutatud asjatundmatule lihtinimesel oma ulualuse pandil, vaesusriskis elanike osakaal on barbaarselt suurenenud nagu kodumaise kapitali väljakantimine ilma siin makse maksmata, spetsialistide vist massilisest pagemisest rääkimata (statistika puudub).

E) „Eesti pingutusi eurole üleminekuks jälgitakse tähelepanelikult. Sellel protsessil pole suur tähtsus mitte ainult Eestile, vaid kogu Euroopa Liidule.” – Eesti majanduse osakaal ELis on promill, peab tõesti eriti tähelepanelikult järgima.

F) „Olukord enamikus Euroopa Liidu riikides on Eesti omast üsna erinev. Valitsused on paisanud majandusse hiigelsummasid ja saanud kaela hiigelvõla. Asjatundjad arutlevad, kui palju aastakümneid läheb aega, et vabaneda ülemäärastest laenukuludest, ja milliseid suuri loobumisi ja lisamakse see inimestele tähendab.” – 1) erinevalt Eesti valitsusest enamik valitsusi ei kõlba kuhugi J 2) üldiselt hinnatakse „paisatud summade” suuruseks keskelt läbi 5-10% rahvatulust, seega meie välisvõla kaalukusest kümneid kordi väiksemaks, kusjuures nende laenud on riiklikud ehk seega rahvuslikult väiksema riskiga.

G) „Meie kohal on mitu varju, mille hajutamine on paljude tegijate töö – Eesti Pank, ettevõtjad, kõik, kellel selleks on võimalus.” – 1) kui Eesti Pank 2005 lõpul asus valitsuse puudlina 2007 eurole üleminekule jalap…le las…a, mis lootust on siis arvata et midagi muutunud on? 2) kas ettevõtjate hulka ei kuulu ka hargmaised pangad mis on huvitatud oma valuutavahetustulude säilimisest siin nagu Rootsiski.

H) „Eurole üleminek pole eraldi võetuna kellegi, sealhulgas ka valitsuse asi.” – no nii, olemegi kirjutise tuumani jõudnud: 1) publikul tuleb ära unustada et reformierakonna platvormis oli see üleminek üks peamisi pühasid lehmi 2) seega, kui üleminek järjekordselt ebaõnnestub siis valitsus pole süüdi, vaid see on valitsusele kaigaste kodaratesse loopijate süü (pensionärid, haiged, väetid, mitteärikad, vallavanemad, välisinvestorid kes meie mudeli eeliseid ei taipa (tohutu töötute armee nendele loodud), sotsiaalteadlased vms) 3) aga kui juhuslikult Almunia armust trehvab, siis see on reformierakonna kangelaslike pingutuste järjekordne särav üleilmne tähttulemus, Baltimaadest rääkimata.

I) Teadusmetoodika vaatevinklist näib, et: 1) rahvuslikku sotsiaal-majanduslikku teadmust on järjekordselt häma ja vassimisega populistlikult risustatud 2) muretult rahvusliku majanduse jätkusuutlikkuse kirstunaela ihutud, oh jah – juhuslikult endale osakese kohaliku poliitkapitali rentimise huvides.

November 13, 2009 Posted by Ülo Ennuste | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Avaliku sotsiaal-majandusliku teadmusruumi korrastamisest

Visand 12.XI 09. ERK 19.XI 09 Memorandumi tarbeks

Avaliku sotsiaal-majandusliku teadmusruumi korrastamisest*

Sotsiaal-majandusliku jätkusuutlikkuse teaduspõhine ootusväärtus sõltub oluliselt rahvusliku avaliku sotsiaal-majandusliku teadmusruumi kvaliteedist, seega teavitamismehhanismide kvaliteedist.

Seejuures oluline on, et nimetatud sõltuvus on kompleksne: mistahes toimija mistahes kavatsusega/sihitusega teavitus avalikkusele võib erinevalt mõjutada rahvusliku jätkusuutlikkuse sotsiaalseid ning majanduslikke dimensioone, seda eriti oluliselt kaasaegse infotehnoloogia võimalusi kasutades. Nt mõne võimuka poliitlaagri enamuse seisukohalt (mitte teaduspoliitiliselt) poliitstabiilsuse tõenäosust suurendav teade (nt euro tuleb panna referendumile) võib kaasnevalt oluliselt riivata rahvusliku majanduse jätkusuutlikkuse tõenäosust, seda seoses majandusteaduslikult irratsionaalse otsustusprotsessi käivitamise üritamisega, olles majandusteaduslikult kas mõttetu või positiivselt falsifitseeritav.

Teaduslikult on kohustuslik väita, et eesti praeguse avaliku sotsiaal-majandusliku teadmus- struktuuri kvaliteet teaduslikult on äärmiselt madal ja ilmselt jätkusuutlikkust ning ka kriisist väljapääsu pärssiv ning oli selle kriisi erandliku sügavuse üks põhjustajaid. Seega tingimata on kiiresti vaja jõustada mitmeid reforme avalike teadustusmehhanismide optimeerimiseks, nt**:

1) Seada põhiseaduslikud kitsendused sõnavabaduse laienemisele poliitökonoomilist kompetentsi nõudvate probleemide avalikule käsitlemisele (nt keelata okupatsiooni eitamine, euroliidu ja sovjetiliidu võrdsustamine jne).

2) Kommerts- massimeedias (alates entsüklopeediatest ning lõpetades võrgukommidega) lugeda seadusvastaseks teaduslikult mõttetute ning sotsiaal-majanduslikku arengut kahjustavate avalduste produtseerimine (nt „meie töötus/kriis on hea”, „pensionärid uluvad”, majandusteadulike teooriate asemel avalikkusele nendest karikatuuride pähemäärimine (nt nagu neoliberalism eeldaks õhukest valitsust) jne manipuleeringud ).

3) Ametliku makro-statistika regulatsioone tuleb ajakohastada (avalikustamist vastavalt infotehnoloogia võimalustele kiirendada, andmebaase laiendada ja detailiseerida jne (nt ei teata kui palju meie spetsialiste on pagenud, milline on rahva varanduslik seis, milline on jooksvalt kuude lõikes majanduslik tõus ning ebavõrdsuse muut jne).

4) Tuleb luua vähemalt mõned sõltumatud makro-majanduslikud teaduslike meetodiga töötavad keskused (maksusüsteemide, eelarvemetoodikate, pensionisüsteemide jne alal).

5) Toimijate poolt avalikustatud sotsiaal-majanduslike makro-teadete teadusliku kvaliteedi (teaduspõhine tõe-rääkimine koos andmete usaldushinnangutega ja väidete tõepärahinnangutega, andmete küllaldane detailsus, läbipaistvus, esitamiskiirus jne) edendamiseks seadustada/rakendada pidevat monitooringut ja moraalset ning reaalset stimuleerimist/makseid teostavate institutsioonide süsteem. Seda nii ametkondlikult kui ka ühiskondlikult ning selleks vajaliku seadusliku kehtestamisega.

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*Põhineb eeskätt uurimusel: Ennuste, Ülo. 2008. Synthetic Conceptions of Implementing Mechanisms Design for Public Socio-Economic Information Structure: Illustrative Estonian Examples. In: Aksel Kirch et al. (eds.) Socio-economic and institutional environment: harmonisation in the EU countries of Baltic Sea Rim. Institute for European Studies, TSEBA, TUT, 9-39. http://www.ies.ee/iesp/No4/Ennuste.pdf

** Üksikasjalisemalt:

Guidelines to designer of public socio-economic knowledge/belief structure building mechanisms

Idiosyncrasies of the design problem:

Information comes from heterogeneous strategic actors (political camps, business, stock market, macro- and microeconomic schools, internal and external etc) at different activities and with different rationalities, learnedness, and moralities etc, actors with multidimensional targets.

Quick announcements avalanches especially due to the modern information technology (possibly enabling quick contamination of national knowledge structures (possibly by speculative currency attics, foreign general cyber-attacks etc) especially in crisis situations.

Quality indicators of knowledge basis and announcements:

uncertainty indictors (neg-entrophy, confidents intervals, data dispersions, truthfulness assessments …) fullness of reports (proper fields, aspects, states, aggregates, disclosure in proper details …) transparency (logical rigour, contradictions …).

Synthesise hybrid (evolutionary experience and theoretical constructions) regulation (coordination and monitoring) mechanisms designs (by hierarchical state authorities (coalition and opposition), combined with competitive civil networks and complex coordination (e.g. economic and political sector).

Coordination objects/preferences and periods:

moral behavioural values and motives of the actors (reputation, credibility, rationality, …) permanently

material values of the actors permanently

Coordinative motivating instruments:

incentives (real side-payments and imaginary (e.g. decorations) possibly as complementary side payments and in properly sequentially …)

constraints (laws, directives, norms …)

consultation/mentoring (technological, strategically, statistical, educational …)

Knowledge basis and communications quality enhancements:

media data (quotations of sources, constraints for incompetent professional announcements and hoaxes …)

statistics (adequate speed, adequate dimensionality, in necessary detail, transparency, credibility metric: e.g. GDP statistics by monthly, Gini by quarterly …)

predictions (continuously adaptable, statistical characteristics of predictions: e.g. unemployment, national net and gross external debts …)

research (national teams on all nationally significant fields…).

Institutional:

amendments of constitutions (freedom of speech specifications, clauses of protection of national knowledge base, social and human capital, e.g. prohibition of the denial of the fact of occupation …)

laws (e.g. voluntary codes of data disclosure and transparency enhancements for corporations à la Sir David Walker initiative)

directives, norms, decision norms (formal and informal, mandatory and voluntary …)

media institutional regulations (e.g. curtailing the meddling of political bosses and tycoons in the editorial work etc)

organizations, networks functioning quality (governmental and non-governmental e.g. permanent inspective and monitoring activity …).

November 12, 2009 Posted by Ülo Ennuste | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Survey speech: On optimal socio-economic public knowledge mechanism design

Survey speech: On optimal socio-economic public knowledge mechanism design

2.XI 09

“Depending on which shared knowledge prevails, change may be favoured or deterred.”

Paolo Ramazzotti. 2005(?). “ Knowledge and macro-coordination” preliminary version – do not quote, Google.

There are at least two excuses for me to talk to you here: first to make an apology to Prof Ramazzotti that I could not resist, and had publicly quoted one of his 2005(?) papers several times, although I have found it in Google with the warning “do not quote”.

But I just thought that this caveat could have been valid before the crises, and certainly not any more. Indeed, before one could argue snobbishly that given motto is perhaps not broad enough etc. But just now, in the midst of crises, it sounds extremely actual, like: 1) significant sources of the crises may have been in the low quality regulation/coordination mechanisms of the building of the national public socio-economic knowledge structures and information acquisitions 2) perhaps there are available some implemental modern knowledge based institutional-theoretic instruments to enhance the quality of these mechanism and so the quality of the prevailing “shared knowledge” 3) the expression “which shared knowledge prevails” seems especially challenging for the mathematical modeller; which indeed: scholarly knowledge or mythological beliefs? hard or soft knowledge? truthful or manipulated? or bubble-beliefs and bubble-ideas and bubble-valuations/ideas prevail. And how this prevailing works etc. These problems widely discussed e.g.

Martin Wolf: “As Mr Smithers remarks sardonically: “Invalid approaches to value typically belong to the world of stockbrokers and investment bankers whose aim is the pursuit of commission rather than the pursuit of truth.”” FT 27 Oct, How mistaken ideas helped to bring the economy down.

And secondly:

“In their pursuit of tractable models, economists have made over-simplified and misguided assumptions concerning of human agents, markets and other institutions, rather than engaging adequately with the complexities of the real world.”

Geoffrey M. Hodgson (Press Release, Oct 09)

With all my deep respect to Geoffrey, in my report here I am trying to give a little counter-argument to this his statement. Indeed, from the point of socio-economic design theories, which are based heavily on mathematical game theories (no much neatness in these coordinated and Bayesian extended games), with the main theme as agents strategic behaviour (deceptiveness, manipulations, bubble-making etc), with the main task to correct markets mechanisms and other institutions imperfectness and optimally adapt these to contemporary environmental conditions (especially to modern information technology and turbulent socio-economic developments) and that by meta-synthetic, heuristic etc workhorse implementation methods to combine evolutionary theories and abstract formalized results etc – the Geoff’s statement seems to me a bit overstrained, and I am sorry to say, it has, to my mind, already a bit contaminated e.g. even Estonian public economics knowledge structure.

***

As a matter of fact, one lesson from the crisis certainly is the need for more effective and complex high quality institutionalized socio-economic regulation systems ( it seems that the lessons of the crises have already in general suggested that we have to move to more regulative varieties of democratic liberal market capitalism, see e.g. BOX 1), and it seems this lesson should be extended on the enhancement the quality of building public socio-economic knowledge/belief structures: to adapt respective data basis to the modern IT possibilities and turbulent socio-economic developments, especially as the decision making base to come more effectively out of the crises (as in the crisis erroneous over-optimistic statements may dominate (B2C), especially from manipulations of incumbent coalition and government and so to defer recovery etc).

And it seems that especially in this crises, first serious in the IT age, of serious socio-economic crises and turbulences, the shared knowledge that prevails in societies is, in general, loosing much quality and adequacy, as being at least too much lagging behind events, and frequently also politically and managerially most excessively distorted/biased, manipulated (B2), not sufficiently in proper detail any more, and most importantly, contaminated with ignorant messages by masses acting in the information networks, not in sufficient truthfulness and excessive neg-entrophy, not transparent etc. And most importantly, in the crisis situation, it seems the theme of information games with active deception come specially on the fore The theme of active deception is to manipulate the decisions of a decision-maker by changing its base information in favour of a deceiver. Generally speaking, the purpose of deception is to conceal reality by inserting “noise”, or to mislead the decision-maker with biased information. Although deception has received a lot of attention, to date, the literature on deception is still relatively sparse.

In other words, public announcement mechanisms are not spontaneously and evolutionarily adapting sufficiently quickly and time consistently in the extant regulative frameworks – although there may be in the mechanism/institution theories’ tool-kits many good instruments and principles to help on designing more effective regulative systems.

And now the most critical question to the institutional economists is what theoretical recent results of the game theoretic mechanism/institutional design, could/should be implemented to make national public knowledge systems building mechanisms more valuable for complex socio-economic decision making, and also for more effectively recognize in these structures the deterring complex risk phenomenon bubbles growing – that in the midst of crises and thereof in turbulent/volatile global information environment.

The main problem is that general well-designed mechanism building for national socio-economic knowledge structures is extremely large and complex (see Annex A) problem. In the rigorously formalized ways these are tractable only by decomposed/separated parts of it (e.g. B3-4). So, un-happily, we are facing un-convenient problems of synthesis (B5) of these partial mechanism. One suggestion for operational analyzing these synthetic issues is in the t BOX 6.

Instead of conclusion: Guidelines to designer of public socio-economic knowledge/belief structure building mechanisms

Idiosyncrasies of the design problem:

Information comes form heterogeneous strategic actors (political camps, business, stock market, macro- and microeconomic schools, internal and external etc) at different activities and with different rationalities, learnedness, moralities etc, actors with multidimensional targets.

Quality indicators of knowledge basis and announcements:

Coordination objects/preferences and periods:

moral behavioural values and motives of the actors (reputation, credibility, rationality, …) permanently

material values of the actors permanently

Coordinative motivating instruments:

incentives (real side-payments and imaginary (e.g. decorations) possibly as complementary side payments and in properly sequentially …)

constraints (laws, directives, norms …)

consultation/mentoring (technological, strategically, statistical, educational …)

Knowledge basis and communications quality enhancements:

media data (quotations of sources, constraints for incompetent professional announcements and hoaxes …)

statistics (adequate speed, adequate dimensionality, in necessary detail, transparency, credibility metric: e.g. GDP statistics by monthly, Gini by quarterly …)

predictions (continuously adaptable, statistical characteristics of predictions: e.g. unemployment, national net and gross external debts …)

research (national teams on all nationally significant fields…).

Institutional:

laws (e.g. voluntary codes of data disclosure and transparency enhancements for corporations à la Sir David Walker initiative)

directives, norms, decision norms (formal and informal, mandatory and voluntary …)

media institutional regulations (e.g. curtailing the meddling of political bosses and tycoons in the editorial work etc)

organizations, networks functioning quality (governmental and non-governmental e.g. permanent inspective and monitoring activity …).

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BOX 1

Regulatory capitalism and the reassertion of the public interest

David Levi-Four. 2009. Policy and Society, 27, 181-191

Abstract

Neoliberalism has not led to the retreat of the state but instead to the restructuring of the state. This has led to new forms of governance where regulation represents the expanding part of government, and where the various models of governance compete and sometimes are synthesized into global forms of regulation. It will be discussed where such forms have emerged, and where they are yet to emerge. In this new order, best described as regulatory capitalism, the regulatory state meets the regulatory society and actors’ demand for and supply of regulation is ever expanding. Rule- making, monitoring and enforcement are becoming increasingly important for democratic policy making. It is being asserted that varieties of regulatory capitalism are produced by the interaction of varying degrees of civil- and state-regulation and variations in the composition of the networks that serve as the backbone that transform autonomous jurisdictions to interdependent ones. Accordingly the paper distinguishes between Corporatists, Pluralist, Command & Control and Laissez-Faire forms of regulatory capitalism.

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BOX 2

A) The value of a stochastic information structure

Yaron Azrieli, Ehud Lehrer. 2008. Games and Economic Behavior 63 679–693.

Abstract

Upon observing a signal, a Bayesian decision maker updates her probability distribution over the state space, chooses an action, and receives a payoff that depends on the state and the action taken. An information structure determines the set of possible signals and the probability of each signal given a state. For a fixed decision problem, the value of an information structure is the maximal expected utility that the decision maker can get when the observed signals are governed by this structure. Thus, every decision problem induces a preference order over information structures according to their value. We characterize preference

orders that can be obtained in this way. We also characterize the functions defined over information structures that measure their value.

B) Information structures with unawareness

Jing Li. 2009. Journal of Economic Theory, 144, 977–993

Abstract

I construct a state space model with unawareness following [R.J. Aumann, Agreeing to disagree, Ann.

