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on Post Keynesian Economics |
| By: | Nikolas Passos; Guilherme Spinato Morlin |
| Abstract: | The paper analyses the growth models of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico since 1996. We depart from the typology proposed by Bizberg (2019) and apply a growth decomposition based on the Sraffian supermultiplier (Freitas and Dweck, 2013). We argue that the growth models perspective, introduced by Baccaro and Pontusson (2016), contributes to understanding the diversities of capitalism in Latin America. We find that the commodities boom oriented the countries towards export-led growth models, especially in Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico. Brazil and Argentina presented a hybrid growth model, with higher household consumption, and government expenditure along with exports growth. After the commodities boom, the export-led model was no longer feasible for commodity exporters. Mexico sustained the existing model, based on low-value-added manufacturing exports. Brazil and Argentina reduced public expenditures generating economic stagnation. Chile and Bolivia increased public expenditure, sustaining growth at a slower pace. This work extends the growth models perspective to emerging countries, considering former contributions of the Latin American political economy. It also highlights how the growth models evolved in tandem with changing international conditions. Finally, the paper opens a research agenda for the political economy of stagnation in Latin American economies. |
| Keywords: | Latin America, Comparative Political Economy, Growth Models, Supermultiplier, export-led growth, state-led growth. |
| JEL: | O54 O57 O11 P16 |
| Date: | 2022–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:891&r=pke |
| By: | Gerrard, Bill |
| Abstract: | In his recent paper in this journal, Bateman (2021) breaks with the “Standard View” of Ramsey’s influence on Keynes and argues that Ramsey’s pragmatist philosophical thought underpinned both Keynes’s acceptance of Ramsey’s subjective theory of probability, and Keynes’s adoption of a narrative theory of the role of confidence in economic fluctuations in the General Theory. In this paper it is argued that Bateman is right both in emphasizing the influence of Ramsey’s pragmatist philosophy on Keynes’s thought during the development of the General Theory and afterwards, and in arguing that the influence of Ramsey’s pragmatist philosophy partly explains Keynes’s emphasis on the importance of the state of confidence in Chapter 12 of the General Theory. However, it is argued that Ramsey’s pragmatist philosophy had a much greater influence on Keynes than acknowledged by Bateman. Furthermore, contra Bateman, Keynes’s move to a more pragmatist philosophical position does not imply that Keynes’s accepted Ramsey’s subjective theory of (measurable) probability. |
| Date: | 2023–04–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:6w8g2&r=pke |
| By: | Bateman, Bradley W. |
| Abstract: | In his response to my essay in the recent symposium celebrating the centenary of John Maynard Keynes’s Treatise on Probability (Bateman 2021), Bill Gerrard (2022) offers a comprehensive critique of my argument that Keynes was influenced by Frank Ramsey’s turn to pragmatism. Gerrard’s comments cut both ways: on the one hand, he agrees that Ramsey’s turn to pragmatism influenced Keynes, but argues that I do not go far enough in articulating the extent of the influence; on the other hand, Gerrard argues that Keynes’s embrace of Ramsey’s subjective theory of probability has nothing to do with his acceptance of Ramsey’s pragmatism. The purpose of this short comment, however, is neither to rehearse the many ways in which I agree with Gerrard, nor to elaborate each way in which we disagree. The purpose of this comment is to address just one of my disagreements with Gerrard and to use this clarification to reiterate Keynes’s embrace of pragmatism. The disagreement on which I focus concerns the question of whether Keynes employed mathematical expectation in The General Theory. In particular, it stems from my focus on the distinction between the way that expectations about future profit are handled in Chapters Eleven and Twelve of The General Theory. |
| Date: | 2023–04–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:j23hm&r=pke |
| By: | Sergio Cesaratto |
