Il libro che segnaliamo è opera fondamentale per la comprensione dei rapporti che intercorrono tra reddito e disuguaglianza, tra degrado ambientale e reddito pro-capite.
Le curve di Kuznets
Gli Autori sottopongono ad approfondita disamina critica il significato e la tenuta delle argomentazioni sintetizzate nelle curve di Kuznets. La curva base (Kuznets Curve – “KC”) descrive la relazione empirica tra reddito pro-capite e disuguaglianza del reddito con una rappresentazione a U rovesciata: la disuguaglianza è dapprima crescente e poi decrescente all’aumentare del reddito pro-capite. “The theoretical plausibility of the Kuznets hypothesis is based on the structural characteristic of development. The latter typically entails a progressive concentration of population in urban centers where the distribution of income and economic opportunities is generally more unequal than in rural areas( …). Nonetheless, the same process creates a ‘growing pressure of political and legal decisions affecting higher-level incomes’ (Kuznets, 1955, p. 9) which manifests itself in increasingly effective redistribution measures such as progressive income taxation“. Gli Autori sottolineano che se questa relazione avesse validità generale, il processo di globalizzazione sarebbe sostenibile dal punto di vista sociale, almeno nel lungo periodo. L’ipotesi avanzata da Kuznets – “very popular during the 1970s when it was taken as one of the very few empirical regularities of the economy (… Robinson, 1976) -trovava supporto nella riduzione della disuguaglianza tra le due guerre mondiali e nel periodo di Bretton Woods. Ma gli studi successivi hanno messo in discussione la robustezza empirica della curva (KC) in presenza di nuovi dati che hanno evidenziato un diffuso incremento della disuguaglianza, in un contesto di sviluppo economico ancor più rapido ed esteso, con la conseguente svalorizzazione della tenuta generale della ipotesi formulata da Kuznets.
Il libro esamina poi le tematiche connesse con un’altra regolarità empirica, relativa all’ambiente (Environmental Kuznets Curve – “EKC”), che riassume le relazioni tra il reddito pro-capite e il degrado ambientale. Il dibattito si è concentrato principalmente sulla domanda se l’evidenza disponibile avvalori, o meno, l’esistenza di una curva a U rovesciata, con un degrado ambientale prima crescente e poi decrescente con lo sviluppo del reddito pro-capite. Gli studi empirici più recenti individuano seri limiti di validità della curva di Kuznets ambientale (EKC). Secondo gli Autori, bisogna seguire un approccio diverso, imperniato sulle interrelazioni tra intensità del degrado ambientale, crescita del reddito pro-capite e crescita demografica: “In order to use the EKC for constructive purposes (…) we have to relax the constraints of its narrow specification and reformulate it as a more general relationship that clarifies the logical link between the three dependent variables appearing in the Kuznets literature (…). We suggest to call it the ‘environmental Kuznets relation’ (EKR)”. Gli Autori pervengono alla formulazione della seguente tesi: i) il degrado ambientale non aumenta se e solo se la riduzione dell’intensità del degrado permette di controbilanciare l’effetto negativo della crescita del reddito pro-capite e della crescita demografica; ii) una riduzione della pressione demografica e/o della intensità del degrado ambientale orienta la situazione in una direzione più coerente con la sostenibilità dello sviluppo.
I limiti dei mercati reali
Il libro contiene spunti di riflessione estremamente interessanti, di grande attualità, concernenti i limiti dei mercati reali. Gli Autori ricordano come i grandi protagonisti del “classical liberalism” (Smith, Ricardo, Mill) abbiano evidenziato le virtù dei mercati liberi ma non abbiano sottovalutato i loro limiti. Muovendo dalle argomentazioni di Adam Smith comunemente riferite alla mano invisibile (“invisible hand“) gli Autori sottolineano quanto segue: “In Smith, in fact, as in most other classical economists, the exaltation of this ‘providential’ role of the market was never disjoint from a lucid awareness of its shortcomings. This is the reason why the liberalism of classical economists, or ‘classical liberalism’ as we call it here, did not deny an important economic role for the state. The invisible-hand argument implies only that the interference of the state in the economy should be considered an exception, not the rule, and that any violation of this rule should be thoroughly justified in each single case”. Vengono poi ricordati gli argomenti sui limiti dei mercati formulati nell’ambito delle analisi e delle riflessioni di quello che gli Autori definiscono “updated liberalism” che vede, come fondamentali, i contributi di Pigou e Keynes.