Stat. 76 (1976) 1236–1239]. Dekel et al. [E. Dekel, B.L. Lipman, A. Rustichini, Standard state-space models preclude unawareness, Econometrica 66 (1998) 159–173] show that standard state space models are

incapable of representing unawareness. The model circumvents the impossibility result by endowing the agent with a subjective state space that differs from the full state space when he has the unawareness problem.

Information is modelled as a pair, consisting of both factual information and awareness information. The model preserves the central properties of the standard information partition model.

“There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns – that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.”

Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of Defence

C) Information, decision-making and deception in games

Dengue Li , Jose B. Cruz Jr. 2009. Decision Support Systems (in press).

Modelling deception in a real-world conflict situation is usually difficult. For a better understanding, we study deception through a fundamental relationship between information and decision-making. Under a

probabilistic framework, we consider a zero-sum game with an asymmetrical structure, where player 1 receives additional information and player 2 has the potential to inject deception. We derive accuracy

conditions on the information obtained by player 1, which can lead to a better decision. The feasibility of deception is further explored, which is conditioned on the quality of deceptive signals generated by player 2.

We classify deception into passive and active deception.

D) Evolutionary example: Pope Benedict XVI’s “Caritas in Veritate”: It is Man’s Selfish Use of Markets, Globalization That Is The Problem

The Pope on “Love in Truth” by Father Robert Sirico from the Wall Street Journal is a penetrating analysis of Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical on the economic crisis, “Caritas in Veritate”.

Sirico points out that Pope Benedict doesn’t condemn markets, globalization – but rather man’s selfish uses of these instruments.

Caritas in Veritate by Pope Benedict XVI

Democrats Link Pope’s ‘Economic Justice’ Plea With Obama Agenda

Caritas in Veritate is an eloquent restatement of old truths casually dismissed in modern times. The pope is pointing to a path neglected in all the talk of economic stimulus, namely a global embrace of truth-filled charity.

Benedict rightly attributes the crisis itself to “badly managed and largely speculative financial dealing.” But he resists the current fashion of blaming all existing world problems on the market economy. “The Church,” he writes, “has always held that economic action is not to be regarded as something opposed to society.” Further: “Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations.”

The market is rather shaped by culture. “Economy and finance . . . can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends.

***********************************************************

BOX 3

Correlated Types and Bayesian Incentive Compatible

Mechanisms with Budget Balance

Masaki Aoyagi. 1998. Journal of Economic Theory 79, 142-151.

Abstract

This note presents a condition which guarantees the existence of a Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism with budget balance when agents have quasi-linear utility functions. This condition requires correlation among agents’ private signals (“types”), and is (1) simple and easy to verify, (2) good for any decision rule whether efficient or not, (3) valid even if agents’ types are mutually payoff-relevant, and (4) true for almost every

probability distribution of agents’ types.

Key Words: mechanism, transferable utility, budget balance, correlated types, complementarities condition.

***********************************************************

BOX 4

Behavioral aspects of implementation theory

Hitoshi Matsushima. 2008. Economic Letters.

Abstract

We incorporate behavioral economics into implementation theory, where each agent dislikes telling a white lie. By using a single detail-free

mechanism, any alternative can be uniquely implemented as long as the agents regard this alternative as being socially desirable.

Keywords: Behavioral economics; Implementation theory; White lie aversion; Detail-freeness; Possibility theorem

*************************************************************

BOX 5

Meta-synthesis approach to complex system modeling

Jifa Gu, Xijin Tang. 2005. European Journal of Operational Research. 166 597-614.

Abstract

Meta-synthesis method is proposed to tackle with open complex giant system problems which cannot be solved by traditional reductionism methods by a Chinese system scientist Ian, Queen (Stein Shushed) around the early 1990s. The method emphasizes the synthesis of collected information and knowledge of various kinds of experts, and combining quantitative methods with qualitative knowledge. Since then, continuous endeavors have been taken to put those ideas into practice. In this paper, firstly we review meta-synthesis approach and other research relevant to

complex system modelling briefly. Then we discuss two main issues, model integration and opinion synthesis, which are often confronted when applying meta-synthesis approach, together with an exhibit of the development of an embryonic meta-synthetic support prototype. Such a demonstration shows how to model complex problems, such as macroeconomic problems in Hall for Workshop on Meta-Synthetic Engineering with versatile resources in information collection, model integration and opinion synthesis. Finally, some future work is indicated.

*************************************************************
BOX 6

A) A Linear Planning Analysis of Institutional

Structure in the Economy

Ülo Ennuste. 2003. http://pdc.ceu.hu/archive/00001564/01/linear.PDF

Abstract

The paper uses the paradigms of the New Institutional Economics to

quantify a linear optimal choice model to design perspective

institutional clusters for a national economy. This model uses binary

integer institutional choice variables and structural parameter values

based on subjective probabilities collected from experts by calibration

questionnaires.

The optimization goal may be e.g. a high expected probability of

stable national economic performance under socio-economic

development-credibility constraints, dependent on the realization of

prospective significant events. The model may be useful as a

complementary tool for the social design of the effective institutional

structure, and especially for evaluation of the socially optimal values

of co-coordinating shadow prices and implementing side-payments in

the political institutional design game.

We use the Estonian case as an example. The model variables

and data calibration table illustrations are provided mainly to

demonstrate the broad spectre of issues that may be involved in this

analysis.

B) INFORMATION IN MECHANISM DESIGN

Dirk Bergemann and Juuso Välimäki. 2005. COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 1532

COWLES FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS

Abstract

We survey the recent literature on the role of information for mechanism design. We specifically consider the role of endogeneity of and robustness to private information in mechanism design. We view information acquisition of and robustness to private information as two distinct but related aspects of information management important in many design settings. We review the

existing literature and point out directions for additional future work

Keywords: Mechanism Design, Information Acquisition, Ex Post Equilibrium, Robust Mechanism Design, Interdependent Values, Information Management.

*********************************************************************

BOX 7

Mechanisms for sharing knowledge in project-based organizations

Wai Fong Boh. 2007. Information and Organization, 17, 27-58.

Abstract

Organizations need to effectively combine and utilize knowledge resources that are distributed amongst the employees and groups in the firm. This paper examines the use of knowledge-sharing mechanisms to leverage the learning, experience and expertise of employees accumulated across projects. I specify a framework that classifies the knowledge-sharing mechanisms used by project-based organizations. Prior research tends to examine only one dimension of knowledge-sharing mechanisms

– personalization versus codification. Personalization mechanisms are often assumed to be more ad hoc and informal, and codification mechanisms are assumed to be formal and involve the use of electronic databases. In this paper, personalization versus codification and individualization versus institutionalization are highlighted as two distinct dimensions of knowledge-sharing mechanisms. Individualized knowledge-sharing mechanisms are informal and unstructured, while institutionalized knowledge-sharing mechanisms are formal and embedded in organizational routines

and structure. A framework is presented to show how the two dimensions interact. Based on empirical case studies in two project-based organizations, the paper examines if there are suitable configurations of knowledge-sharing mechanisms for organizations with different characteristics.

The study contributes to research by providing a more nuanced classification of knowledge-sharing mechanisms, and provides guidance to managers about the types of knowledge-sharing mechanisms that should be adopted based on the size, geographical dispersion and task nature of organizations.

*************************************************************

BOX 8

Sir David Walker’ Guidelines for Disclosure and Transparency in Private Equity

21 Nov 2007. Source: Jeffrey Pellin Consultancy. Sir David Walker

Sir David Walker has published his Guidelines for Disclosure and Transparency in Private Equity, recommending that both private equity firms and their portfolio companies disclose more information. However, the private equity business will remain a private business and Sir David does not see the need to make it wholly transparent.
The guidelines are a measure of self-regulation of the industry and apply to those buy-out firms that own or look to invest in larger UK companies.

Private equity firms are now required to publish an annual review or regularly update their websites to show information on their portfolios and investor base. They should use established guidelines for reporting to LPs and for the valuation of investments, and communicate promptly with their portfolio companies’ employees, particularly in times of strategic change.

Portfolio companies will need to publish an annual report and accounts to include enhanced disclosure on their website within six months of year-end. They should also publish a mid-year update no later than three months after mid-year. Sir David wants to apply section 417 of the UK Companies Act 2006, including sub-section 5 that otherwise applies only to quoted companies, to the private equity industry’s portfolio companies as well, calling for an indication of trends and factors likely to affect a company and to include information on the company’s employees, environmental matters, and social and community issues.

Annex A: On complex efficiency of an announcement

Algebraic form of a complex number z (i – imaginary unit)

Polar form z=r(cosφ + isinφ) and ˉz/z=r/r(cos(ˉφ- φ) + isin(ˉφ- φ)).

Interpretations:

z is the model of complex announcement,

x and y - probabilities (non-commensurables) that announcement is increasing the expected value of the Bayesian information structure (expected values of the optimal decisions) accordingly for sectors Re and Im. Note: negative x and y – absolute values describe probabilities that expected values of optimal decision will decline accordingly for sectors.

Define ideal announcement as z* where x*=y*=1, and complex efficiency of an announcement z as z/z*= i.

It is easy to see that for the monitor complex non-detrimental (positively effective) announcements belong to the first quadrant x,y>0, and the task of the coordinating mechanism is to coordinate/enforce all announcements into this quadrant, possibly close to the ideal direction.

E.g. let us consider a societal sustainability model, decision based on Bayesian knowledge structure, containing two sectors: Re economic and Im political.

Let the announcement make publicly more prevailing knowledge: 0-profit tax is optimal.

Easy to see that the emitted announcement may increase the probability of political sustainability (as it may be in the coalitions agenda), and may decrease probability of economic sustainability (as the statement may e.g. economical error based on “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” error).

For knowledge structure regulating mechanism the main task is to enhance the complex quality of the structure, id est., to stipulate only complexly effective harmonized announcements.

Annex B: Public Information, Private Information, and the

Multiplicity of Equilibria in Coordination Games1

Christian Hellwig

Journal of Economic Theory 107, 191–222 (2002)

I study coordination games with incomplete public and private information and

relate equilibrium convergence to convergence of higher-order beliefs. As the

players’ signals become more and more precise, the equilibrium manifold converges

to the correspondence of common knowledge equilibria, whenever the variance of

the public signal converges to 0 at a rate faster than one half the rate of convergence

of the variance of private signals. The same condition also determines the

convergence of common p-belief to common knowledge, which leads to a simple

intuition for its origin and an immediate generalization of the former results about

equilibrium convergence. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers:

Key Words: global games; equilibrium convergence; common knowledge; higher order

beliefs.

November 2, 2009 Posted by Ülo Ennuste | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Towards Synthetic Design of Implementing Socio-Economic Communication (3.X 09)

Towards Synthetic Design of Implementing Socio-Economic Communication

Mechanisms for Building Optimal Public Socio-Economic Knowledge Spaces

Ülo Ennuste

ylo.ennuste@mail.ee

This narrative note is discussing compiled implementing mechanism design conceptions for optimizing public socio-economic information structures. Proposed for discussion optimal meta-synthesis concept emphasizes compiling methods with the imitation of variety of theoretical partial implementation models and principles of real world evolutionary empirical mechanisms.

The main idea of the proposed design is to sequentially and adaptively coordinate reasonable learning and private information disclosure of the actors with the help of stimulating their reporting credibility (non-distorting with sufficient disclosure, transparency, speed and costs) and respectfulness for incoming reports (reasonable learning from credible actors). Incentives and constraint may be heterogeneous: relevant material and moral side-payments and consultations and informational constraints etc.

The main suggestion is to complement extant respective public reporting mechanisms with more complex coordination instruments, especially moral ones and with voluntary non-governmental monitoring webs. For the synthesis of different potential coordination activities and partial mechanisms optimisation models are suggested, the constraints may be e.g. the quality characteristics of the knowledge space and objective function as cost minimization or vice versa.

Keywords: Public socio-economic knowledge structure, Complex implementation, Side-payments, Moral and material incentives, Voluntary webs, Optimal coordination structure, Coordination magnitude, Over-coordination, Under-coordination, Substitute- and complementary coordination instruments.

1. Introductory Notes

The basic argument presented is to form a concept that effective/operational theoretical mechanism for the creation of high-quality/optimal public socio-economic knowledge structure may be most conveniently designed by synthesising extant theoretical partial mechanism models.

At least five supporting interrelated sub-arguments are presented to form the concept:

The first is that high-quality socio-economic information structures with a certain sets of characteristics are the necessary recourses for creating sustainable and utilitarian based socio-economic development paths, that the quality of public socio-economic knowledge structure, the design of communication mechanisms and efficient utilitarian based socio-economic sustainability are interrelated phenomena.

The second sub-argument is that in order to reach this utilitarian based social efficiency, public knowledge structures need large and complicated set of efficient communication mechanisms and institutions, formal as well as informal (institutions making in the long run all communicating actors better off are labelled efficient).

The third argument is that it is unlikely that such mechanisms will be efficiently designed/evolved/adapted endogenously by communicating actors. “Moreover, if such institutions have been created, we should expect market agents to try to destroy them. Based on insights from various approaches.” (Rothstein 2009).

The fourth argument is that public socio-economic knowledge structure can only reach high quality and social efficiency if the institutions that reproduce the necessary efficient type of mechanisms, act according to a logic institutional and communication truth-telling principles of modern political-economics, that may be different from the logic that actors use, e.g. manipulative strategic business efficiency principles, populist- political capital accumulation tricks etc.

The fifth argument, and most importantly suggestion, is that complement extant respective public reporting mechanisms with more complex coordination instruments and principles, especially moral ones, and with voluntary non-governmental monitoring webs. The main idea of the proposed effective designs is to sequentially and adaptively coordinate reasonable learning and rational private information disclosure of the actors with the help of stimulating their reporting credibility (non-distorting with sufficient disclosure and transparency and speed) and respectfulness for incoming reports (reasonable learning from credible actors). Incentives and constraint may be heterogeneous: relevant material and moral side-payments and consultations and informational constraints etc. This narrative note is discussing and suggesting synthesising implementing mechanism for optimizing public socio-economic information structures on the basis of modern mechanism design theories. Proposed meta-synthesis concept emphasizes theoretical compiling methods with the imitation on the basis of optimal planning models and of principals of real world evolutionary empirical mechanisms.

These arguments are especially topical in finding institutional means to recovery from present global socio- economic crises. There is plenty of evidence, that one of the significant factors to trigger this crises has been defective knowledge structure and that in the crises the quality of this structure has suffered and been contaminated continuously (e.g. Inotai 2007, Ennuste 2008, Krugman 2008).

As Friedman (1962,12) has postulated: “basic problem of social organization is how to co-ordinate the economic activities of large numbers of people.”

It follows logically from this statement that the dynamic solution of this basic socio-economic problem cannot be solved without permanently up-dated high quality public knowledge (belief) structure. Meaning, that in this structure the imaginary information store (space) is necessarily and sufficiently large, up-to-date, with high scientific truth-value, transparent, and has specific mechanism (governance system) for implementing non-distorting communication and rational learning, and this with rational enforcements/incentives and expenses.

Understandably, in the turbulent environment, in the situations of emerging phases of rapid change from a centralized market economy to the capitalist type etc, in this situation of exuberant transitional uncertainties (e.g.Ramazzotti 2005), the social governance rules for providing high quality speedy and adequate public socio-economic reporting/correspondence, should be relatively robust and adaptive to corresponding changes, and to respective administrative regulations, and properly monitored.

The most subtle problem here is that heterogeneous reporting actors may have different rationalities and different egoistic objectives, and therefore may be interested in strategically distorting their announcements about hidden private information, erroneous or not, to achieve more conveniently their objectives.

The theoretical informatics basis for this statement comes from the

phenomenon that for the solving of different national social problems

different public knowledge structures have different value and so may

give social actors incentives to try implementing strategic manipulative and

erroneous message policies to improve the expected egoistic results of

decision makers following activities which may have negative social

externalities (e.g. Azrieli and Lehrer 2008, Hellwig 2002, and Ramazzotti

2005).

Our point is, after Sir David Walker (2007), that more complex

correspondence relationships and additional incentive mechanisms with

complementary non-governmental arrangements may be more effective especially in

crucial turbulent socio-economic stages and would help to overcome the communication crises.

This is so because governmental legal administrative contracts cannot or

may be not sufficiently wide-ranging, because the nature of the behaviour

and relationships expected in this public socio-economic-political

correspondence field are often defined dominantly by the dynamic implicit

context, rather than by rigorously fixed formal contracts.

It follows that the effective mechanism of enforcement of such

complementary non-governmental arrangements, where the requirements of

the parties to go on doing data transfers voluntarily, together may be

complementary positive (e.g. Myatt and Wallace 2008.); especially

considering that there are intersections of the groups of different

rationalities, e. g. political and economic rationalities that may make

administrative disclosure regulations ineffective, if not paralysed.

The question, of course, will be first of all about informational privacy of

many institutions/individuals and about the rewards, carrots and sticks, of

senior managers in these institutions, and about reasonable secrecy and

reasonable limits of political populist distortions of reports and announcements.

In the incentive mechanism design of measuring “sticks and carrots” for the

Partners of the Code by the Monitor, we will methodically rely on the

several branches of Applied Institutional Economics Theories and

differentiate political announcers in the political world and announcers of

the socio-economic economic world (see e.g. Aoyagi 1998).

2. Main Modelling Conceptions

The compact mathematical deduction of rational models of implementing

mechanisms for the public social knowledge structure in the

stochastic dynamic environment is extremely complicated. First of all, all extant definitions of the structure have their drawbacks (Ramazzotti 2005), and more importantly, private information of the actors in this area is an intangible invisible asset of complex values,

moral and material.

And there are the problems rational private information collection and learning. So also are the preferences of the actors heterogeneous.

We have stressed in our discussions the importance to tackle this kind of

study of public social knowledge structures as active dynamic institutions:

as the sate of quality of this structure has not only indirect relationships with

general social developments, but also directly with future developments of

the implementing mechanisms under this very study.

Consequently, the compact deductions comprising in more or less the whole system may

give only very general results.

