Acemoglu, Daron, Robinson, James.
Thomas J. Sargent’s Nobel Prize lecture, “United States Then, Europe Now,” draws an important parallel between the United States – the Articles of Confederation of 1781 and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788 – and Europe today. In both cases, polities were joined in a currency union under the tutelage of a weak central government, without the power to tax and conduct fiscal policy, and with all the free-rider problems that this creates. Sargent takes the reader through a tour of some basic dynamic general (macro-) equilibrium modeling, emphasizing the importance of the government’s budget constraint — even the government’s debt has to be paid and that determines the value of its bonds.
Πηγή: whynationsfail.com