“Pigou developed a few seminal contributions of Marshall where he introduced the concepts of external economies and consumer welfare in order to provide sound foundations for ‘welfare economics’ (1920). In particular, he generalized the Marshallian concept of externalities, i.e. costs or benefits not registered by unfettered markets, showing that they are ubiquitous and bring about sizeable distortions of the market allocation. He provided then new microeconomic foundations to public intervention in the economy finalized to the ‘internalization’ of externalities. This clarified the rationale of state intervention prescribed by classical liberalism, such as defense, security, education, and extended the scope of public intervention to new sectors such as environmental economics. The new branch of economic analysis called ‘welfare economics’“.
Keynes”argued that the market is unable to auto-regulate itself in such a way to assure the full employment of existing resources, bringing about a huge waste of social welfare. This new limit of the market justified a further extension of the scope of public intervention into the field of macroeconomic policy in order to assure full employment. (…). Keynes was aware that it could be contended that ‘the central controls necessary to ensure full employment will… involve a large extension of the traditional functions of government’ but he stressed that ‘there will still remain a wide field for the exercise of private initiative and responsibility’ (…). In his opinion, however, this does not imply a reduction of individual liberty for at least two reasons (…):
i) Structural unemployment is redefined by Keynes as involuntary unemployment, i.e. as a restriction of the set of options available to individuals. Therefore, its removal through state intervention is meant to enlarge the liberty of individuals. (…)
ii) In any case, this macroscopic but circumscribed enlargement of the functions of government advocated by Keynes is considered by him ‘as the only practicable means of avoiding the destruction of existing economic forms in their entirety and as the condition of the successful functioning of individual initiative’ (…). In other words Keynes considered full employment macroeconomic policy as a necessary condition for preserving market capitalism and economic freedom.”
Il libro contiene importanti riflessioni sul tema continuità/discontinuità tra Keynes e il “classical liberalism“. “The point of view maintained in this book (…) inclines to the opinion that there is a basic continuity between classical liberalism and updated liberalism, since both recognized the existence of insurmountable limits to the markets and stressed the need to define the areas where the interference of the state in the economy is preferable or necessary. The updated liberalism defined better, and extended to some extent, the scope of state intervention on the basis of the advances in economic theory, but it did not change the basic approach: the market should rule the economy unless there are serious reasons, grounded in scientific theory, to call for state intervention.”
Liberal dilemma
Molto significativi sono i passi del saggio contenenti cenni al “liberal dilemma”. “In order to ‘filter’ the positive potentialities of globalization from its disruptive ‘side effects’, we have first of all to find the right balance between the main sources of economic power in order to minimize the economic failures originating from their weaknesses and misbehavior. This issue raises a dilemma. We defined as development the process of expansion of economic freedom. Globalization may contribute to development in this sense only by choosing a policy strategy consistent with individual freedom. At first sight this strategy should coincide with “laissez-faire” as any intervention of the state seems to interfere with free initiative, i.e. the exercise of individual freedom. The latter, however, may be limited not only by the state but also from other individuals and private organizations. In order to avoid these restrictions to individual liberty it seems convenient to resort to the state, notwithstanding all the risks of substituting the public restrictions of individual liberty for the private restrictions. This is what we call the “liberal dilemma”.
Nel concludere il ragionamento Vercelli e Borghesi, con un approccio estremamente attento alle tutele delle opportunità individuali e delle chances di vita dei singoli, così concludono: “A serious analysis of what we have here called the liberal dilemma would require another book. We end this one by observing that we may exploit the opportunities offered by globalization for expanding the economic liberty of people around the world only by strengthening effective democracy, not only political democracy but also corporate democracy”.
Ambiente, sviluppo sostenibile e “equal opportunities“
La lettura del libro continua a suscitare grande interesse quando sono affrontate direttamente le questioni ambientali e le relative ricadute sulle tutele e le chances di vita individuali. Si parte dalle definizioni di sviluppo sostenibile: “We will adopt, as is customary, the now-famous definition introduced in 1987 by the so-called ‘Brundtland Report’: ‘Development is sustainable if it satisfies present-day needs without compromising the capacity of future generations to satisfy their needs’ (…). We will adopt the convention of calling this prerequisite of sustainability as the environmental condition, given that the real freedom of future generations will depend to a large degree on the state of the natural environment they inherit“. Chiara ed immediata appare la relazione tra libertà sostanziale degli individui e contesto ambientale di riferimento: “sustainable development should be interpreted in its broadest sense as development that gives ‘equal opportunities’ to all generations“. Chiara ed immediata appare la relazione tra i valori fondanti delle nostre “società aperte” e lo sviluppo sostenibile: “The two conditions of sustainable development that we have just defined are founded on ethical principles of equity, freedom, and equal opportunities, which are not necessarily in contrast with more prosaic, yet vital, economic objectivies. Equal access to all the basic economic opportunities is, after all, a fundamental condition of efficiency“.