Due to these complications the extant rigorous operational mechanism design theories tackle mainly decomposed by aspects (Ennuste 1978) partial models, e.g.: correlated information, non-detail coordination (aggregated coordination), moral incentives, faulty agents, Bayesian environment etc. The novelty of our approach is to tray design a general theoretical/operational model on the basis of partial models by a kind of wholeness analysis based on the meta-synthetic design (Gu and Tang 2005). And might be highly justified, to use for the synthesis some types of optimisation models where among the activities are e.g. different coordination activities and partial mechanisms, the constraints may be e.g. the quality characteristics of the knowledge space and objective function as cost minimization or vice versa (Ennuste 2003).

Our mainly narrative/heuristic discussion is heavily based on the framework

of recent theoretic partial concepts of Descartes-Bayes-Nash transferred utility

implementation as the most precise and rigorous tools in the field of New

Institutional Economics (e.g. d’Aspremont, Crémer and Gerard-Varet 2004).

So far these tools are still quite stylised for a complex analysis of the

empirical mechanisms’ clusters and constructivist design. The main missing

link in a standard implementation theory now is in our context that at

construction of the implementing mechanisms some moral social

dimensions such as credibility/respectability of agents (Matsushima 1993,

2003 and Baliga 1999), bounded rationality (Eliaz 2002 and) and learning

by doing and information trade-offs (Koessler 2004 and Kaminski 2004),

and intuitional capacities of agents are not sufficiently exploited; and the

costs connected with transferring utilities are not taken into consideration;

also the implementation variants of economic institutional structures are not

explicitly formalized (Ennuste 2003).

Our heuristic model findings, based on the assumption of separability of the

social choice function by agents, containing institutional variables with

complementarities and combined institutional influences, are that the

synthesized models of emergent types of mechanisms have probably robust

sub-optimal implementation permissiveness for a very general class of

socio-economic systems choice functions.

Suppose communicating actors have combined material (socio-economic,

environmental, monetary, material wellbeing) and moral, political, ethical,

cultural and religious objectives, motivations (Macchiavello 2008),

preferences, targets, and values in their private knowledge disseminating

and learning policies in the communication. That means the effective

implementing (optimizing) mechanisms should have complex side-payment

systems combining material and moral side-payments as incentives for

truth-telling, avoiding erroneous statements and respective learning in the

communication processes. In other words, we have a vector like effective

side-payment mechanism to design. In this procedure we have compared

complexly the pairs of informativeness values of different statements:

statements made on the basis of endogenous socio-economic objectives

(consequential/non-consequential) and on the basis of exogenous moral

ends.

The emergent empirical institutional systems generally may be functioning

(e.g. North 1990) sequentially, gradually, repetitively, and adaptively, and

may be active in updating information in this process of communication,

and private and public use; the coordination fields of these systems are not

only limited to primal socio-economic activities but also deal with

constitutional activities (institutional design, organisational engineering and

construction, reforms). In these processes, the social planners with their

private information have had parallel roles as implementers of the game and

also as players in the game in the role of coordinators and utility transferors.

In these mechanisms, agents’ reports may be indirect aggregated indicators;

agents are worried about their consequential credibility status, depending on

their behaviour in the process. They are in parallel consulted and multiply

coordinated horizontally by other agents in market rules and vertically by

the coordinator in their activity variant choices; they may be ostracised, they

may use informal communication, they learn and create new knowledge in

the coordination process, they are private and public actors, etc.

Compared to the standard mathematical implementation theoretic designs,

the empirical mechanisms are taking more into consideration the

complexities and information content of the problems, bounded rationality

and credibility of agents, heavier central coordination by quotas, more side

payments, and not aiming necessarily at the minimalist mechanism design

with exploitation of subsidiary elements but on sufficient implement ability.

And more importantly, the imitations of empirical designs show that socioeconomic

mechanisms should be dealt with in complementary or co-varying

clusters (Pryor 2005).

Our heuristic model findings, based on the imitations of empirical

institutional systems and assumption of separability of the social choice

function of explicit institutional arrangements (”institutional engineering“,

Olsen 2002) by agents, containing institutional variables with

complementarities and combined institutional influences (e.g. Searle 2005

and Solari 2005), are that the emergent types of mechanisms have probably

robust sub-optimal implementation permissiveness for a very general class

of socio-economic choice functions.

As long we all do not understand sufficiently the importance of

informational transparency in national political and socio-economic

activities, especially in learning processes, and unless there are no sufficient

legal and alternative mechanisms bases and other complex contractual

relationships and mechanisms with complementary non-governmental

arrangements, there may be large unperceived socio-economic and political

losses. This is so because governmental legal contracts alone cannot be

sufficiently wide-ranging, and because the nature of the behaviour and

relationships expected in socio-economic-political field are often defined

dominantly by the implicit context, rather than by the formal contract. It

follows that the effective mechanism of enforcement of such complementary

arrangements and contracts is not legal regulations only, but may be the

requirements of the parties to go on doing data transfers voluntarily together

- and more activity will escape from informational shadow, entropy growth

will be reduced, and the efficiency of the functioning of the entire national

socio-economic and political process will be enhanced.

*Complex and parallel coordination networks (e.g. governmental and nongovernmental;

*Complex coordinating instruments (e.g. material and moral etc);

*Complex social characteristics of actors (e.g. reputation/ respectability, credibility, respectfulness, rationality etc);

*Complex coordination methods (e.g. non-detail, hierarchical etc);

*Complex coordinating principles (e.g. incentives, constraints, consultations);

*Complex incentive and restriction mechanisms (e.g. based on complex

numeral models).

The results of the survey (Ennuste 2008) revealed the importance in considering current

idiosyncrasies of the societies under the study, e.g.:

*Political system (e.g. divided into political parties and coalitions democracy may be interested at disseminating dominantly populist messages to the public and at non-rational

closure of national statistics; Ennuste 2007b);

*Linguistic heterogeneity of the population (e.g. part of the population may

communicatively belong more or less to some other society);

*Weight of academic community in the society.

3. Discussion and conclusions

The main idea of the proposed synthesized design is to

sequentially and adaptively coordinate the game of information and learning

of the subsidiary constitutional actors with the help of stimulating their

credibility and respectability behaviour by the constitutional coordinator

with relevant side payments, quotas, and consultations.

In this game, the social meta (constitutional) planner will first of all take the

role of implementer and will design the rules of the meta game, and then

will take the role and power of coordinator of the collective decision game,

mainly trying to correct the incompleteness of the design to achieve socially

desirable institutional developments.

The proposed illustrative mechanism functions as follows. The

constitutional coordinator will focus the next sequential coordination

campaign of institutional arrangements on one certain selected institutional

agent (or group of them). The coordinator will ask her or him to share the

indirect private information she or he has about efficient steps for her or his

activity profile with fixed short-term plans and state contingent preliminary

long-term activity plans. For that, the coordinator will give to the chosen

agent some coordinating and consulting information, including side

payments and constraint quotas and about new environmental parameters.

These are based on the private information the centre has, containing also

the agent’s credibility probabilities. The better the rate of the agent is, the

more generous the coordination and vice versa. Then the coordinator will

ask other agents to send to all agents messages containing their views about

the plan preferred by the selected agent on the basis of their own private

information. By deviating from the probable weighted average messages,

they will harm their credibility rates.

Then the selected agent will tackle the efficiency of her or his institutional

project. For that she or he will take into consideration the credibility rates of

the communicators and her or his own consideration rate of others, etc. This

all is taken by others to correct her or his common credibility rate in their

eyes. If her or his new version comes to be overwhelmingly effective over

the status quo, she or he will implement it. If the proposed project happens

to be overwhelmingly negative, she or he will stay with the status quo

variant. In the middle of both, the centre may announce repetition of the step

to try again to figure out the efficiency of the proposed corrected project on

the basis of refreshed information and revised credibility rates, etc.

In the end, the next campaign with the other selected agent will be initiated.

The meta-synthetic deduction of rational conceptions for implementing mechanism building of the public social knowledge structure in the environment of the dynamic post-transformation society is extremely complicated.

First of all, all extant definitions of the structure have their drawbacks

(Ramazzotti 2005), and more importantly, private information of the actors

in this area is an intangible invisible asset of complex values: moral and

material. So also are the preferences of the actors.

We have stressed in our discussions the importance to tackle these public

social knowledge structures as active dynamic institutions: as the quality of

these structure is not having only relationships with general social

developments, but also directly, with future developments of the

implementing mechanisms under this very study.

Consequently, the studies comprising more or less the whole system may

give only very general results. Still, as this study has proved, this kind of

wholeness analysis based on the meta-synthetic design (deductive

implementation theoretic and inductive empirical-intuitional, based e.g. on optimal planning model ), might be highly justified, especially in the case of post-transformation situations. In

these cases of rapid structural changes in many social areas, the rational

regulation/coordination of current beliefs, opinions, expectations, and

learning structures is extremely important.

The above abstract discussion argued that the adequate socio-economic

information structure implementing mechanisms design should have

extremely complicated configuration.

Acknowledgements

The author has benefited from comments many participants of the EAEPE

2005 Conference in Bremen on the of the parallel paper, also from

dozens of corrections by András Inotai to the earlier version of the paper.

The remaining errors are my own.

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October 3, 2009 Posted by Ülo Ennuste | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Memo 23.IX 09

Memo to:

The Prime Minister of Estonia

The Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs

First, Estonia shouldn’t at all in the present hyper-crisis rush to exit from significant fiscal stimulus policies categorically. It is not yet late to ensure a proper sequencing of fiscal expansionary relief instruments (possibly at the expence of ample reserve stock of the BoE) with the goal of preventing further increase of high-unemployment (already about 17%, and net financial assets of households in the red, industrial output in free fall etc) and soften the likely double-dip recession (one neighbour country already signalling about preparing for that by new future transit-blockades, so have euro-sceptics activated activities against euro-zone enlargement).

Second, but Estonia should rush to “harmonize” and seek better time-consistency (crisis-contingency) with the EU Commission at least to the extant Maastricht inflation criterion: in present form it is also non-transparent and technically defective, and with that may cause for Estonia irretrievable socio-economic and credibility losses. It seems at the moment the Estonian Government is incompetently going in the end of the year to deflate the country dawn to fulfil the first part of the inflation criterion (level of inflation < i+1.5%, i – average three-best inflation), thereby the second part of it (stability and sustainability of prices) stays almost certainly unfulfilled according to many political and economic interpretations. The trouble is that Estonian ruling macro-economic experts are mainly not competent enough to understand that the second part of inflation criterion (stability and sustainability of prices) has been made in the present fuzzy definition to be the playground for political logic, and has nothing to do with distinct economic logic. In 2006 Lithuania failed just with the second component, and it seems that Estonian proposals for the amendment of Maastricht inflation criterion thus far have been incompetent.

And perhaps in the Estonian hyper-crisis situation, it may be rational for new Commission to move beyond a rigorous adherence to the hole stability and growth pact altogether and rewrite it to be more state-contingent (decision theoretically) and charitable to micro-member states with a past in half of century in the occupational centralised planning limbo with huge economic and human capital losses. See also: Sapir, A. (Ed). 2009 Sept. “Europe’s economic priorities 2010-2015. Memos to the new Commission.” Bruegle.

Third, instant reform of the Estonian tax system is probably necessary: in the sense of harmonization of moral competition with member countries, for enhancement of Estonian socio-economic sustainability, lowering the risks of domestic capital flight without domestic taxing and avoiding worsening of the Estonian international investment position. And most importantly, presently there is a lack of balance between tax laws and national pension law, the income tax law is biased towards incompetently low capital income taxation, absolutely unbalanced, that has almost certainly had regrettably vast opportunity costs for national economy. See also: Vanhanen, M. 2009. “Europe will need to raise taxes in harmony.” FT June 17 2009.

Fourth, the crisis has shown that macroeconomic policy in the Baltic-Rim area needs to be better coordinated regionally, especially when it comes to post-crisis management, e.g. “free” movement of “all kind” of labour, credit, investments, financial obligations, and most importantly to the Baltic-See protection against third-parties contaminating activities etc. It seems resonable that the Commision has to intoduce a Baltic-Rim Coordination Centre.

Fifth, the coordination mechanism of the Estonian public soci-economic knowledge space building should be basically adapted to the IT and liberal non-censorship conditions. Unfortunately at present such significant indicators as Estonian high national gross external debt (this year forecast about 140% of GDP), current account chronically with relatively high deficiency, international investment position retreating, Estonian economic inequality index by quintiles barbarically high compared to nearby Nordic countries, net financial assets of households in the read etc – are, alas, from the Estonian public knowledge space by self-important administrative and incumbent political camp rhetoric, in overshadowed position in mass media and administrative statistics, thus helping to play down cognition of real severity of the present national economy situation, and not enabling to make high quality forecasts – so probably significantly magnifying national socio-economic sustainability risks. It slould be organized that the freedom of speech clauses are not extended to the tax-law, pencion-law, foreign-trade etc matters, and especially not to the last occupation and foreign policy matters, most imprtantly not to insulting and slandering the European Union à la EU=SU etc, and bousting against member-countries.

Macro-economic scholar Ü. Ennuste, 23.IX 09

September 23, 2009 Posted by Ülo Ennuste | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/

Debt deflation laboratory of the Baltics

Property prices in Estonia’s Hanseatic capital of Tallinn have fallen by 59pc from their peak in the Baltic boom, a remarkable state of affairs for an EU country nestled against Russia on the most dangerous fault line in Europe.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Published: 6:52PM BST 20 Sep 2009

Comments 11*

Cost per sq.m has dropped from €1,611 (£1,455) to €669 since April 2007, according to Ober-Haus Real Estate Advisors. Swedbank says up to 30pc of its mortgages in Estonia are in negative equity. Recent loans are in euros – not the local kroon.

Professor Ülo Ennuste from Tallinn University says the private net wealth of Estonia’s people has fallen below zero. I know of no other country in the world where this has occurred, though Latvia may be deeper in hock. Estonia’s foreign debt is 116pc of GDP, second highest in Eastern Europe.

It is not a good moment for the poster-child of the flat-tax revolution, but those crowing the end of “Margaret Thatcher’s Baltic Model” neglect half the story. Estonia’s euro peg is anything but free-market. It makes Tallinn dance, awkwardly, to Frankfurt’s distant tune. It stoked the boom by enticing people to borrow cheap at eurozone rates: it is now prolonging the bust.

The economy will contract by 14.5pc this year, twice as bad as Iceland (OECD forecasts). Industrial production has fallen 28pc. The unemployed receive half their former pay for a few months, then benefits fall to £12 a week. The shock awaits this winter. Chief victims will be ethnic Russians on the lower rungs of industry.

Most governments would try to cushion the blow. Estonia is instead pushing through yet another austerity package to keep the budget deficit below the EMU ceiling of 3pc of GDP. Such is the totemic appeal of euro entry in 2011.

“This is an absolutely mad policy,” Mr Ennuste told an Open Europe Forum. “We’re in a vicious circle where thousands more lose their jobs and don’t pay taxes, so there have to be more cuts. We need fiscal relief packages at once. This makes nobody happy but the Kremlin.”

The government could spend more. The national debt is just 5pc of GDP. It chooses not to do so. Such ultra-orthodoxy shows admirable discipline. Estonians will be a shining example to us all if they pull it off – and hold their society together.

“Estonia’s credit rating (A-) is going to rise against other countries next year,” said economy minister Johan Parts. “The next phase of the global crisis is how states are going to manage their huge deficits.”

Dag Kirsebom, the author of Hard Landing: a Fairy Tale of the Rise and Fall of the Estonian economy, said the elites had lost the plot. “They are complacent, and they shouldn’t be. We’re in a downward spiral but all they are focused on is joining euro.

“The free-market model worked great for 15 years and then they ruined it with crazy lending. Did Margaret Thatcher say you should borrow money from Swedish banks to buy German cars? I don’t think so. They screwed up, and now it is too late. They need to let the currency fall to reflect the damage already done.”

The euro is more than a currency ambition for Estonia. Like joining Nato, it is part of a national strategy of locking into every part of Europe’s security system as quickly as possible to keep Russia at bay.

What puzzles me is the strange serenity in the ministries. Officialdom seems to think it enough that they have managed to defend their peg without recourse to the IMF, and that their neighbour has collapsed even faster.

“The situation in Latvia is a tragedy,” said Mr Parts. “Nobody will lend them any money except the IMF, and it has the same menu whether you are Latvia or Zimbabwe. The big difference between us and the rest of the Baltics is that we had a buffer of reserves, and we didn’t run budget deficits in the good times.”

Mr Parts quoted Aristotle to defend Estonia’s currency peg: “Give me a single fixed point and I can move the globe”. But is the euro the right “fixed point” when the currencies of Sweden, Russia, Poland, Ukraine have plunged around you? The official view is that exports are not sensitive to the exchange rate. This overlooks the suffocating effect of deflation in a post-bubble economy saddled by debts and wage levels that raced ahead of productivity. The country faces an “internal devaluation” within the EMU bloc to right the ship again. Such cures are painfully slow, and very damaging to democratic solidarity.

Edward Hugh from Baltic Watch advises the four fixed-peggers – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria – to bite the bullet and negotiate a joint devaluation against the euro rather than suffer the political agonies of deflation.

Estonia’s leaders will hear none of it. They can defend the peg as long as reserves last at the central bank. At recent loss rates, they are safe until Christmas.

*****************************************************************

*11 kommentaari 11:00 21.IX 09

Comments: 11

I wish the good people of Eastern Europoe would stop seeing EU membership and especially the Euro as an El Dorado. They and us would be better off out.

Kevin Smith

on September 21, 2009

at 06:06 AM

Estonia – as with all the Baltic States – needs to devalue or exit from the Euro.
Those who enticed them into the Eurozone are to blame (many with D on the backs of their cars, as Eastern European memberships were seen as a political hedge against Russia) as are the greedy politicians and apparatchiks in Talinn who saw EU-membership as a foolproof gravy-train.

JohnT

on September 21, 2009

at 06:00 AM

Estonia is doing the right thing in refusing to debauch its currency and following austerity measures to cut its budget deficit. If it holds its nerve it will experience a short sharp recession followed by a speedy recovery as creative destruction is allowed to take its course. Property and asset prices will fall, making property affordable and investment attractive once again. If only the UK would pursue these policies instead of opting for the Zimbabwe option of debauching its currency and failing to address its very deep rooted structural problems. This will lead to a very dire future and inevitable decline for the UK in the long run as it will never learn to live within its means and impose the savage cuts in public spending that are so desperately needed.

