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on Post Keynesian Economics |
| By: | Sau, Lino (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | Joseph Schumpeter and Hyman Minsky have devoloped, during their lives, both a theory of the business cycles and a theory of capitalist development. Minsky was influenced by Schumpeter during the period he spent at Harvard University in 1942 and he thought that Schumpeter vision of the capitalist process required an integration of financial markets and investment behaviour: roughtly speaking, Minsky’s financial keynesianism was what Schumpeter needed to complete his own theory of the devoloping of a capitalist economy. Minsky explored an even broader historical framework during the last decade of his life: the theory of capitalist development along the idea that there are many types of capitalism. As pointed out by Whalen (2001) to analyse each stage of capitalist development following Minsky’s perspective, one should ask what is the distinctive activity being financed, what is the pivotal source of financing, and what is the balance of economic power between those in business and in banking/finance activity. Capitalist development is shaped by the institutional structure, but this structure is always evolving in response to profit-seeking activity. The financial system takes on special importance in this theory not only because finance exerts a strong influence on business activity but also because this system is particularly prone to innovation. In this paper, I shall focus particularly on this analysis trying to up-date his taxonomy, taking into account the process of global financialisation, and comparing it with Schumpeter’s previous scrutinity on the evolution of capitalism. |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uto:dipeco:201923&r=all |
| By: | Luká? Augustin Máslo (University of Economics, Prague) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, the author summarizes key arguments in a discussion of two post-Keynesian economists, Paul Davidson and Rod O?Donnell, about the nature of uncertainty in economics. The author focuses on a controversy about necessity/unnecessity to supply a proof of ergodicity/non-ergodicity of economic processes. The author draws a conclusion that O?Donnell perceives the difference between probabilistic and non-probabilistic uncertainty as quantitative rather than qualitative in opposition to Davidson who perceives this difference as qualitative. In a controversy about necessity/unnecessity, the author sides with O?Donnell and supports O?Donnell?s argumentation by pointing to baselessness of the burden-of-proof argument, as long as both parties of the controversy have an interest in finding the truth. |
| Keywords: | ergodicity, uncertainty, probability |
| JEL: | B41 D80 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:9512190&r=all |
| By: | al-Gharbi, Musa (Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | Often described as an outcome, inequality is better understood as a social process -- a function of how institutions are structured and reproduced, and the ways people act and interact within them across time. Racialized inequality persists because it is enacted moment to moment, context to context -- and it can be ended should those who currently perpetuate it commit themselves to playing a different role instead. This essay makes three core contributions: first, it highlights a disturbing parity between the people who are most rhetorically committed to ending racialized inequality and those who are most responsible for its persistence. Next, it explores the origin of this paradox – how it is that ostensibly antiracist intentions are transmuted into ‘benevolently racist’ actions. Finally, it presents an alternative approach to mitigating racialized inequality, one which more effectively challenges the self-oriented and extractive logics undergirding systemic racism: rather than expropriating blame to others, or else adopting introspective and psychologized approaches to fundamentally social problems, those sincerely committed to antiracism can take concrete steps in the real world – actions which require no legislation or coercion of naysayers, just a willingness to personally make sacrifices for the sake of racial justice. |
| Date: | 2019–06–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:wd54z&r=all |
| By: | Lambert, Thomas |
| Abstract: | Throughout history, the performance, practices and ethics of bankers and banking in general have received mixed reviews in both popular and scholarly writings. Early writings by philosophers, clerics, and scribes played a crucial role in the perceptions of banking and banking occupations. Thomas Aquinas’s thoughts and writings were greatly influenced by the Romans’ and Aristotle’s opinions on usury and the charging of interest, and Aquinas was in a position to have his opinions implemented in policy and practice. Marx noted how banking and credit were used to expand the production and sales of a capitalistic economy beyond certain limits, although his focus was mostly on credit extended to businesses. At the same time, he wrote about how the credit system could lead to economic crises as well as to the concentration and centralization of capital. While lending is motivated by profit, and while households are not coerced into borrowing money, the justice of a system which exploits workers and at the same time encourages them to borrow money in order to maintain a certain standard of living can be viewed as unfair and immoral. The value of goods, according to Aquinas and Marx, should mostly reflect the value of labor embodied in them, and for that reason, labor should be compensated fully for its work. For these reasons, Aquinas and Marxian economists offer somewhat similar views on both the labor theory of value as well as on the morality of certain banking practices. If credit and the banking system also bring about crisis and the greater concentration and centralization of capital, then the morality of these outcomes also needs to be examined. |
| Keywords: | banking, exploitation, usury, Aquinas, Marx |
| JEL: | B11 B51 N20 |
| Date: | 2019–12–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:97741&r=all |
| By: | Palma, J. G. |