Quanto sopra riporta alla mente una importante riflessione dell’economista statunitense Hyman Minsky: “Nessuna economia, regolata o meno che sia, è in grado di perpetuarsi restando libera, se essa non viene considerata equa e tendente a promuovere la giustizia sociale” (H.P. Minsky, Keynes e l’instabilità del capitalismo, Bollati Boringhieri, pag. 215).
Risulta evidente una oggettiva vicinanza del libro ad alcune importanti riflessioni effettuate nel tempo dal pensiero liberale più evoluto con riferimento alla tutela e allo sviluppo delle chances di vita individuali e alla necessità di assicurare nel tempo eguaglianza di opportunità per gli individui con una continua attenzione alle libertà politiche e sostanziali ed un continuo impegno per assicurare una effettiva tutela degli individui (“effective democracy“, come viene efficacemente definita dai nostri Autori): tale impegno si impone non solo per ragioni “filosofico-politiche” ma anche per finalità di efficienza economica e di sviluppo della produttività complessiva del sistema.
Appendix
Una ultima lode al libro si riferisce alla Appendix, dal titolo “The Meanings of ‘Economic Liberalism’: A Conceptual Clarification“. Questa parte del volume contiene una magistrale sintesi delle fondamentali tesi del Liberalismo economico (“Classical and updated liberalism”) e delle profonde differenze tra classical and updated liberalism e il “neoliberismo” di Hayek e Von Mises. Vale riportare ampi brani della Appendix in argomento:
“All the varieties of economic liberalism share the following proposition, although it is expressed in different versions and argued with different degree of sophistication:
1. Invisible hand postulate. A perfect-competition market allocates the resources between alternative uses in the best possible way by coordinating the decisions of self-interested rational agents in such a way to maximize their welfare.
More controversial are the following propositions:
2. Limits to the invisible hand. Even an ideal model of perfect completion has strict limits in its power of coordinating the decisions of economic agents. In particular, it cannot solve the distributive problems, in the sense that the distribution of income, wealth and resources does not necessarily correspond to a given standard (ethical or of other nature). In addition the uniqueness of equilibrium and its stability are not granted (…).
3. Existence of a market gap. Between real markets and the ideal perfect-competition market there is a significant discrepancy, here called ‘market gap’, that is quite relevant for economic theory and economic policy. (…) markets are incomplete, and characterized by externalities, transaction costs, asymmetric information, and other intrinsic shortcomings.
4. Foundations of liberal policies. The ultimate rationale of liberal economic policies may be seen in the progressive reduction of the market gap. In order to provide general foundations to them we have thus to assume that, in principle, there is a monotonous correlation between the size of the market gap and the losses of social welfare brought about by this gap. This postulate is not made explicit but is logically necessary to justify the validity of liberal policies.
5. Limits to liberal policies. In principle, there are serious limits in the reduction of the gap between real markets and the ideal perfect-competitions market. (…) markets cannot be altogether completed, externalities cannot be completely internalized, transaction costs may be reduced but not fully eliminated, information may become less asymmetric but not fully homogeneous, and so on. (…).
(…) Classical and updated liberalism accept the five propositions above. (…) the updated liberalisms is characterized by different economic foundations, a different rhetoric orientated to define the limits of the market rather than its superior virtues, and a cautious and motivated extension of the role of the State to new fields.
If, from the logical point of views of this appendix, we compare classical and updated liberalism with neoliberalism we see a sharp distinction (…). Neoliberalism, in fact, accepts proposition 1, 3 and 4 but, differently from both classical liberalism and updated liberalism, does not accept or plays down propositions 2 on the limits of the invisible hand, and 5 on the limits of liberal policies.”
Conclusioni
Desideriamo concludere questa presentazione augurando alla versione inglese del volume dei Professori Vercelli e Borghesi la più ampia diffusione tra tutti coloro che sono interessati ad approfondire le grandi tematiche di teoria economica, le cruciali questioni di sostenibilità dello sviluppo e le problematiche connesse alle politiche di contrasto nei confronti dei ricorrenti fenomeni di instabilità economica e finanziaria: interventi di così alto livello intellettuale forniscono un importante contributo alla difesa delle chances di vita individuali, alla tutela della nostra “Terra-Patria” (per usare una espressione di Edgar Morin), e, in ultima analisi, alla salvaguardia dei fondamenti delle nostre società aperte.