Sane head

on September 21, 2009

at 06:00 AM

The Eurozone is a shambles for every economy, except the Germans and their poodle, France. There isn’t a single Euro nation that would not be better off controlling its own economy. Why aren’t we hearing this? Because every major news source goes to the Germans and French for their opinions, rather than polling each member nation and comparing the results. Behind the confident platitudes of the ECB, cracks are growing in the EU structure, that may cause the whole to collapse. If it does, none will be more surprised than those Western Europeans lulled into somnolence by the tame mass media, and the Euro-zealot politicians who are keeping them in the dark.

Quincunx

on September 20, 2009

at 10:53 PM

As usual, Evans-Pritchard sounds rational but cannot be relied upon for facts. It simply isn’t true to say that the Polish currency has ‘plunged’. It is off its highs, no more than that but it is part of the A E-P narrative that Poland is in trouble so despite being the only economy in the EU to be still growing, in his columns it’s suffering. As with all economists, the data will support pre-conceived ideas whatever they actually say.

Martin Hinton

on September 20, 2009

at 10:29 PM

Mistake: ‘Mr Parts quoted Aristotle to defend Estonia’s currency peg: “Give me a single fixed point and I can move the globe”.’Don’t you mean Archimedes?

Corrections

on September 20, 2009

at 09:50 PM

Not Aristotle,
Archimedes.

Detlef Guertler

on September 20, 2009

at 09:46 PM

It was Archimedes, not Aristotle.

Neep Hazarika

on September 20, 2009

at 09:37 PM

I visited Estonia four years ago, just as the bubble was starting.It’s a very beautiful country, and parts Tallinn – the old city, mainly – are very picturesque. But as with most of the former soviet outposts, huge parts of it were run down, and it was difficult to see how it would make a swift transition into mainland European standards. Dozens of new hotels being built around the city centre begged the question what, apart from possible tourism (dependant of course on the budget airlines), was going to bring much in the way of sustainable economic growth?
November is possibly not a good month to visit, and the bitter cold and short days convinced me that it would not compete on the same terms as western Europe in the foreseeable future.

The hot speculative money that flooded in was on a hiding to nothing. Why would anyone pay UK city prices for residential property in Estonia? It was never going to work. This is exactly where you need the flexibility of a floating currency. Pegging is a terrible mistake.

I feel for the population of Estonia – almost a case of out of the frying pan…

MarkS

on September 20, 2009

at 09:26 PM

It may seem odd to say so now, but the main problem the U.S. will face, fairly soon, will be the unstoppable strengthening of its dollar. It will not be able to stop it, because even massive Federal spending goes–by law, structure, tradition, force, you name it–to the 20% highest income earners.The Federal Government is betting on what all other governments are betting on: that the collapse of demand and massive unemployment won’t challenge the system.
And they’re right, to a point. Look how bad unemployment got in the U.S. during the depression. And yet there was no serious movement to change the system.

The real threat to the system here in the U.S. will come when the underemployment rate among those with a Bachelors degree or higher, reaches 40%.

It’s about 10% now, which is why the Federal Government can blithely pursue Andrew Mellon’s mandate: “liquidate liquidate liquidate.” To use a metaphor from the Westerns, they’ve circle the wagons (protected all the powerful), and now they’re shooting at the Indians.

So it doesn’t matter what anyone says. The only thing that matters is that undermployment rate among those who have a Bachelors degree or higher.

By the way, it matters to the Department of Labor. Every month, they break down unemployment by educational level. Just double the number they produce.

John Ryskamp

on September 20, 2009

at 08:53 PM

The Estonian government’s policy is madness. They have no business being in a Euro currency area with an economy in the shambles that it is and need a set of economic policies that suits its own circumstances. Nuts.

Chris

on September 20, 2009

at 07:48 PM

***************************************************

PS1:

Main conclusion of my talk http://uloennuste.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/154/ at “Open European Forum” in Tallinn 16.IX 09 has been:

Memo to:

The Prime Minister of Estonia

The Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs

First, Estonia shouldn’t at all in the present hyper-crisis rush to exit from significant fiscal stimulus policies categorically. It is not yet late to ensure a proper sequencing of fiscal expansionary relief instruments, with the goal of preventing further increase of high-unemployment (already about 17%, and net financial assets of households in the red, industrial output in free fall etc) and soften the likely double-dip recession (one neighbour country already signalling about preparing for that by new future transit-blockades, so have euro-sceptics activated activities against euro-zone enlargement).

Second, but Estonia should rush to “harmonize” and seek better time-consistency (crisis-contingency) with the EU Commission at least to the extant Maastricht inflation criterion: in present form it is also non-transparent and technically defective, and with that may cause for Estonia irretrievable socio-economic and credibility losses. It seems at the moment the Estonian Government is incompetently going in the end of the year to deflate county dawn to fulfil the first part of the inflation criterion (level of inflation < i+1.5%, average three-best inflation), thereby the second part of it (stability and sustainability of ) stays almost certainly unfulfilled (the trouble is that Estonian ruling macro-economic experts are mainly not competent enough to understand the existence of the second part of inflation criterion (stability and sustainability of prices), although in 2006 Lithuania failed just this that component (BTW, it seems that Estonian proposals for the amendment of Maastricht inflation criterion thus far have been incompetent).

And perhaps in the hyper-crisis situation, it may be rational for new Commission to move beyond a rigorous adherence to the hole stability and growth pact altogether and rewrite it to be more state-contingent (decision theoretically) and charitable to micro-member states with a past in half of century in the occupational centralised planning limbo with huge economic and human capital losses.

Fifth, the coordination mechanism of the Estonian public knowledge space building should be basically adapted to the IT and liberal non-censorship conditions. Unfortunately at present such significant indicators as Estonian high national gross external debt (this year my forecast about 140% of GDP), current account chronically with relatively high deficiency, international investment position retreating, Estonian economic inequality index by quintiles barbarically high compared to nearby Nordic countries, net financial assets of households in read etc – are, alas, from the Estonian public knowledge space by self-important administrative and incumbent political camp rhetoric, in overshadowed position in mass media and administrative statistics, thus helping to play down cognition of real severity of the present national economy situation, and not enabling to make high quality forecasts – so probably significantly magnifying national socio-economic sustainability risks. It slould be organized that the freedom of speech clauses are not extended to the tax-law, pencion-law, foreign-trade etc matters, and especially not to the last occupation and foreign policy matters, most imprtantly not to insulting and slandering the European Union and bousting against member-countries.

PS2: „Open Europe Forum“ Tallinn 16.IX 09 programmis on minu töökohaks märgitud „economist“ – seega mitte TLÜ ega ka TTÜ, rõhutatult märkisin kõigile selles seltskonnas, ka Ambrose’le, et olen tavapensionär, muidugi on seal minu nimega seotud ka mõningaid andmeid, milliseid näen esmakordselt.

Vabandades, Ülo Ennuste prof DSc

September 21, 2009 Posted by Ülo Ennuste | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Memo Draft

Draft, 20.IX 09 do not quote

Independent macro-economic scholars

Memo to:

The Prime Minister of Estonia

The Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs

First, Estonia shouldn’t at all in the present hyper-crisis rush to exit from significant fiscal stimulus policies categorically. It is not yet late to ensure a proper sequencing of fiscal expansionary relief instruments, with the goal of preventing further increase of high-unemployment (already about 17%, and net financial assets of households in the red, industrial output in free fall etc) and soften the likely double-dip recession (one neighbour country already signalling about preparing for that by new future transit-blockades, so have euro-sceptics activated activities against euro-zone enlargement).

Second, but Estonia should rush to “harmonize” and seek better time-consistency (crisis-contingency) with the EU Commission at least to the extant Maastricht inflation criterion: in present form it is also non-transparent and technically defective, and with that may cause for Estonia irretrievable socio-economic and credibility losses. It seems at the moment the Estonian Government is incompetently going in the end of the year to deflate county dawn to fulfil the first part of the inflation criterion (level of inflation < i+1.5%, average three-best inflation), thereby the second part of it (stability and sustainability of ) stays almost certainly unfulfilled (the trouble is that Estonian ruling macro-economic experts are mainly not competent enough to understand the existence of the second part of inflation criterion (stability and sustainability of prices), although in 2006 Lithuania failed just this that component (BTW, it seems that Estonian proposals for the amendment of Maastricht inflation criterion thus far have been incompetent).

Fifth, the coordination mechanism of the Estonian public knowledge space building should be basically adapted to the IT and liberal non-censorship conditions. Unfortunately at present such significant indicators as Estonian high national gross external debt (this year forecast about 140% of GDP), current account chronically with relatively high deficiency, international investment position retreating, Estonian economic inequality index by quintiles barbarically high compared to nearby Nordic countries, net financial assets of households in read etc – are, alas, from the Estonian public knowledge space by self-important administrative and incumbent political camp rhetoric, in overshadowed position in mass media and administrative statistics, thus helping to play down cognition of real severity of the present national economy situation, and not enabling to make high quality forecasts – so probably significantly magnifying national socio-economic sustainability risks. It slould be organized that the freedom of speech clauses are not extended to the tax-law, pencion-law, foreign-trade etc matters, and especially not to the last occupation and foreign policy matters, moust imprtantly not to insulting and slandering the European Union and bousting against member-countries.

September 20, 2009 Posted by Ülo Ennuste | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

14.IX 09

Estonian hyper-crisis lessons confirm importance of more effective high quality coordination/regulation and harmonisation: Mechanism design theoretic approach

Talk to the debate in Tallinn 16 Sept 09 “European Union: Costs, Benefits and Strategies for Estonia”

Ülo Ennuste

Preface: Meta-remark

From the viewpoint of Modern Political Economics the most powerful economic policy statement by the European Union was made in Lisbon Agenda 2000: the economy should be knowledge based. That means in modern understandings that socio-economic institutions/mechanisms/coordination/regulation/rules etc of the EU and member countries should be knowledge based. Meaning that these should be based on modern high level mechanisms design theory, decision theory, evolutionary economics, and information theory, information technology etc.

In other words, regulations should not be based on ruling incumbent political camps beliefs, pre-election myths and utopias. And mechanisms should not be adapted and changed with the change of ruling political camps, but these should be adapted, enhanced, complemented and their quality enhanced according to the real socio-economic and technological and ecological developments. Political changes may only take place in the sphere the socio-economic desiderata, especially the income redistribution and inequality structure. And most importantly, we have by that to keep in mind Rothstein (2009) anti- devolutionary third argument:

“The third argument is that it is unlikely that such mechanisms will be efficiently designed/evolved/adapted endogenously by communicating actors. “Moreover, if such institutions have been created, we should expect market agents to try to destroy them. Based on insights from various approaches.”

Coordination theme is the basic socio-economic problem, as Friedman (1962,12) has postulated:

“basic problem of social organization is how to co-ordinate the economic activities of large numbers of people.”

(By the way in macro-economics the dominant general term is “coordination” – “regulation” means a kind of coordination.)

Coordination theme belongs in the Modern Macro-Economy generally to the domains of Evolutionary Economics and Mechanism Design Theories – the first is happily enough more or less a narrative one. But the last one is nowadays rigorously formalized, based on heavyweight mathematics: see e.g. Note (N1) on 2007 Nobel Prize in economics:

“Mechanism design theory is a branch of game theory (NB: generally dynamic Bayesian mathematical game theory. ÜE) … and extends (sic! e.g. on the field of social behavior, animal spirit etc. ÜE) the application of game theory to ask about the consequence of applying different types of rules to a given problem.”

and see also e.g. (N2) on an example of theoretic optimization model of building of national socio-economic institutional structure.

As the politicians and lawmakers, the implementers of institutions, as a rule don’t know mathematics and hate it and high level tedious scholarship in general, the try, especially in this very crisis period to claim that mathematical macro-economics is to blame as the significant destabilizing factor (lately especially Lord Roland Skidelsky:

“ They were preoccupied with sophisticated mathematical models – a serious weakness, … .”(Lunch with FT August 28 2009 and (N3)),

and mathematical dismal science is also not able to forecast important socio-economic events and is no good altogether and whatsoever.

But, this is absolutely not true ((N12) Bezemer 2009a), actually slander: first of all, the high level, e.g. Nobel domain, mathematical macroeconomic theories, are in the mainstream credible, these contain all the uncertainties and moral hazards of animal spirit in all varieties (limited rationality, strategic manipulative distortion of communication, incompetence, greed etc), and these theories should be implemented especially in the times of crisis (Bezemer 2009b).

For example the extant definition of Maastricht inflation (complex) criterion is methodologically defective: semi-formalized mathematically and therefore non-transparent (restrictive information level is mathematically defined by +1.5%, but prices stability/sustainability restriction is only vaguely verbally defined and so open for all kinds of interpretations).

And, just last year the Estonian Parliament enacted abortive “pre-payment income tax law”. The law was dynamical (several years interactively involved) and so to be transparent should have been mathematically formalized, it was not, and so in the end on the basis of public protests the law was abolished before enforcement – tens of millions kroons wasted.

But interpretations of excellent mathematical macro-theories by dominating politicians, policymakers, jurists, journalists, spin doctors etc, are generally incorrect caricatures, e.g. (N4). And secondly, there are certainly some distorting biases and divisions in dismal science community globally and locally, on the basis of regrettable biases of independence and divisions towards to different political power-camps:

“Consensus economics does exist. The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are trying to apply it. The economics professoriate has an obligation to criticize and improve those policies. But if politics is allowed to split the discipline, and communication across that divide continues to break down, the science of economics will forfeit what little respect it still commands.” – C. Crook “Politics is damaging the credibility of economics” FT February 8 09.

1. Introductory remarks: The central dilemma

Wilde discussions have already started about instant necessity of time consistent adaptations of European economic mechanisms and member counties ones versus mechanisms and multilateral harmonisation on the fresh knowledge base of the crisis lessons: as for greater coordination/regulation and harmonisation, and as for relaxation and liberalization.

Remarkable among first ones in the Estonian context has been the paper in FT June 17 2009 by PM of Finland Matti Vanhanen „Europe will need to raise taxes in harmony” (N5):

“EU policy with respect to tax competition is currently based on member states refraining from implementing new tax competition measures and on dismantling old measures perceived to be harmful. These codes of conduct are not legally binding. I do not think this could or should be changed. But member countries could agree, for example, to change the levels of certain taxes in parallel.

Parallel measures would help all of Europe: tax competition risk would be reduced and the public finances of individual countries would improve. Such co-ordinated tax changes could set also an important global example.”

From the mechanism’s theories point this is an extremely important paper for Estonia, but alas, has already here got publicly only sarcastic side-remarks.

And in the same vein the Letter to the FT from the President of the Party of European Socialists Poul Nyrup Rasmussen “Sustainable growth requires greater regulation”:

“Our future must be based on real jobs in a green economy. We need transparent, highly competitive and low-cost financial markets to serve that purpose. No amount of short-sighted industry lobbying will stop policymakers from pursuing this goal.”(etc (N3)).

In the vein of deregulations the most outstanding publication in the Estonian context seems as far to be “OECD urges rich countries to strive for flexibility” By Chris Giles, Economics Editor, The Economist March 3 2009. There we may read:

“The countries should redouble efforts to increase flexibility in labour markets and boost competition even though they are suffering the worst recession since the second world war,… .

Arguing that liberalisation was the surest route to a speedy recovery, the Paris-based international organisation locked horns with a vocal group of European economists, who have been extolling the virtues of labour market rigidities as a way of preventing deflation and depression.”

Thus, our main dilemma will be: to regulate more, or to deregulate, and where so. To figure out some Estonian solutions, first of all let us look for the Estonian crisis idiosyncrasies.

2. Main Estonian hyper-crisis idiosyncrasies

Estonia started to solve the crisis in the own way

First of all we have to notice that all the Eastern-European countries have their differences and had already applied different varieties of crisis management strategies:

“That highlights an important problem. Outsiders tend to lump “the ex-communist world” or “eastern Europe” together, as though a shared history of totalitarian captivity was the main determinant of economic fortune, two decades after the evil empire collapsed. Though many problems are shared, the differences between the ex-communist countries are often greater than those that distinguish them from the countries of “old Europe” (The Economist “The whiff of contagion”. Feb 26^th 2009 http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13184594):

Source: The Economist (Note: Estonian GDP per person 2009 in current prices is about kilo-USD 15-16, ÜE)

Estonia, pegged to euro, mainly “squeezes spending to stay afloat” (N8).

Estonian crisis started relatively earlier

In the second half of 2007 the export actually began to decline in real terms (according to the Eurostat). In particular, the decrease of competitiveness began because of relatively much higher inflation than in partner countries (without, increase the quality the products of services).

The export crises worsened due to the start of global financial crisis in 2008, and the unemployment started rapidly to increase. As the Government started to alleviate crisis by severe cuts of the budget, the local demand also started to decline and GDP started to fall rapidly and so in repeating cycles.

The Economist Table “Output, prices and jobs” Sep 3rd 2009 (see the Table below or: http://www.economist.com/markets/indicators/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14365843), implicitly classifies Estonia at the moment in the group of most high magnitude crisis countries, as in the EU and more broadly as well. Although the indexes may be approximate, we may still with great certainty claim that the combined magnitude of Estonian complex crisis is at the moment 2-3 times higher than in the EU member countries in general. Easy to see even at first glance, as Finland indexes are given in the Table nearby. Notice that most important crisis indicators as prices instability of the two countries are about 12 and 5 percentages points and unemployment accordingly 17 and 9 percentage points(for Estonian QII 09 statistics in more details see (N9)).

Note: It is important to add to The Economist table that according to the Bank of Estonia Statistics, Estonian national Gross eternal debt has been in the last years and is presently excessively high – about 120-140% of GDP, and Current account deficiency has been chronically relatively high, International investment position retreating etc; according to Eurostat economic Inequality index by quintiles barbarically high etc.