| Abstract: | This is a two-part paper. Part 1 addresses the diversity in the distribution of disposable income across the world; and Part 2, that in market income (i.e., before taxes and transferences). There are many underlying questions to these phenomena: does the diversity of inequality in disposable incomes reflect a variety of fundamentals, or a multiplicity of power structures and choice? Is rising market inequality the product of somehow ‘exogenous’ factors (e.g., r>g), or of complex interactions between political settlements and market failures? If the latter, how do we get through the veils obscuring these interactions and distorting our vision of the often self-constructed nature of inequality? Has neoliberal globalisation broadened the scope for “distributional failures” by, for example, triggering a process of “reverse catching-up” among OECD countries, so that now highly unequal middle-income countries like those in Latin America embody the shape of things to come? If so, are we are all now converging towards features such as mobile élites creaming off the rewards of economic growth, and ‘magic realist’ politics that lack self-respect if not originality? (Should I say, ‘Welcome to the Third World’?) In Part 1 I also develop a new approach for examining and measuring inequality (distance from distributive targets). In turn, Part 2 concentrates on three issues: why there has been such a deterioration of market inequality among countries of the OECD, why this has led to a growing asymmetry between their distributions of market and of disposable incomes, and why inequality seems to move in "waves". The main conclusion is that to understand current distributive dynamics what matters is to comprehend the forces determining the share of the rich — and, in terms of growth, what they choose to do with it (and how they are allowed do it). |
| Keywords: | income distribution, inequality, ideology, reverse catching-up, institutional persistence, neo-liberalism, new left, poverty, Latin America, Southern Africa, US, Western and Eastern Europe, emerging Asia, Palma ratio and sectors |
| JEL: | D31 E11 E22 E24 E25 I32 J31 N16 N30 N36 O50 P16 |
| Date: | 2019–12–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:1999&r=all |
| By: | Palma, J. G. |
| Abstract: | This is a two-part paper. Part 1 addresses the diversity in the distribution of disposable income across the world; and Part 2, that in market income (i.e., before taxes and transferences). There are many underlying questions to these phenomena: does the diversity of inequality in disposable incomes reflect a variety of fundamentals, or a multiplicity of power structures and choice? Is rising market inequality the product of somehow ‘exogenous’ factors (e.g., r>g), or of complex interactions between political settlements and market failures? If the latter, how do we get through the veils obscuring these interactions and distorting our vision of the often self-constructed nature of inequality? Has neoliberal globalisation broadened the scope for “distributional failures” by, for example, triggering a process of “reverse catching-up” among OECD countries, so that now highly unequal middle-income countries like those in Latin America embody the shape of things to come? If so, are we are all now converging towards features such as mobile élites creaming off the rewards of economic growth, and ‘magic realist’ politics that lack self-respect if not originality? (Should I say, ‘Welcome to the Third World’?) In Part 1 I also develop a new approach for examining and measuring inequality (distance from distributive targets). In turn, Part 2 concentrates on three issues: why there has been such a deterioration of market inequality among countries of the OECD, why this has led to a growing asymmetry between their distributions of market and of disposable incomes, and why inequality seems to move in "waves". The main conclusion is that to understand current distributive dynamics what matters is to comprehend the forces determining the share of the rich — and, in terms of growth, what they choose to do with it (and how they are allowed do it). |
| Keywords: | income distribution, inequality, ideology, reverse catching-up, institutional persistence, neo-liberalism, new left, poverty, Latin America, Southern Africa, US, Western and Eastern Europe, emerging Asia, Palma ratio and sectors |
| JEL: | D31 E11 E22 E24 E25 I32 J31 N16 N30 N36 O50 P16 |
| Date: | 2019–12–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:19100&r=all |
| By: | Servaas Storm (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands); Jeronim Capaldo (Tufts University) |
| Abstract: | Labor market regulation is a controversial area of public policy in both developed and developing countries. Mainstream economic analysis traditionally portrays legal interventions providing for minimum wages, unemployment insurance and (often only a modicum of) employment protection as `luxuries` developing countries cannot afford. After decades of de-regulatory advice, international financial institutions have recently come to a less extreme position. But any such concessions to labor regulation are based on concerns for social stability or for short-term support to aggregate demand, while regulation continues to be viewed as harmful to economic efficiency in the long run. In this paper we take a deeper look at the impact of labor institutions on economic development in two ways. First, we propose a macroeconomic model of a balance-of-payments constrained `small` developing country open to trade and foreign capital. This helps us clarify the importance of a dynamic view of economic efficiency, as opposed to the static view embedded in mainstream policy advice. Secondly, we discuss the political economy of labor regulation. We argue that labor institutions promote economic development through positive effects on aggregate demand, labor productivity and technology. |
| Keywords: | Labor regulation, labor cost, balance-of-payments constrained growth, labor income share. |
| JEL: | F43 F63 F66 O4 J3 J8 |
| Date: | 2018–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:thk:wpaper:76&r=all |
| By: | Quaas, Friedrun |
| Abstract: | In recent years, the Austrian School of Economics (NASE) has decisively expanded its ideological sphere of influence with the help of neoliberal think tanks. At the same time it explicitly cultivates the image of a scientifically heterodox actor far away from the economic mainstream. In this way, it has succeeded in arousing the interest of representatives of the plural economy, which the Austrian School has since adopted as part of its heterodox canon. But how coherent is this image of the NASE as an opponent of orthodoxy? The article examines this question from a historical-theoretical perspective and analyses the mainstream contribution of the various generations of the Austrian School. |
| Keywords: | Austrian School of Economics, Neoclassical Mainstream, Heterodoxy |
| JEL: | B13 B25 B53 |
| Date: | 2019–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:97470&r=all |
| By: | Grieve, Roy H |
| Abstract: | Book review (title and editors as above) |
| Date: | 2019–02–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:3bjw4&r=all |