The Misesian, vol. 2, no. 3, 2025

2025-02-19

Renowned Keynesian polymath, Woody Brock, in a presentation given at the ADC Forum in 2012, advocated for government investment in profitable private sector infrastructure projects in order to generate income with which to combat rising deficits. Basing his arguments on Arrow and Kurz’s Public Investment, the Rate of Return, and Optimal Fiscal Policy (1970), he argued the following:We need a new investment bank with investors from around the world, with analysts paid two to three million a year to keep them non-corrupt, who do nothing but evaluate different [infrastructure projects].… These objective people using the Arrow-Kurz calculus will compute that [the rate of return on project A] is -4[ percent]. It will be posted worldwide. [Project B] has a rate of return of 16%. [It] will get