Truth value of Estonian public socio-economic knowledge structure is at the moment relatively low: full of low quality, non-transparent, and distorted statements and of boasting and distorting bluff bubbles

Examples

Random extract from one of the recent State Budget Laws

RIIGIEELARVE TULUD KOKKU			-9,631,300,000	-10,159,000,000	0	-21,000,000	0	-9,610,300,000
RIIGIEELARVE KULUD KOKKU			-6,575,777,978	-7,103,477,978	0	-21,000,000	0	-6,554,777,978
RIIGIEELARVE FINANTSEERIMISTEHINGUD KOKKU			-3,055,522,022	-3,055,522,022	0	0	0	-3,055,522,022

Osa 1. RIIGIKOGU
RIIGIEELARVE KULUD KOKKU			-9,265,724	-9,265,724	0	0	0	-9,265,724
15		Materiaalsete ja immateriaalsete varade soetamine ja renoveerimine (ü)	-1,807,000	-1,807,000	0	0	0	-1,807,000
74000101. Riigikogu Kantselei			-7,011,634	-7,011,634	0	0	0	-7,011,634
4		Eraldised	-15,400	-15,400	0	0	0	-15,400
	450	Sihtotstarbelised eraldised	-15,400	-15,400				-15,400
	4500	Sihtotstarbelised eraldised jooksvateks kuludeks	-15,400	-15,400				-15,400
	4500.0	Valitsussektorisisesed eraldised	-15,400	-15,400				-15,400
		– Eesti Keele Instituut	-15,400	-15,400				-15,400
5		Tegevuskulud	-6,996,234	-6,996,234	0	0	0	-6,996,234
		– tegevuskulud	-6,996,234	-6,996,234				-6,996,234
70008256. Vabariigi Valimiskomisjon			-447,090	-447,090	0	0	0	-447,090
4		Eraldised	-447,090	-447,090	0	0	0	-447,090
	450	Sihtotstarbelised eraldised	-447,090	-447,090				-447,090
	4500	Sihtotstarbelised eraldised jooksvateks kuludeks	-447,090	-447,090				-447,090
	4500.0	Valitsussektorisisesed eraldised	-447,090	-447,090				-447,090
		– valimiskomisjonid	-447,090	-447,090				-447,090

Notice that e.g. the first number in the table is prognostic, thus in this number at least 80% of numerals are totally incredible, and according decision theories senseless to fix these, as these are contaminating transparency, that at least is especially disturbing conceptually the parliamentary discussions.

Random Estonian research paper on euro-area accession from TUTWPE 2005 (133): M. Sõrg 2005. Estonia’s Accession to the EMU

Abstract

EE countries have passed the process of transition to market economy and eight of them, including Estonia, joined the European Union in 2004. Estonia has been very successful in the transition process, mainly owing to the currency board-based monetary system, which serves as a signal of commitment to prudent monetary policy and as a guarantee of sound money during the transition period. The current paper discusses the thirteen years of experience in operating the currency board-based monetary system in Estonia. Estonia’s accession to the European Union will soon be accompanied by membership of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Here it is also explained why Estonia wants to join the EMU as fast as possible and what the prospects are to do it on time, at the beginning of 2007.

Notice that in this very late 2005 paper the Abstract contains no word that Estonia started to spoil Maastricht inflation criterion already in 2004 and continued so in 2005, and high inflation risk is not discussed in the text and the plan to join euro at the beginning of 2007 was roughly abortive because of this criterion, although immense resources were spent for preparations. Notice also that Prof Sõrg was in the time of writing the paper the Head of the Board of the Bank of Estonia.

Random GDP administrative forecasting example: Extract of Bank of Estonia 26 Aug 09 forecast:

Table 1. Economic forecast by key indicators

2008 2009 2010

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

Real GDP growth (%) -3,6 -12,3 0,2

HCPI (%) 10,6 -0,5 -2,9

————————————————————————————————-

Easy to see that published for public forecast is low probability “V “forecast, as among specialists “W” shape is much more credible, thus just for political manipulations.

Note: It is important to add that according to the Bank of Estonia Statistics, Estonian national Gross eternal debt has been in the last years and is presently excessively high – about 120-140% of GDP, and Current account deficiency has been chronically relatively high, International investment position retreating etc; according to Eurostat economic Inequality index by quintiles barbarically high etc. Alas these indicators are in the Estonian public knowledge space and administrative rhetoric, especially in the present crises, in overshadowed position, thus helping to play down real severity of the situation, and not enabling to make high quality forecasts (N12).

Much boast about “Baltic Shining Star” and slander on the addresses of other member states

E.g.: “Openeurope” 2006 (p7) “Beyond the European Social Model” :

“Meelis Kitsing notes that success in the information economy has made the Nordic

model “as hot as stones in a sauna” among EU policymakers. But studies which try

to show a link between Nordic welfare systems and the information economy

suggest that this is less of a “model” and more of a coincidence. He argues that

success stories like Nokia can be explained by getting a few big things like telecoms

regulation right, and also by the “gales of creative destruction” unleashed on

Scandinavia in the early 1990s by the collapse of the Soviet Union. He argues that if

poorer member states want to break into the new economy they should learn from

low-tax Estonia instead. He notes the story of the revolutionary telecoms company

Skype: technology developed entirely in Estonia – by entrepreneurs who had left

Denmark and Sweden.”

By the way, low are only Estonian profit taxes, and just this “low-tax” thing forced the Estonian Government to implement high inflationary and money illusionary policies, and may be blamed for relatively excessive crisis phenomenon at the moment, and more importantly – the probabilities of successes certainly depend on development of information technology.

And there is no credible proof whatsoever known till now that low-tax system helped Estonia “to break into the new economy” in other ways.

In the Estonian mass-media the strange caricatures of socio-economic realities are customarily circulating:

E.g.: (the EU)=(the SU)

– perhaps one explanation for that kind of slander can be found in:

“Stalin still looms large over eastern Europe” By Stefan Wagstyl FT August 30 2009:

“ Lies are allowed to multiply with, for example, an official historian recently denying the 1940 occupation of the Baltic states took place and saying they joined the Soviet Union voluntarily.”

The problem is that Estonian Press has considerable commercial interest connected with the large Russian speaking Diaspora, many with very strange irredentist beliefs of anxieties about market economy and the EU expansion to Estonia (Ott and Ennuste 1996).

No research centers for macroeconomic studies in Estonia, R&D expenses pc are magnitude lower than in Nordic countries

Unfortunately, the current system of financing universities is such that universities are not at all interested in (independent) macro-economic research activities. There is extreme shortage of second-degree macro-economists in Estonia.

The official macro-economic statistical communication is very slow and selective

***

On the basis of these idiosyncrasies in mind, I am trying schematically to tackle enhancements and complementation strategy problems in the three the most urgent regulation and harmonization are: Maastricht criteria, tax system, and communication mechanisms; mainly on the basis of the concepts of mechanism design theory in narrative form.

(Main concepts:

*combined vertical (included hierarchical e.g.: Brussels>Baltic Rim>Estonia) and horizontal ( e.g.: Estonia-Finland-Sweden-Russia) coordination;

*Complex and parallel coordination networks (e.g. governmental and nongovernmental, optimally detailed, updated);

*Complex coordinating instruments (e.g. material and moral);

*Complex coordinating principles (e.g. incentives and constraints, bargaining, consultations, updated);

*Complex incentive and restriction mechanisms and consultations;

*Etc.).

3. Most urgent Estonian regulation and harmonization strategies and conceptions

A. The Maastricht inflation criterion amendments

Criterion * consists of economic quantitative component: anchoring of the three best national averages of annual inflation + 1.5 percentage points. Secondly, it includes a qualitative not numerically calibrated component: requirement for the sustainability of prices where the “sustainability” is not rigorously defined and so gives ways for diverse political interpretations and manipulations. This methodological error has to be by Commission immediately corrected.

In addition to that the Commission has rigorously to formalize the definition of the price stability for the case of deflation (crisis period).

But one thing is certain: theoretically in 2009-2010 price instability is high in Estonia and according to extant criterion it is not transparent is it unfulfilled or fulfilled, or what will be the respective probability.

************************************************** *********

* The inflation criterion is formally set out in Article 1 of the Protocol is

Convergence Criteria of the Maastricht Treaty (European Union, 1992b: 29 –

30):

[A] Member State has a price performance that is sustainable and an

average rate of inflation, observed over a period of one year before the

examination, that does not exceed by more than 1 1 / 2 percentage points

that of, at most, the three best performing Member States in terms of

price stability.

B. New member countries tax-systems harmonization should be more rigorous

Matti Vanhanen is absolutely right (FT June 17 “Europe will need to raise taxes in harmony”) claiming:

“We should avoid tax competition and the damage this would cause to Europe’s economic growth.” Understandably this kind of damage comes first of all from incompetent competition instead of rationally coordinated cooperation between the partner countries, as e.g. Prof Krugman has proved.”

It is easy to see that in given case the incompetence that he had in mind comes from Baltic-States, first of all from Estonia (0-profittax). And it seems evident that these countries are not jet mature to design civilized tax systems, at least in the Baltic-Rim advanced Nordic-Counties sense (rational cooperation between countries in the region and avoiding political instability in the country via excessive income inequality etc). Thus it is first of all in the interest New-Member sustainability to introduce, without any delay, a more rigorous taxing harmonization, to save some countries from deepening their socio-economic degeneration.

C. Conceptual suggestions for designing optimal public socio-economic communication mechanism

“This note is discussing implementing mechanism design Conceptions compiled for Optimizing public socio-economic information structures. Proposed for discussion meta-synthesis concept emphasizes compiling methods with the imitation variety of implementations of theoretical models and empirical evolutionary principals of real world mechanisms.

The main idea of the proposed design is to sequentially and adaptively coordinate reasonable learning and private information disclosure of the actors with the help of stimulating their reporting credibility (non-Distorting with sufficient disclosure and transparency) and respectfulness for incoming reports (reasonable learning from credible actors). Incentives and constraint may be heterogeneous: relevant material and moral side-payments etc and consultations and informational constraints.

The main Suggestion is to complement extant respective public reporting coordination mechanisms with more complex instruments, especially moral ones with voluntary and non-governmental monitoring Webs”. (Ennuste 2009).

4. Summary: under-coordination, low quality harmonization and public socio-economic knowledge structure stunt Estonian socio-economic sustainability probabilities from the viewpoint of mechanism design theory

First, Estonia shouldn’t at all in the present hyper-crisis rush to exit from significant fiscal stimulus policies categorically (see also Note (N13)). It is not yet late to ensure a proper sequencing of fiscal expansionary relief instruments, with the goal of preventing further increase of high-unemployment (already about 17%) and soften the likely double-dip recession.

Fourth, the crisis has shown that macroeconomic policy in the Baltic- Rim area needs to be better coordinated regionally, especially when it comes to post-crisis management, e.g. “free” movement of “all kind” of labour, credit, investments, financial obligations, and most importantly to the Baltic-See protection against third-parties contaminating activities etc.

Unfortunately, most of suggested points stand no chance of easy implementation. Adopting these policies would require high competence and quality of political leadership, Estonian leaders according by existing policies lack, and Brussels seemingly prefers by existing policies not to enough notice these local objective shortcomings in the economic mechanisms harmonization and consultation processes.

Notes and Extracts

(1) Nobel Museum 2007: Press Release

“The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2007 jointly to

Leonid Hurwicz
University of Minnesota, MN, USA,

Eric S. Maskin
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA

and

Roger B. Myerson
University of Chicago, IL, USA

“for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory.”

The design of economic institutions

Adam Smith’s classical Metaphor of the invisible hand refers to how the market, under ideal conditions, ensures an efficient allocation of scarce resources. But in practice conditions are usually not ideal, for example, competition is not completely free, consumers are not perfectly informed and privately desirable production and consumption may generate social costs and benefits. Furthermore, many transactions do not take place in open markets but within firms, in bargaining between individuals or interest groups and under a host of other institutional arrangements. How well do different such institutions, or allocation mechanisms, perform? What is the optimal mechanism to reach a certain goal, such as social welfare or private profit? Is government regulation called for, and if so, how is it best designed?

These questions are difficult, particularly since information about individual preferences and available production technologies is usually dispersed among many actors who may use their private information to further their own interests. Mechanism design theory, initiated by Leonid Hurwicz and further developed by Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson, Has greatly enhanced our understanding of the properties of optimal allocation mechanisms in such situations, accounting for individuals’ incentives and private information. The theory allows us to distinguish situations in which markets work well from those in which they do not. It has helped Economists identify efficient trading mechanisms, regulation schemes and voting procedures. Today, mechanism design theory plays a central role in many areas of economics and parts of political science.”

(N2) Ennuste 2003: A Linear Planning Analysis of Institutional

Structure in the Economy

Abstract

The paper uses the paradigms of the New Institutional Economics to

quantify a linear optimal choice model to design perspective

institutional clusters for a national economy. This model uses binary

integer institutional choice variables and structural parameter values

based on subjective probabilities collected from experts by calibration

questionnaires.

The optimisation goal may be e.g. a high expected probability of

stable national economic performance under socio-economic

development-credibility constraints, dependent on the realization of

prospective significant events. The model may be useful as a

complementary tool for the social design of the effective institutional

structure, and especially for evaluation of the socially optimal values

of co-ordinating shadow prices and implementing side-payments in

the political institutional design game.

We use the Estonian case as an example. The model variables

and data calibration table illustrations are provided mainly to

demonstrate the broad spectre of issues that may be involved in this

analysis.

Journal of Economic Literature Classification numbers: B4, D71, E5,

K0, P3, F15.

Keywords: The New Institutional Economics, market design,

comparative institutional analysis, economic sector institutional

design, institutional structures, credibility effects, linear programming,

implementing side-payments, co-ordinating shadow prices,

computational economics, data calibration.

(N3) Skidelsky 2009: “For 30 years or so Keynesianism ruled the roost of economics – and economic policy. Harvard was queen, Chicago was nowhere. But Chicago was merely licking its wounds. In the 1960s it counter-attacked. The new assault was led by Milton Friedman and followed up by a galaxy of clever young disciples. What they did was to reinstate classical theory. Their “proofs” that markets are instantaneously, or nearly instantaneously, self-adjusting to full employment were all the more impressive because now expressed in mathematics. Adaptive Expectations, Rational Expectations, Real Business Cycle Theory, Efficient Financial Market Theory – they all poured off the Chicago assembly line, their inventors awarded Nobel Prizes.

No policymaker understood the maths, but they got the message: markets were good, governments bad. The Keynesians were in retreat. Following Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Keynesian full employment policies were abandoned and markets deregulated. Then along came the almost Great Depression of today and the battle is once more joined.”

(N4) Wickens 2009: “The problem is not with the theory but with its interpretation. Nobody believes that people are rational or that they are identical. These are just simplifying assumptions to make the analysis of complicated economies more tractable.

From time to time economies are hit by large shocks. What we have learnt from the current crisis is that it is crucial to have financial systems that correctly price the risks that these shocks generate, to have appropriate regulatory structures to avoid bank failures and to use the theory to stabilise the macro-economy in the short term.”

(N5) Vanhanen 2009: Europe will need to raise taxes in harmony:

“The global recession is forcing Europe to re-evaluate the co-ordination of economic policy. Surviving the present crisis, ensuring the sustainability of European countries’ public finances and maintaining the continent’s competitiveness will compel us to co-operate more deeply than ever before.

We have to initiate discussions at the European Union level about how to prepare for the post-crisis period. Getting public finances in order is a must if we are to grow, create employment and provide the welfare services that we in Europe value so much.

………………………………………………………………………….

After the recession, we will have to reduce elevated public debt-to-GDP ratios if we are to cope with the expenditure pressures that will come with the ageing of the EU’s population. This will require tight control and, in many countries, painful cuts. However, it would be unrealistic to assume that all the balancing could be done on the spending side alone.

The overall tax rate will have to rise as well over the longer term. In some areas that can be done without much consultation between the countries. ………………………………………………………………………………..

I am not advocating overall tax harmonisation. But I believe that we should follow in taxation the examples of what we did in banking policy and fiscal stimulus last autumn. In both areas, EU member states decided to co-ordinate their policies in important ways. Decisions to provide banks with guarantees and capital injections, and to create national stimulus packages of a certain minimum scale, have proved important in stabilising Europe’s financial system and arresting a free-fall in economic activity.

These measures were not based on the authority of the Union but on the fact that member states considered parallel measures and recommendations to be sensible policy. The same co-ordination will be needed to balance public finances after the recession. It is important that different countries do not find themselves with very different tax solutions. We should avoid tax competition and the damage this would cause to Europe’s economic growth.

……………………………………………………………………………….

EU policy with respect to tax competition is currently based on member states refraining from implementing new tax competition measures and on dismantling old measures perceived to be harmful. These codes of conduct are not legally binding. I do not think this could or should be changed. But member countries could agree, for example, to change the levels of certain taxes in parallel. …”

(N6) Rasmussen 2009: “Sir, Jonathan Russell, chairman of the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, misunderstands the European Union treaties when he attacks proposed EU regulation of private equity funds for allegedly undermining their free movement of capital principle (“Private equity attacks EU plan”, June 27).

The EU’s free movement principles are meant to apply to the European single market, not the world. The forthcoming European directive will indeed introduce a uniform regime to enable the marketing of alternative funds to professionals across the entire European single market.

……………………………………………………………………………..

Business as usual is not an option. We cannot afford financial crises of this kind in future, causing the worst recession since the 1930s. I believe moves towards regulation in the EU and US will lead to a welcome regulatory convergence at global level, which will benefit us all. Private equity executives – who by their own admission pay less tax than their cleaners – have generated moral outrage at their use of offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share. If the UK’s Financial Services Authority has not been able to review the exposure of funds until now, it is because they are located offshore. …”

(N7) Giles 2000: OECD urges rich countries to strive for flexibility

Rich countries should redouble efforts to increase flexibility in labour markets and boost competition even though they are suffering the worst recession since the second world war, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said on Tuesday.

Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, OECD chief economist argued: “More flexible product and labour markets are likely to strengthen country resilience to weather future downturns with less disruption to output and employment.”

But the OECD did not limit itself to its perennial calls for greater economic flexibility in its latest “going for growth” report.

