A first formal approach to animal spirits beyond uncertainty

Gerasimos Soldatos and Erotokritos Varelas

European Journal of Government and Economics, 2015, vol. 4, issue 2, 104-117

Abstract: Standard Macroeconomics treats animal spirits as a source of uncertainty disturbing otherwise rational expectations. But, Keynesian animal spirits ensue from suboptimal emotional responses to socioeconomic status change beyond matters of uncertainty. This paper identifies such spirits with the disturbance from the optimal decision-making implied by an emotional well-being utility function. The introduction of a policy-maker, holding its own view of private welfare in a society of emotional individuals, generates by itself, i.e. in the absence of animal spirits, uniform business fluctuations. This is the result of the income redistribution needed to reconcile the policy-maker’s with the emotional individual’s view of private welfare. Consequently, if animal-spirits induced fluctuations are already present when a policy-maker is introduced in the economy, the aim of policy intervention should be the design of that income redistribution that would not aggravate the business cycle but that would end up in uniform only cycles, with the aid perhaps of discretionary interest rate policy. Nevertheless, if animal spirits do not exist when the policy-maker enters the system, the income-redistribution induced cycles may incite such spirits by themselves in which case the cycles will not be of the uniform type. All comes down to “income and emotion”, to an ageless and ecumenical fact of life, complicated purposefully or not by authority.

Keywords: Animal spirits; Emotions; Socioeconomic status; Individual vs. social perception of private welfare; Business cycles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 E32 E43 H11 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ejge.org/index.php/ejge/article/download/80/56 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:egr:ejge00:v:4:i:2:p:104-117

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Government and Economics is currently edited by Jose Manuel Sanchez Santos

More articles in European Journal of Government and Economics from Europa Grande
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Europa Grande ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).