| Abstract: | The search for the income distribution cores of pre-capitalist formations in the light of the classical surplus approach led to a re-examination the Marxist debates on the concept of mode of production. Unfortunately the Marxist debate is not only vast, but often wordy (this paper not being an exception), so we limit that ourselves to some episodes and scholars that sound particularly relevant for the relationship between forms of exploitation and economic modes. For a start, I shall consider some Marx’s insights on pre-capitalist formation which appear relevant also in the light of subsequent Marxist debates. I shall then outline some earlier Marxist debates which focused on the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Other debates focused on the concept of mode of production from Althusser and Perry Anderson to Jairus Banaji, John Haldon and others. Some conclusions try to make sense of these debates |
| Keywords: | Marx, modes of production, social formations, pre-capitalist economies, Surplus approach, institutions |
| JEL: | B51 N01 Z13 |
| Date: | 2023–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:898&r=pke |
| By: | Ryan Woodgate; Eckhard Hein; Ricardo Summa |
| Abstract: | Since autonomous demand has to be financed independently of income from current production, this paper starts with the requirement that autonomous demand-led growth models have to include endogenous money and credit, and hence financial dynamics. It then seeks to make two contributions. First, we show that the inclusion of financial stock-flow interactions in a simple closed economy autonomous demand-led growth model provides an endogenous mechanism which, under certain conditions, aligns two autonomous growth rates, as a requirement for long-run equilibrium. Second, using that model, we prove that the relative size of autonomous growth contributions may be misleading as a guide to classify growth regimes if autonomous growth rates are interdependent, both for the steady state growth equilibrium as well as for the traverse towards this equilibrium. Furthermore, we show that the relative growth contributions are economic policy contingent. Therefore, in Sraffian supermultiplier demand-led growth decomposition exercises, interdependencies between autonomous growth components should not be ignored when growth drivers are supposed to be identified, both in medium- to long-run growth regime analysis, as well as in the analysis of autonomous drivers of short-run cycles. |
| Keywords: | Sraffian supermultiplier and endogenous credit, two autonomous growth drivers, demand-led growth accounting, growth regimes |
| JEL: | E11 E12 E20 E62 |
| Date: | 2023–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp2307&r=pke |
| By: | Sergio Cesaratto |
| Abstract: | I compare three approaches to economic history and institutions: the classical surplus approach, the Polanyian view, and New Institutional Economics (NIE). In the first institutions are seen in relation to the production and distribution of the social surplus. Research in economic anthropology, archaeology and history has validated the fecundity of this approach. The Polanyian criticism to classical and neoclassical theories is then considered and appreciated, although some severe limitations are envisaged. Most of the paper concentrate upon Douglass North, the NIE most representative author in the field of economic history. Striking of North is the attempt to replicate Marx’s relation between economics and institutions in the context of neoclassical theory. Transaction costs economics revealed a dead end in explaining institutions and the power of predatory élites. Lacking a material anchor such as surplus theory, North’s theory became progressively more elusive and indeterminate. On balance, a surplus-based Marxist-Polanyian approach is the most promising direction although much further work is still necessary to explain the coevolution of the economic and institutional sides of the economy |
| Keywords: | Institutions, Surplus approach, Karl Polanyi, New Institutional Economics, Douglass North |
| JEL: | A12 B15 B51 B52 Z13 |
| Date: | 2023–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:899&r=pke |
| By: | Rafael Galvão de Almeida (UFMG); Leonardo Gomes de Deus (UFMG) |
| Abstract: | This article analyses Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, from the point of view of the critique of political economy. Using immanent analysis, we critically analyze the objectivist philosophy of the novel and its superficial resemblances with Marxism, especially its idea of a utopic society in the John Galt’s Gulch. While Rand presents the individual producer as a realized and rational human being, we contrast him with the idea that the capitalist is merely the personification of capital to show how Galt’s Gulch fails as a utopia. Such analysis allows us to situate Atlas Shrugged in the liberal project, arguing that liberalism still has an aristocratic bias which facilitate the 2008’s economic crisis. |
| Keywords: | Ayn Rand; liberalism; critique of political economy; aristocracy; economics and literature. |
| JEL: | B24 B29 Z11 |
| Date: | 2023–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td654&r=pke |