It also identified higher spending on infrastructure, increased spending on training and reduction of personal income taxes for low earners as policies that gave a “double-dividend” of limiting the depth of the recession and boosting longer-term growth prospects.

The list will please the new US administration of Barack Obama since it reflects much of the thinking behind Washington’s stimulus plan.

The OECD also says that recessions have previously proved a good time to introduce reforms because the complacency and inertia of good times is swept away, “even if it is easier to cope with adjustment costs of reform when the economy is strong”.

The main message of the report is that the drive for economic flexibility must continue. Flexible markets for goods and services “will induce producers to cut profit margins”, lower prices will help to support demand”, the OECD argues, and flexible labour markets allow workers to agree to lower wages, which will protect jobs.

The US, the report concludes, has tended to rebound form recessions faster because it has been more flexible even if its original downturn was deeper.

Mr Schmidt-Hebbel insists that “the debacle in financial markets does not call into question the beneficial effects of recommended reforms of product and labour markets in this report”. It urges countries to avoid policies that allow people to lose contact with the world of work.

In the early 1970s, many European countries responded to the recession with early retirement programmes, something the OECD said, “proved to be a failure”.

“Attempts to cut unemployment by reducing labour supply would prove as damaging as in the past and leave our societies poorer; keeping markets open and avoiding new protectionism is key to strengthen prosperity throughout the world,” Mr Schmidt-Hebbel insisted.

The difference between the OECD’s view and those who have praised rigidities – such as professor Paul De Grauwe of the University of Leuven – is that the latter worry that debt remains fixed in a downturn and so flexibility in other prices and wages potentially increases its burden.

The OECD argues that rigidities take their toll on company profits and will end up raising unemployment even higher, in any case exacerbating the problem of debt.

Its solution is to urge compulsory training for those out of work, big spending on infrastructure if it can be introduced quickly and improves the efficiency of the economy, and tax cuts to boost the spending power of low earners when borrowing is constrained.

Separately, the OECD says the gap between underlying US and European economic performance, which opened up in 1995, might have closed, ending an unusual decade where the US appeared streets ahead of Europe in boosting productivity and household incomes.

(N8) “The whiff of contagion” 2009:

“… At one extreme is Russia, which enjoyed huge external surpluses thanks to its wealth of raw materials. But its big companies borrowed lavishly on the strength of that, creating a potential short-term debt problem. Russian corporate borrowers have to pay back around $100 billion this year. At the other extreme lie countries such as Slovakia. They attracted billions from foreign car manufacturers, drawn by a skilled workforce, low taxes and decent roads in the heart of high-cost Europe.

(N9) A. Bank of Estonia:

2. Quarterly economic indicators for Estonia

		08/31/09
				% change comparing to
		Period /as of		previous period	same period of previous year	Source
1.	GDP ¹					SA
1.1.	current prices (EEK mln)	I/2009	52,229.2
1.2.	constant prices (EEK mln)	I/2009	32,773.8	-14.5	-15.1
2.	Industry					SA
2.1.	Volume index of industrial production (at constant prices (2005=100); %)	II/2009		-1.0	-32.5
3.	Investments in fixed assets (at current prices; EEK mln)	I/2009	8465.8	-8.9	-10.2	SA
4.	Construction					SA
4.1.	Construction activities of construction enterprises (at current prices; EEK mln)	II/2009	10135	23.3	-34.7
4.2.	Usable floor area of completed dwellings (thousand m²)	II/2009	84.3	38.9	-28.4
4.3.	Usable floor area of non-residential buildings (thousand m²)	II/2009	269.3	3.6	0.3
5.	Consumption
5.1.	Retail sales volume index (at constant prices, 2005=100; %)	II/2009		11	-14	SA
5.2.	New registration of passenger cars (pieces)	II/2009	5,838.0	27.0	-59.9	ARK
6.	Prices
6.1.	Consumer price index (%)	II/2009		-1.2	-0.3	SA
6.2.	Producer price index (%)	II/2009		-1.3	-0.6	SA
6.3.	Export price index (%)	II/2009		-2.0	-4.5	SA
6.4.	Import price index (%)	II/2009		0.9	-7.0	SA
6.5.	Construction price index (%)	II/2009		-3.9	-8.8	SA
6.6.	Estonian kroon real effective exchange rate index (REER; %)	II/2009		-2.0	1.1	EP
7.	Labour market and wages
7.1.	Employment rate (employed persons/working-age population, %; based on the Labour Force Survey) ²	II/2009	57.0	58.9	63.0	SA
7.2.	Unemployment rate (unemployed/labour force, %; based on the Labour Force Survey) ²	II/2009	13.5	11.4	4.0	SA
7.3.	Registered unemployed	II/2009	64045.7	37	279.2	TK
7.4.	% of workforce ²	II/2009	9.8	7.1	2.6	TK
7.5.	Average monthly gross wages and salaries (EEK)	II/2009	12716	4.7	-4.4	SA
8.	General government budget ³					RM
8.1.	revenue (EEK mln)	IV/2007	25,768.0	1.3	21.6
8.2.	expenditure (EEK mln)	IV/2007	26,887.0	30.0	17.0
8.3.	balance (+/-; EEK mln) ²	IV/2007	-1,119.0	4,759.2	-1,804.7
8.4.	Period’s revenue to the planned annual revenue (%) ²	IV/2007	29.1	28.8	29.5
9.	Transport					SA
9.1.	Carriage of passengers (thousands)	I/2009	47,762.3	-1.0	-3.5
9.2.	Carriage of goods (thousand tons)	I/2009	22526	2	-3.1
10.	Tourism, accommodation					SA
10.1.	Visitors from foreign countries received by Estonian travel agencies (thousands)	I/2009	154.0	-19.5	2.2
10.2.	Visitors sent to foreign tours by Estonian travel agencies (thousands)	I/2009	74.2	-37.4	-43.8
10.3.	Accommodated visitors (thousands)	II/2009	562.4	56.6	-13.3
10.4.	o/w foreign visitors (thousands)	II/2009	379.5	95.6	-9.3
11.	Foreign trade (special trade system)					SA, EP
11.1.	exports (EEK mln)	II/2009	25,167.1	8.0	-27.6
11.2.	imports (EEK mln)	II/2009	27,766.0	1.1	-37.6
11.3.	balance (EEK mln) ²	II/2009	-2,599.0	-4,156.1	-9,765.9
11.4.	Foreign trade balance/exports (%) ²	II/2009	-10.3	-17.8	-28.1
12.	Balance of payments ²					EP
12.1.	Current account balance (EEK mln)	I/2009	-1.5	-3,038.2	-9,670.0
12.2.	Current account balance to GDP (%)	I/2009	0.0	-5.0	-16.4
12.3.	Foreign direct investment inflow (EEK mln)	I/2009	2,617.8	3,783.7	9,139.4
12.4.	Foreign direct investment outflow (EEK mln)	I/2009	-1,841.5	-1,901.8	-4,734.3
13.	International investment position (at end-period)					EP
13.1.	Net international investment position (EEK mln)	I/2009	-189,359.1	0.4	0.0
13.2.	Direct investment in Estonia (EEK mln)	I/2009	177,389.7	0.1	-4.7
13.3.	Net external debt (EEK mln)	I/2009	287,905.1	-3.3	1.7
13.4.	o/w government (EEK mln)	I/2009	9,527.3	24.2	12.9
14.	EEK/USD average quarterly exchange rate	II/2009	11.5	-4.2	14.9	EP

¹ Preliminary estimation of the GDP growth has been calculated according to the new methodology. Whereas, Statistics Estonia previously calculated the GDP growth at the constant prices of fixed year 2000, since 2008 the growth is calculated by chain-linking method in which the year preceding the accounting period is applied as a base year.
² Instead of changes comparing to previous periods, absolute figures for the periods are shown by this indicator.
³ Net borrowing is not included here.

Source:
SA – Statistical Office of Estonia
ARK – Motor Vehicle Registration Centre
EP – Eesti Pank /Bank of Estonia
TK – Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund
RM – Ministry of Finance
EKI – Estonian Institute of Economic Research

Financial assets and liabilities*

EEK mln

		03/31/09
		S.1	S.11	S.12	S.13	S.14	S.15	S.2
		Total	Nonfinancial corporations	Financial corporations	General government	House- holds	NPISHs	Rest of the world
AF.A	Financial assets	1,134,488.5	411,641.7	506,565.1	86,018.6	127,700.7	2,562.4	449,828.3
AF.1	Monetary gold and SDRs	90.4		90.4
AF.2	Currency and deposits	200,735.7	54,566.0	71,080.2	10,230.5	62,409.3	2,449.7	144,950.8
AF.3	Securities other than shares	75,468.3	5,007.2	54,854.4	14,991.7	610.1	4.9	24,802.4
AF.4	Loans	424,462.7	100,187.8	321,389.1	2,756.1	129.7	−	92,047.3
AF.5	Shares and other equity	248,470.8	111,404.6	51,019.5	45,584.5	40,403.2	59.0	159,231.8
AF.6	Insurance technical reserves	19,795.4	1,987.6	−	−	17,807.8	−	170.3
AF.7	Other accounts receivable/payable	165,465.2	138,488.5	8,131.5	12,455.8	6,340.6	48.8	28,625.7
AF.L	Financial liabilities	1,326,709.2	659,096.2	506,849.5	26,925.1	128,915.9	4,922.5	257,517.2
AF.2	Currency and deposits	306,422.5		306,422.5				39,264.0
AF.3	Securities other than shares	33,179.5	13,287.7	15,715.7	3,935.4	238.7	2.0	67,091.2
AF.4	Loans	464,356.1	255,816.1	68,992.0	9,651.6	125,445.7	4,450.7	52,153.9
AF.5	Shares and other equity	343,577.8	256,133.8	87,079.1	−	−	364.9	64,124.8
AF.6	Insurance technical reserves	19,965.7		19,965.7				−
AF.7	Other accounts receivable/payable	159,207.6	133,858.6	8,674.5	13,338.1	3,231.5	104.9	34,883.3
BF.90	Net financial assets	-192,220.7	-247,454.5	-284.4	59,093.5	-1,215.2	-2,360.1	192,311.1

* After additional information is received, data of the earlier periods have been updated accordingly.

The Economist poll of forecasters, September averages

Sep 10th 2009
From The Economist print edition

(N10) Pope Benedict XVI’s “Caritas in Veritate”: It is Man’s Selfish Use of Markets, Globalization That Is The Problem

Sirico points out that Pope Benedict doesn’t condemn markets, globalization – but rather man’s selfish uses of these instruments.

Caritas in Veritate by Pope Benedict XVI

Democrats Link Pope’s ‘Economic Justice’ Plea With Obama Agenda

The market is rather shaped by culture. “Economy and finance . . . can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends.

(N11) Samuel Bowles and Sung-Ha Hwang 2008:

„Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable allocations that would be unattainable by incentives that appeal solely to self-interest. But experimental and other evidence indicates that conventional economic incentives and social preferences may be either complements or substitutes, explicit incentives crowding in or crowding out social preferences. We investigate the design of optimal incentives to contribute to a public good under these effects would make either more or less use of explicit incentives, by comparison to a naive planner who assumes they are absent.“

(N12) Bezemer 2009: Understanding Financial Crisis Through

Accounting Models

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Table 1: Anticipations of the Housing Crisis and Recession

Analyst Capacity Forecast

Dean Baker, US co-director, Center for

Economic and Policy

Research

“ …plunging housing investment will likely push the economy into

recession.” (2006)

Wynne Godley, US Distinguished Scholar,

Levy Economics

Institute of Bard

College

“The small slowdown in the rate at which US household debt levels are

rising resulting form the house price decline, will immediately lead to

a …sustained growth recession … before 2010”. (2006). “Unemployment

[will] start to rise significantly and does not come down again.” (2007)

Fred Harrison, UK Economic

commentator

“The next property market tipping point is due at end of 2007 or early

2008 …The only way prices can be brought back to affordable levels is a

slump or recession” (2005).

Michael Hudson, US professor, University

of Missouri

“Debt deflation will shrink the “real” economy, drive down real wages, and

push our debt-ridden economy into Japan-style stagnation or worse.”

(2006)

Eric Janszen, US investor and iTulip

commentator

“The US will enter a recession within years” (2006). “US stock markets are

likely to begin in 2008 to experience a “Debt Deflation Bear Market”

(2007)

Stephen Keen, Australia associate professor,

University of Western

Sydney

“Long before we manage to reverse the current rise in debt, the economy

will be in a recession. On current data, we may already be in one.” (2006)

Jakob Brøchner Madsen

Jens Kjaer Sorensen,

Denmark

professor

graduate student,

Copenhagen

University

“We are seeing large bubbles and if they bust, there is no backup. The

outlook is very bad” (2005)” The bursting of this housing bubble will have

a severe impact on the world economy and may even result in a recession”

(2006).

Kurt Richebächer, US private consultant and

investment newsletter

writer

“The new housing bubble – together with the bond and stock bubbles – will

invariably implode in the foreseeable future, plunging the U.S. economy

into a protracted, deep recession” (2001). “A recession and bear market in

asset prices are inevitable for the U.S. economy… All remaining questions

pertain solely to speed, depth and duration of the economy’s downturn.”

(2006)

Nouriel Roubini, US professor, New York

University

“Real home prices are likely to fall at least 30% over the next 3

years“(2005). “By itself this house price slump is enough to trigger a US

recession.” (2006)

Peter Schiff , US stock broker,

investment adviser

and commentator

“[t]he United States economy is like the Titanic …I see a real financial

crisis coming for the United States.” (2006). “There will be an economic

collapse” (2007).

Robert Shiller , US professor, Yale

University

“There is significant risk of a very bad period, with rising default and

foreclosures, serious trouble in financial markets, and a possible recession

sooner than most of us expected.” (2006)

Note: for sources and more detail, please refer to the Appendix.

(N13) Balanced budget vs. Tax smoothing in a small open economy: A welfare comparison

Constantine Angyridis

A b s t r a c t

The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of lending and borrowing constraints on the dynamics of public debt and optimal taxation policy in the context of a general equilibrium model with tax smoothing. The results from the numerical simulation of the model show significant welfare gains, provided that the policymaker is allowed to borrow and lend in order to smooth taxes across time instead of maintaining a balanced budget at all times. Moreover, for a specific process for asset prices, it is also shown that if the government can issue state-contingent debt then overall welfare can be further improved substantially.

(2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserve).

(N14) Flat tax reform: The Baltics 2000–2007

Helmuts Azacis and Max Gillman

A b s t r a c t

The paper presents an endogenous growth economy with a representation of the tax rate system in the Baltic countries. Assuming that government spending is a given fraction of output, the paper shows how a flat tax system balanced between labor and corporate tax rates can be second best optimal. It then computes how actual Baltic tax reforms from 2000 to 2007 affect the growth rate and welfare, including transition dynamics. Comparing the actual reform effects to hypothetical tax experiments, it results that equal flat tax rates on personal and corporate income would have increased welfare in all three Baltic countries by more than the actual reforms. Experiments show that movement towards a more equal balance between labor and capital tax rates, through changing just one tax rate, achieve almost as high or higher utility gains as in actual law for all three countries.

(N17) Sapir, A. (Ed). 2009 Sept. Europe’s economic

priorities 2010-2015. Memos to the new Commission. Bruegle.

(p25)

e) A blueprint for recovery in the new member

states and euro-area enlargement

Several of the new member states have been hit

very hard by the crisis and you should be prepared

for the unexpected. It is to be hoped – but it is by no

means certain – that the intensity of the crisis will

have abated somewhat and instead of managing

further crises you will be able to concentrate on

supporting the recovery. But even on this

optimistic assumption your task will not be an easy

one. There is a clear risk that the successful growth

model that allowed rapid catching-up in the region

will not survive the crisis and that some of the new

member states will experience relative stagnation.

You should therefore assess the obstacles to

growth and propose a blueprint for recovery in the

new member states.

An issue of major importance in this respect is euro

membership. The euro area members, the ECB and

the Commission have argued so far that euro entry

should be decided country-by-country on the basis

of the criteria set out in the early 1990s for the

formation of monetary union in 1999. But this

makes less and less sense. First, the country-bycountry

approach ignores regional spillovers. As

Slovakia has experienced, a country’s fate in the

euro area depends to a great extent on the

bruegel memos to the new commission 2009 25

monetary strategy of its competitors. Second, the

criteria made little sense in normal times but they

have now become wholly inappropriate. When two

criteria designed to be mutually consistent –

inflation and deficits – convey opposing messages,

it is likely to be because there is a problem with the

criteria.

So your economic brief is clear: you should break

with the formalistic approach and make an

economic assessment of the costs and benefits of

euro membership on the basis of both the

immediate benefits of joining and the longer-term

sustainability issues, and taking into account the

regional dimension. You should assess at what

exchange-rate level potential members should join

and what should be the preconditions, including in

some cases as regards the restructuring of private

hard-currency debts. This assessment should be

discussed with candidates and euro-area members

and serve as a basis for a renewed euro-area

enlargement strategy. To countries wishing to join

the euro, a path to membership should be offered,

with clear, economically meaningful benchmarks

instead of a-temporal, nowadays largely irrelevant

criteria. Countries preferring to postpone euro entry

should be free to do so. Looking beyond the EU

borders, monetary cooperation should be offered to

neighbouring countries.

To restore some economic logic to a process where

a legalistic approach has been allowed to dominate

(in large part because it offered a convenient

excuse for procrastination) will not be easy. But

you should remind everyone that the criteria for

joining the euro were introduced in order to ensure

that economic logic prevails over political logic, not

that legal logic prevails over economic logic.

References

Azacis, H. and Gillman, M. 2009. Flat tax reform: The Baltics 2000–2007.- Journal of Macroeconomics (in press).

Bezemer, D. 2009a. „No One Saw This Coming”: Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models. Groningen University.

Bezemer, D. 2009 b. Why some economists could see the crisis coming. FT September 7 2009.

Bowles, S. and Sung-Ha Hwang, S.H. 2008. Social preferences and public economics: Mechanism design when social preferences depend on incentives.- Journal of Public Economics, 1811-20.

Ennuste, Ü., Kein, A. and Rajasalu, T. 2002. Institutional Determinants of Convergence: Conceptual Framework AND Empirical Studies of Australian Socioeconomic INSTITUTIONAL HARMONIZATION AND CONVERGENCE WITH THE EU. CERGE-EI GDN No program project. 34. (http://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/gdn/RRCII_34_paper_01.pdf).

Ennuste, Ü. and Rajasalu, T. 2002. Critical Probability of the EU Eastern Enlargement Project’s Institutional Failure: Aspects of Calibrated Economic Impacts of the Failure. In: Monitoring Preparations of Transition Countries for EU-Accession. 4th International Conference October 4-6, 2002 in Pärnu, Estonia, The Institute for European Studies, Tallinn, 212-227.

Ennuste, Ü. 2003. A Linear Planning Analysis of Institutional

Structure in the Economy.

Ennuste, Ü. 2007th Dual-Market Transition in Estonia 1987-2006: Institutional Mechanism Analysis Approach. In: “HISTORICAL EUROPE AFTER ENLARGEMENT. The Proceedings of 5^th Audentes Spring Conference, May. 28 2007, Tallinn, 60-126. (http://www.ies.ee/iesp/No3/).

Ennuste, Ü. 2008th http://uloennuste.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/synthetic-conceptions-of-implementing-mechanisms-design-for-public-socio-economic-information-structure-illustrative-estonian-examples/).

Ennuste, Ü. 2009. Towards Synthetic Design of Communication Mechanisms Implementing Socio-Economic Structures and Public Information. – In spe: Amsterdam, 2009 Conference EAEPE Nov 7, 10:00:

_____________________________________________

Research area C Room: E0.07

Chair: Paolo Ramazzotti

Stam: Designing institutions for dynamic efficiency

Jacquinet: The problem of order and economic regulation

Happy: The role of technology in institutional reproduction of capitalism

Ennuste: Towards synthetic design of implementing socio-economic communication mechanisms.______________________________________________

Friedman, M. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. University of Chicago Press.

Giles, C. 2009. OECD urges rich countries to strive for flexibility. The Economist, March 3 2009.

Kukk, K. 2005. Economic Losses. In:”The White Book” (Ed. Vello Salo), Tallinn, 125-5, http://www.riigikogu.ee/public/Riigikogu/TheWhiteBook.pdf

North, D. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press.

Ott, A. F. and Ennuste, U. 1996. Anxiety as a Consequence of liberalization: an Analysis of Opinion Surveys in Estonia. – Social Science Journal, 33, 2, 149-164.

Pryor, F. 2005: Market Economic Systems. – Journal of Comparative

Economics, 33, 1, 25-46.

Phelps, E. 2006. Macroeconomics for a Modern Economy. Prize Lecture.

Nobel Museum.

Ramazzotti, P. 2005. Knowledge and Macro-Coordination. Google.

Rosser, J. 2007. The Rise and Fall of Catastrophe Theory Applications in

Economics: Was the Baby Thrown out with the Bathwater? –Journal

of Economic Dynamics & Control, 31, 3255-80.

Rothstein, B. 2009. Preventing Markets from Self-Destruction: The Quality of Government Factor. Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Working Paper Series 2009:2, ISSN 1653-8919, http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13184594

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. 2007. Mechanism Design Theory.

Stockholm.

Sapir, A. (Ed). 2009 Sept. Europe’s economic

priorities 2010-2015. Memos to the new Commission. Bruegle.

Schweitzer, U. 2005. Law and Economics of Obligations. – International

Review of Law and Economics, 25, 2, 209-228.

Serrano, R. and R. Vohra. 2001. Some Limitations of Virtual Bayesian

Implementation. – Econometrica, 69, 785-792.

Vanberg, V. 2005. Markets and States: The Perspective of Constitutional

Political Economy. – Journal of Institutional Economy, 1, 23-49

Walker, David. Guidelines for Disclosure and Transparency in Private

Equity (20 Nov 2007), http://walkerworkinggroup.com/?section=10366 .

Wallis, J. 2006. Evaluating Economic Theories of NPOs: a Case Study New

Directions for Socio-Economics – The Journal of Socio-Economics,

35, 959-979.

Rasmussen, P. 2009. “Sustainable growth requires greater regulation” Letter to the Editor of the FT July 2 2009.

Skidelsky, R. 2009. Economists clash on shifting sands. FT June 9 2009.

Vanhanen, M. 2009. Europe will need to raise taxes in harmony. FT June 17 2009.

“The whiff of contagion”. 2009. The Economist. Feb 26^th 2009.

Wickens, M. 2009. Interpretation is wrong, not theory. FT July 23 2009.

September 14, 2009 Posted by Ülo Ennuste | Uncategorized | | 1 Comment

Konspekt

Eesti majandussüsteemi ELiga integreerumislõpu aegse endogeense majandus-poliitilise kriisi kronoloogiast: institutsionaal-ökonoomiline konspekt ja moraal

22.VIII 09

Moodsa poliitökonoomika järgi on sotsiaal-majandusliku eduka jätkusuutlikkuse seisukohalt kvaliteetne majandusmudel ehk institutsionaalne struktuur olulisem isegi kui reaalmajandusliku struktuuri kvaliteet (nt läbimurdetöö North, D. 1990 ja Eesti kohta esimene sellealane rakendusuurimus – Ennuste 1997).

Seda eriti ühte suurimasse tsiviliseeritud majandusliitu integreeruva millimajanduse puhul (vt nt Ennuste, Ü., Kein, A. and Rajasalu, T. 2002). Seega Eesti integreerimisel ELiga on oluline eristada majandus-institutsionaalset harmoniseerimist ning reaal-majanduslikku konvergentsi. Esimest nendest võiks lugeda põhiliselt lõppenuks siirdega euro-alale (oluliseks sabaks jääks veel maksusüsteemi harmoniseerimine – vt allpool) ja teises osas Eesti majandustaseme oluline lähendamine Põhjalaga (praegu ca kolmekordne vahe).

Seejuures tuleb silmas pidada, et institutsionaalne evolutsioon on põhiliselt endogeenne poliitiline protsess (institutsioone jõustatakse sisemaiselt seadusandlikult ja sõltub seega suuresti poliitikute makro-ökonoomilisest kompetentsist). Reaalmajanduslik konvergents aga edeneb suuresti väliskaubanduse, tehnoloogilise difusiooni, välisinvesteeringute vms kaudu ja seega sõltub eeskätt majandusjuhtide mikroökonoomilisest ratsionaalsusest.

Oluline on märkida, et kui institutsionaalse adapteerimise makro-ökonoomiline peaeesmärk Keynes-Friedman’i tsiviliseeritud tõlgenduse vaimus on eeskätt üsna abstraktne värk: jätkusuutlik stag-flatsiooni vältimine (inflatsiooni-jõnksudeta stabiilse täishõivega pikaajaline areng majandusliku ebavõrdsuse kahanemisega), kusjuures turumajanduslikud mikrokriteeriumid on intuitiivselt palju selgemini mõistetavad ja konkreetsed à la „osta odavalt – müü kallilt“. Seejuures rahvusliku majandussüsteemi adapteerimisel tuleb arvestada meie idiosünkraatiatega nagu nt praegune räige etniline eksogeenselt tingitud irredentistlik lõhestatus (vt nt Ott ja Ennuste 1996), ligi triljon krooni majanduslikke kaotusi (ka institutsioonilisi) viimases okupatsioonis (vt nt Kukk 2005) – seega tingimusi mis jäävad kindlasti välja turumajanduslikest teooriatest.

Kahjuks on inimintellekti intuitsiooni evolutsioon maha jäänud abstraktsete teooriate (nagu moodne matemaatiline institutsionaalne makro-ökonoomika ehk mehhanismide teooria, ka kompleksarvude teooria jne) arengust, ja õnnetuseks on ilmselt seetõttu meil sageli juhtunud et ebakompetentselt makroökonoomiliste probleemide lahendamine ning endogeensete kriisidega-tagasilöökidega seotud konarlik institutsionaalne harmoniseerimine toimub poliitikute poolt kergeminimõistetavate barbaarsete turumajanduslike dogmade alusel (vt nt Ennuste 2007).

Institutsioonilise harmoniseerimise kriisi ilminguid: valitud mudeli jätkusuutmatus

Esimene olulisem pahaendeline tagasilöök Eesti-ELi majandus-institutsionaalses harmoniseerimises ilmnes 2004. Seda Eesti poolt äpardunult ELi suhkruturuga liitumise nn puhverseaduse jõustamisel: ilmselt meie poolt suhkruturu siiret reguleeriva seaduse disainimisel lähtuti ebakompetentselt mikro-ökonoomilistest kriteeriumidest mis intuitiivselt lihtsalt arusaadavad (eeskätt: osta suhkrut odavalt – müü kallilt) ning Brüsseliga koordineerimisvaeguses. Lisaks Eesti Valitsuse poolt moonutatud informatsiooni edastamisega laovarude tegeliku seisu kohta, ilmselt mitte teades, et EL Komisjonil on rahvusvahelise kaubandusstatistika kaudu täpsem informatsioon kui seda meie ametnikud kasutavad.

Järgmiseks juba fataalsemaks apsuks sai 2005 lõpus Eesti Valitsuse ja Keskpanga poolt varjatult ning vassimise- ja hämamispoliitikaga (vt EP avalikkusele suunatud publikatsioone 2005. lõpust nt Sõrg TTUWPE ja Kaasik ÄPis) valitud strateegia uhkeldavalt Maastricht’i inflatsioonikriteeriumist möödahiilimiseks: tulenevalt ilmselt jälle ebakompetentsest/populismist kalkuleeritud kaalutlusest, et Eesti kui särava ning uhkeldava täiesti „eripärase“ Balti transitsiooni „tähe“ jaoks võimaldatakse Brüsseli poolt nagunii kriteeriumi lõdvendatud erandeid (veel 2006 Valitsus esines ELi keskustes avaldustega, et inflatsioonikriteerium tuleb meie jaoks ümber teha). Sellest lähtuvalt võeti valitsuse poolt võimul püsimiseks järsult kindel suund populistlikule majanduslikult jätkusuutmatule inflatsioonilisele ja rahaillusioonilisele eelarvepoliitikale.

See vastutustundetu poliitika nurjas aga Eesti euro-alale pääsu paraku 1. Jaanuaril 2007 (Sloveenia ja Slovakkia siis liitusid ning nende masud on siiani kordades leebemad Eesti omast) ning lükkas ilmselt selle perioodi 2012 – 2015 või umbes nii (NB nt 2009 on Eestil duaalse inflatsioonikriteeriumi nn hindade stabiilsuskomponendi täitmise võimalus enam kui küsitav, sest THI langus on üle kümne protsendipunkti, seega jätkusuutlikkuselt ligemale 3-4 korda viletsam võrreldes paremate hinnastabiilsusega liikmesriikidega, muide, tarbijahinna indeks ei sisalda nt elamispinna turuhinna tõusu-langust, seega tegelik inflatsioonikõikumine või tänavu ulatuda 15 protsendipunktini, vt ka Lisa A). Samuti tekitas see poliitika endogeense finantskriisi inflatsioonilise laenamishulluse ärgitamisega välisvaluutas ning Eesti viimisega rahvusliku netovõlgnevuse alal euroliidus esiridadesse (vt ELi Komisjoni viimaseid prognoose kus ka liikmesriikide netovõlgade voogude prognoosid ja statistika, erinevalt meie ametkondade prognoosidest kus Eesti rahvuslike võlgade ning rahvusvahelise investeerimispositsiooni kriisilistele näitudele ei pöörata mingit tähelepanu).

2008 kevad pani olulise punkti harmoniseerimiskriisile ja teadvustumisele: seose sellega et kehtiv 0-kasumimaksu seadus tekitas Komisjonis küsitavusi kõlvatu maksukonkurentsi kohta, kehtestati Riigikogu poolt selle seaduse täiesti ebakompetentne parandus kasumite „avansiliseks maksustamiseks“, mis õnneks mingi ime läbi sügisel kuulutati kehtetuks, enne selle jõustumist. Parandus oli sisuliselt hoopiski kasumite järelmaksustamist taotlev ja Seletuskirja kohaselt oleks maksude ajalise edasinihutamisega kantinud lähematel aastatel riigieelarvest välja miljardeid kroone, seda kingituseks eeskätt hargmaistele pankadele, seda lisaks miljarditele kroonidele kasumitele mida äriühingud maksustamata Eestist välja on kantinud ja edasi kandivad seoses 0-kasumimaksu seaduse aukudele – tekitades nii eelarve tulude vähenemist kui ka sisemaiste investeeringute vähenemist, rahvusvahelise investeerimispositsiooni taandumist, rahvatulu osakaalu vähenemist sisemajanduslikust toodangust, sõnaga, oma võttest enda selili panemist. Muide, Soomes kehtib seadus, et nt tütar-äriühing ei tohi emafirma aktsiaid osta, et vältida kasumite maksustamata väljakantimist vähemalt selle trikiga.

Reaalmajandusliku struktuuri kvaliteedi jätkusuutmatuse süvenemine

Eeskätt endogeensest institutsionaal- ja kompetentsikriisist ning avaliku sotsiaalmajandusliku teadmusstruktuuri populistlikust risustamisest tingitud reaalmajandusliku kriisi esimesed kindlad signaalid saabusid enne globaalset finantskriisi Eestisse sellega, et 2007 teisel poolel eksport hakkas reaalselt langema (ELi statistika alusel, mitte meie oma alusel). Eeskätt konkurentsivõime alanes seoses meie suhteliselt kõvasti kõrgema inflatsiooniga kui meie partnerriikides (seda ilma toodete-teenuste kvaliteedi tõusuta). Ka seda signaali püüti meil täiendava vassimise ja hämamisega avalikkuse eest kõige kõrgemalt tasemelt varjata, à la „eksport on meil tugev”, „vaadake kui hea on meie positsioon PPSis ehk ostujõu hindades“ , „vaadake kuidas meie hõive ei lange“ vms. Seejuures ise ilmselt aru saamata et PPS ei ole hind vaid lokaal-deflaator ehk kurss (ELi poliitmugavuseks elimineerib eeskätt lokaalsed toodangu-teenuste kvaliteedierinevused võrreldes majandusliidu keskmise tasemega), taipamata et hõive langus järgneb mõningase hilinemisega ja et selleks tuleb aegsasti ette valmistama asuda.

Reaalmajandusliku kriisi süvenemisel seoses globaalse kriisiga 2008 valiti meil selle leevendamiseks Valitsuse poolt kõige mugavam strateegia – eeskätt eelarvelised kärped – samal ajal kui arenenud riigid läksid üldiselt eelarvelise ekspansiooni ehk majandust toetavate finantspakete teele ja käibemaksude alandamise teele, ning see tee on, nt Saksamaal ja Prantsusmaal, tänaseks juba mõningast leevendust toonud. Seda teed soovitasid nii IMF kui ka EL Komisjon.

Ilmselt meie eelarvelise kärbete arhitektid (sh kolm professorit) oma makroökonoomilises ebakompetentsuses (sest see ei ole olnud nende kompetentsiala) kiiruga ei saanud aru, et kärbete tee on nõiaringi minek. Nimelt eelarvekärped toovad kaasa sisemaise nõudluse languse ja seega täiendava töötuse tõusu ning seega võimendavad maksulaekumiste langust ning seega nõuavad edaspidi järjest täiendavad kärped jne, ning suurendades töötust ja vähendades rahvuslikku majanduspotentsiaali ning seega tekitades täiendavaid eelarvelisi kulutusi jne. Ilmselt ei saada siiani aru kogu kõrge töötuse probleemi tõsidusest: nt ei teata ka et kuipalju tööjõudu on pagenud välismaale, kui palju on hõive langusega seoses langenud SKT potentsiaal, kui palju rahvuslikke kasumeid (maksustamata) investeeritakse välismaale, kui palju töötuse tõus on parajasti suurendanud majandusliku ebavõrdsust jne.

Seda fataalset fiskaalpoliitilist viga – mitte püüda leida täiendavaid eelarvelaekumise allikaid, eeskätt institutsioonilisi (nt normaalse kasumimaksu taastamist, üldiselt regresseeruva tulumaksu reformist progresseeruvaks (seejuures Põhiseaduse vastaste konfiskeerivate varamaksude (nt eramumaa maks) kehtetuks kuulutamist), valitsusobligatsioonide emissiooni vms), ning mitte leida sealjuures lahendeid hõive/majanduspotentsiaali languse leevendamiseks (nt kasvõi negatiivse tulumaksu stiilis palgamaksudega, stiilis kõrgete sotsiaalmaksude ümbermängimist kapitalitulude maksudeks vms).

Kõike seda ebakompetentsust püüti ja püütakse edasi varjata hämaga, et meile ainuke pääsetee reaalkriisist on korrektsioon tööturu kaudu, ehk teiste sõnadega, majanduse reaalstruktuuri kaasajastamine loova destruktsiooni abil: vallandame võimalikult palju väheperspektiivsetest harudest ja siis installeerime uued innovaatilised harud, kuhu töötute armee ümber kolib. Kui kolib, sest vahepealne majandusliku ebavõrdsuse barbaarne tõus suure töötuse tõttu hävitab tohutult inimkapitali, moraalist rääkimata. Püütakse valusat hõiveprobleemi hajutada asendusprobleemide aruteludega nagu „kas euro tuleb meile“, kas vanemahüvitist tõsta või mitte (kuigi tõstmiseks raha ei ole), kuidas rohkem välisinvesteeringuid siia meelitada töökohti looma (kuigi praegu ei ole selleks isegi mingit vajadust, sest paljud töökohad on tühjad), et millal välisturud rahunevad, et siis me hakkame jälle eksportima (ELi põhiturg Saksamaa ongi juba rahunenud, ja arvestades et Eesti majandus moodustab ELi turust mingi tuhandiku murdosa, siis sellise nišikese peaks ikka küll leidma, et kuhu meie vähene eksport suunata – kui see ikka kvaliteetne on ja nõudlust leiab).

Moraal

Teravale tööturu, institutsionaalsele (eriti maksuseaduste alal eeskätt kapitalitulude vaegmaksustamisel ning kogu süsteemi regressiivsusel), finants- ning reaalkriisile (eriti konkurentsi alal), on meil praeguseks lisandunud terav avaliku sotsiaal-majandusliku teaberuumi ning kommunikatsiooni kriis. Eeskätt selle struktuuri populistliku risustamise ning sellest struktuuris oluliste aukudega eeskätt sotsiaal-majanduslike arengu oluliste kriteeriumide mõistmise osas. Kõik see edaspidi madaldab ilmselt veelgi rohkem meie juba niigi madalat makroökonoomilist pädevust ja seega majanduspoliitikate kvaliteeti, kui midagi ette ei võeta. Kahjuks on ka praegune teadusrahastamise süsteem selline et ülikoolid ei ole absoluutselt huvitatud makroökonoomilistes teadusuuringutest, praktiliselt meie ülikoolides Eesti rahvusliku majandussüsteemi alased keskused puuduvad.

Meie avaliku teaberuumi risustamise alalt üks markantne näide: avalikkusele on juba raudselt pähe tambitud uskumus: „majandus on tsükliline (regulaarsuse mõistes), valitsus ei saa midagi teha, iga majandus kukub ükskord auku“ (moodsa poliit-ökonoomika seisukohalt moodne rahvuslik majandus on reguleeritav (sic!), küll korrapäratu protsess (langus- ja tõusufaasidega), teatavasti ka kvaliteetne börs ei ole tsükliline, tõsi, majandust mõjutavad poliitilised tsüklid ja äritsüklid, päikese tsüklid, kuid sedagi oluliselt korrapäratult, nt Jaapan ei ole juba tosin aastat kuskile olulisse auku kukkunud, küll kukkus oodatult Island suures rahvusvahelise panganduse ebakompetentsuses.

Teaberuumi aukudest näiteid: puuduvad arusaamad majandusliku ebavõrdsuse vähendamise olulisusest, sotsiaal- ja inimkapitali arendamisest, viimast eriti poliitikute hulgas (nt lahtiste valimisnimekirjade institutsiooni abil saaks ehk vähemalt piisava osa asjatundjate suunamine esindusorganitesse vms); ka kohati aastaid hilinev makroökonoomiline statistika on lünk avalikus teabes.

Muide, avaliku teaberuumi kvaliteedi praegune madal tase on otseselt seotud ka EP seaduse mulluse parandusega Riigikogus, et paanikat tekitada võivat EP informatsiooni mitte avalikustada ja mille juhist kiiresti ka teised ametkonnad on üle võtma asunud – nt statistika aastaraamat 2009 annab vaesuse kohta 2006 näidud, kuigi 2007 on olulises osas Eurostat’is ammu olemas) ei anna võimalusi avalikkuse kompetentsetel esindajatel valitsusväliselt kodanikualgatuse korras kriisiprobleemides kaasa rääkida, seda eriti institutsionaalsete mudelite konstruktiivse disaini alal. Õigemini mängib kodanikualgatused selles osas auti, seda eriti, arvestades sotsiaal-majanduslik-poliitiliste kompleksprobleemide keerukust ning nende sageli kontra-intuitiivset olemust (nt ka kõrge kompetentsiga valitsusvälistes ringkondades ei olda meil siiani teadlikud sellest, et kas näiteks on meie valitsusel tagataskus mingi salakokkulepe, et Eesti tänavusele hindade jätkusuutmatusele/ebastabiilsusele pannakse Brüsselis vähemalt üks silm kinni, või siis ei olda teadlikud et kontraintuitiivselt on selgunud, et elanikkonna vananemisega tsiviliseeritud ühiskondade majanduslik jätkusuutlikkus võib tõusta).

Kokkuvõttes jääb mõtlevale avalikkusele, praeguse avaliku informatsiooni kvaliteedi juures, osaks ainult Riigilt suuremat kompetentsi ja vastutustunnet nõuda, ausust ning moonutamata teabe küllaldast ning selget ja kiiret avalikustamist, patukahetsust ning uhkeldamise lõpetamist, ja nõuda võimuritelt vähemalt meile lähedaste evolutsiooniliste heaolumajanduslike analoogide institutsionaalset ning poliitikate asjatundlikku matkimist, seda viimast meie majanduse idiosünkraatiaid arvestades (nt paratamatu erakordse etnilise lõhestatuse institutsiooniga arvestamist, seega erilist ettevaatust majandusliku ebavõrdsuse poliitikas vms). Sõnaga, kriisist väljarabelemise esmaseks institutsiooniliseks meetmeks peab saama avaliku sotsiaal-majandusliku teadmusruumi ja kommunikatsiooni kvaliteedi tõstmiseks vajalike efektiivsete mehhanismide seadustamine (vt Lisa B).

Muide, ongi koomiline, et kui keegi kodaniku-algatuslikult juhtub meie räigeid majanduspoliitilisi ebakohti avalikkuses markeerima, siis üldiselt meie kõrgeltmakstud-telgitagustest hästiinformeeritud rahvaesindajate ja kõrg-ametimeeste tüüpvalvevastuseks on: „teie, kulla tavapensionär, parem kasutage võimalust vait olla ja oma suukene kinni pidada kuni teil ei ole nt Valitsusele inflatsiooni talitsemise probleemidele lahendusi konkreetselt välja töötatud“ (muide, tegelikust elust).

Siit huvitav küsimus igas meie kaliibris majandusekspertidele: et nt kui teie räägite et kiireks euro-alale pääsemiseks on vaja veel kõvasti pingutada, eelarvet veel täiendavalt kärpida, siis märkige juurde, et kui palju kümneid tuhandeid töötuid need kärped täiendavalt juurde toovad, ning mis veelgi tähtsam, et kuidas neid kiiresti taashõivata ja mida see maksma läheb. Ja mis veelgi tähtsam, moodsa majandusteaduse järgi tulevad taolised kalkulatsioonid teha intelligentselt – tõenäosusteoreetiliselt, riske arvestades, mitte väga väärtuslikku riskiinformatsiooni prügikorvi visates (vastavad arvutusnäidised on olemas nt Ennuste ja Rajasalu 2002).

Seega: kriisist rahvuslikult väljarabelemiseks püüdkem eeskätt saada makroökonoomiliselt kompetentsilt (vähemalt mitte ärimajandusteooriat ja avaliku majanduse teooriat segamini ajada) ning ka majandusmudelilt eeskätt põhjalaste sarnaseks ning majanduspoliitikates ja toimingutes mitteuhkeldavateks teadmus-pädevateks sotsiaal-majanduslikult hästikoordineeritud (Friedman’i tees) täishõivatud eestlasteks. Nende püüdluste monitooringuks oleks tõesti mõttekas kodanikualgatuslike võrgustike loomine (vt nt Ennuste 2008).

Lisa A

Maastrichti inflatsioonikriteerium on duaalne poliitilis-majanduslik kompleks

See* koosneb majanduslik-kvantitatiivsest osisest: kolme parima hinnastabiilsusega liikmesriigi aastakeskmise inflatsiooni keskmine + 1,5 protsendipunkti. Teiseks sisaldab poliitilis-kvalitatiivset (kriteeriumi definitsioonis mittekvantifitseeritavat osist): hindade jätkusuutlikkuse nõuet.

Esimese osisega eriti suuri arusaamise probleeme ei saa tekkida. Kui siis ainult niipalju, et kas deflatsioon kuulub ikka stabiilse/jätkusuutliku mõiste alla (teoreetiliselt vist mitte, kuid siis ei peaks suure tõenäosusega ka Eesti kuuluma 2010 hindamisele kvalifitseeruvate liikmesriikide hulka, sest suure tõenäosusega 2009-10 on Eesti aastakeskmiselt negatiivse inflatsiooniga).

Kuid üks asi on kindel: kas Eesti 2010 rahuldab hindade stabiilsuse kriteeriumi osist („Member State has a price performance that is sustainable“) – see jääb kriteeriumi praeguse definitsiooni puhul täielikult (majandus)poliitiliseks mängumaaks EL Komisjoni ja Eesti Valitsuse vahel, eriti arvestades praegust turbulentset olukorda.

Seega, kui Eesti Valitsus tõsiselt kavatseb teha mingeid otsuseid euro-alale pääsemise kiiruse üle, siis peab Eesti Valitsus taipama, et praeguses turbulentses majandusolukorras, on eelnevalt vaja Komisjonilt välja nõuda valem „hindade jätkusuutlikkuse“ arvutamiseks/hindamiseks, sest arvestades olukorra turbulentsi, ei pruugi Komisjon arvestada oma eelnenud lahendeid kui eeskujusid.

Märkus

1) Teoreetiliselt on Eestil inflatsioonikriteeriumi kompleksne täitmine 2009 väga suure riskiga lootus, väga väikse tõenäosusega sündmus: sellele viitavad ka nii EL kui ka IMF senised vastavad prognoosid, mis annavad meile üle kolme protsendiseid aastakeskmisi inflatsiooninäite ühelt poolt, ja ka The Economisti siiani deflatsioonilised hoiatused teiselt poolt.

2) Arvestades, et ka nn defitsiidikriteeriumi täitmine on suure riskiga, siis sellel baasil jätta „euro saabumise lootuses“ praeguse poliitika kohaselt töötus (eelarvekärbete jätkumisel) endiselt vabalangemisse koos sellega kaasneda võiva sotsiaalse katastroofiga, selles lootuses, et mitte segada Maastrichti kriteeriumite iseeneselikku täitumist, on majandusteaduslikult äärmine valitsusepoolne vastutustundetus/asjatundmatus.

3) Iseasi oleks, kui Valitsuse poliitika oleks ratsionaalne: defitsiidi leevendamine fiskaalse ekspansiooni teel (tulumaksusüsteemi progressiivistamine&obligatsiooniemissioon vms sest Maastrichti kriteeriumi järgi on Valitsusel küllaldaselt ruumi nt Valitsusvõla ratsionaalseks (sisemaiseks) suurendamiseks; ning kui inflatsiooni talitsemiseks oleks samuti valitud mingi ratsionaalsem tee. nt käibemaksude alandamine.

***********************************************************

*The inflation criterion is formally set out in Article 1 of the Protocol on

Convergence Criteria of the Maastricht Treaty (European Union, 1992b:29-

30):

[A] Member State has a price performance that is sustainable and an

average rate of inflation, observed over a period of one year before the

examination, that does not exceed by more than 1 1/2 percentage points

that of, at most, the three best performing Member States in terms of

price stability.

Lisa B

Meie Põhiseaduse üks lõik on kirjas järgmiselt:

“§ 45. Igaühel on õigus vabalt levitada ideid, arvamusi, veendumusi ja muud informatsiooni sõnas, trükis, pildis või muul viisil. Seda õigust võib seadus piirata avaliku korra, kõlbluse, teiste inimeste õiguste ja vabaduste, tervise, au ning hea nime kaitseks. Seadus võib seda õigust piirata ka riigi ja kohalike omavalitsuste teenistujatel neile ameti tõttu teatavaks saanud riigi- või ärisaladuse või konfidentsiaalsena saadud informatsiooni ning teiste inimeste perekonna- ja eraelu kaitseks, samuti õigusemõistmise huvides.

Tsensuuri ei ole.”

Kas pole see lõik natuke ebaselgelt, lünklikult ja mitmeti tõlgendatavalt kirja pandud? Kas ei näi, et kui teises lauses mainitud mingit piiravat seadust mingi juhu kohta ei ole jõustatud, et siis on igaühel õigus karistamatult levitada avalikkusele selle juhu kohta mistahes avalikkusele olulisi teateid või sõnumeid – olgu need nii moonutatud, valed või laimavad kuitahes?

Nt levitatakse meie avalikkusele sihikindlalt meie riiklust nõrgendavaid valesid/väärveendumusi stiilis, et „1940-91 NSVLi inimvaenulikku okupatsiooni fakti Eestis ei olnud“, et 1940 toimus pelgalt „enamlik pööre Eesti poliitiku ja riigimehe Hendrik Alliku juhtimisel“ (TEA Ents I 2008), et karistamatult võib avalikkuses laimata nt Pätsi, Laidoneri ja seega Eesti riiki, räigelt solvates eesti rahvast jne . Tõepooles on Kaplinskil selle alusel õigus põhjendatult väita: “selle valgel tundub meie iseseisvus üllatavalt nõrk“, eriti kui mõelda, et momendil justkui tahetakse Põhiseaduse mõningate sätete segasusi maha vaikida ning püüda neid õiendada keeleseaduse abil?

Kas ei ole ka selles paragrahvi üks puudus veel selles, et puudub säte tsiviliseeritud riigi jätkusuutliku säilimise ühe olulise tingimuse unustamise kohtakohta: igaühel on kohustus avalikkusele olulist tõepärast teavet piisavalt ning viivitamatult avalikustada? Isegi siis, kui see kahjustab mõningate võimurite huvisid? Kas mitte selles viimases ei olnud ka paavst Benedictus XVI hiljutise sõnumi tuum, seda eriti masust kiiremaks väljarühkimiseks ning seega inimnäolise kapitalistliku sotsiaalse turumajanduse süsteemi arendamiseks? Tõepoolest, isegi meie praeguse masu suhteliselt suuremat sügavust Eestis võib hüpoteetiliselt pidada osaliselt meie üli-partokraatlike valimiseelsete propagandakampaaniate poolt vastutustundedult levitatud moonutatud sotsiaal-majandusliku väärteabe tagajärjeks (Ennuste 2008).

Kas poleks otstarbekam enne keeleseaduse paranduste kehtestamist hoopiski seda Põhiseaduse paragrahvi ümber formuleerida sisukamaks/kvaliteetsemaks kasvõi nt nii:

“§ 45. Igaühel on õigus karistamatult levitada moonutamata teavet, arvamusi ja veendumusi, mis sisult ja vormilt ei riiva avalikku korda ja kõlblust ning teiste inimeste õigusi, tervist ning au ja millede levitamine ka ei ole vastavate seadustega piiratud. Igaühel on kohustus piisavalt ja viivitamatult avalikustada rahvuslikult olulist tõepärast informatsiooni.”

Taolisi küsitavusi tekitab ka „Avaliku teabe seadus“ (vastu võetud 15. 11. 2000):

1) Näib eriti et avalikku ruumi on selles põhjendamatult käsitletud ainult kitsamas tähenduses ehk ametiasutuste ruumina

2) Näib et väljastatavate andmete õigsuse eest vastutuskohustuste määratlemine on selles seaduses üsna puudulik .

3) Kas ei vääriks selle seaduse parandamiseks tähelepanu uurimus (Ennuste 2009), kus näiteks järgmine sünopsis:

“This note is discussing compiled implementing mechanism design conceptions for optimizing public socio-economic information structures. Proposed for discussion meta-synthesis concept emphasizes compiling methods with the imitation of variety of theoretical implementation models and principals of real world evolutionary empirical mechanisms.

The main idea of the proposed design is to sequentially and adaptively coordinate reasonable learning and private information disclosure of the actors with the help of stimulating their reporting credibility (non-distorting with sufficient disclosure and transparency) and respectfulness for incoming reports (reasonable learning from credible actors). Incentives and constraint may be heterogeneous: relevant material and moral side-payments and consultations and informational constraints etc.

Viiteid

Ennuste, Ü., Kein, A. and Rajasalu, T. 2002. INSTITUTIONAL DETERMINANTS OF CONVERGENCE: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS AND EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF ESTONIAN INSTITUTIONAL HARMONISATION AND SOCIOECONOMIC CONVERGENCE WITH THE EU. CERGE-EI GDN program project No. 34. (http://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/gdn/RRCII_34_paper_01.pdf).

Ennuste, Ü. 1997. ESTONIAN ECONOMIC MANAGERS AND POLITICIANS EVALUATE INSTITUTION BUILDING AS AN INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY. PHARE ACE P95-2234-R aruanne, projekti juht G. Hodgson, avaldatud esmalt 1997 University of Cambridge’i preprindis ja 1999 Eestis: Ülo Ennuste. 1999. ESTONIAN ECONOMIC MANAGERS AND POLITICIANS EVALUATE INSTITUTION BUILDING AS AN INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY. In: Ülo Ennuste and Lisa Wilder (eds), HARMONIZATION WITH THE WESTERN ECONOMICS: Estonian Developments and Related Conceptual and Methodological Frameworks, Tallinn, 138-147.

Ennuste, Ü, Rajasalu, T. 2002. Critical Probability of the EU Eastern Enlargement Project’s Institutional Failure: Aspects of Calibrated Economic Impacts of the Failure. In: Monitoring Preparations of Transition Countries for EU-Accession. 4th International Conference 4-6 October, 2002 Pärnu, Estonia, The Institute for European Studies, Tallinn, 212-227.

Ennuste, Ü. 2007. Dual Market-Transition in Estonia 1987-2006: Institutional Mechanism Analysis Approach. In: “EUROPE AFTER HISTORICAL ENLARGEMENT”. The Proceedings of 5^th Audentes Spring Conference, Apr. 28 2007, Tallinn, 60-126. (http://www.ies.ee/iesp/No3/).

Ennuste, Ü. 2008. http://uloennuste.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/synthetic-conceptions-of-implementing-mechanisms-design-for-public-socio-economic-information-structure-illustrative-estonian-examples/).

Ennuste, Ü. 2009. Towards Synthetic Design of Implementing Socio-Economic Communication Mechanisms and Public Information Structures. – In spe: Amsterdam, EAEPE 2009 Conference Nov 6, 10:00:

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Research area C Room: E0.07

Chair: Paolo Ramazzotti

Stam: Designing institutions for dynamic efficiency

Jacquinet: The problem of order and economic regulation

Ozel: The role of technology in institutional reproduction of capitalism

Ennuste: Towards synthetic design of implementing socio-economic communication mechanisms___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kukk, K. 2005. Majanduskahjud. Kogumikus “Valge raamat”(peatoim Vello Salo), Tallinn, 125-5.

North, D. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press.

Ott, A. F. and Ennuste, U. 1996. Anxiety as a Consequence of Liberalization: an Analysis of Opinion Surveys in Estonia. – Social Science Journal, 33, 2, 149-164.

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PS: Tänan Aksel Kirch’i mitmete märkuste eest eelmisele versioonile.

August 20, 2009 Posted by Ülo Ennuste | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

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