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on Post Keynesian Economics |
| By: | Engelbert Stockhammer |
| Abstract: | The paper discusses the historical development of the debate on financialization supported by bibliometric analysis. There are several origins of the concept of financialisation in the 1990s and in the early 2000s this consolidates in a transdisciplinary project: an attempt to create a critical conversation across academic disciplines about the impact of finance on the economy and society. This was driven by the team of CRESC by organising workshops and special issues, involving critical business studies, constructivist approaches on the household and heterodox macroeconomics. This created the basis for the success of the concept and, since the global financial crisis, enabled an explosive rise of studies on financialisation. But with success also come a fragmentation of the debate and its disintegration along disciplinary lines. Thus, research on financialization today is published in more prestigious journals, but it has decoupled from the core financialisation debate of the 2000s. |
| Keywords: | financialization, sociology of science, bibliometric analysis, history of thought |
| JEL: | B29 B59 G30 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp2608 |
| By: | Jakub Ryłow (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences) |
| Abstract: | The paper examines the logical theory of probability formulated by John Maynard Keynes in A Treatise on Probability (1921) as an axiomatic project competing with the measure-theoretic approach to probability codified by Andrei Kolmogorov in Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung (1933). We present the structure of both approaches, identify the key divergences — the epistemological interpretation of the probabilistic relation, Keynes’s rejection of full numerability, the status of conditional probability, and the concept of the weight of evidence — and analyse the reasons for Kolmogorov’s triumph. We survey four contemporary interpretive traditions: subjective Bayesianism, frequentism, logical probability, and imprecise probabilities. Particular attention is paid to current applications — from Bayesian inference in machine learning and decision theory under uncertainty, to catastrophe risk pricing and uncertainty management in climate models. We argue that Keynes’s intuitions, long neglected, are gaining new significance in the face of the epistemic challenges of the twenty-first century. |
| Keywords: | logical probability, measure theory, weight of evidence, imprecise probabilities, Bayesianism |
| JEL: | B41 C10 C11 D81 G32 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2026-8 |
| By: | boughabi, houssam |
| Abstract: | This paper develops and empirically evaluates a Kaleckian framework linking income distribution, mark-up pricing, and household consumption dynamics in selected Eurozone economies. Within the Kaleckian tradition, real wages are structurally determined by distributive conflict through the mark-up, implying that shifts toward profits may compress purchasing power and alter aggregate demand. The analysis addresses two central questions: whether variations in the mark-up are reflected in real wage dynamics consistent with Kaleckian pricing, and whether households smooth consumption through borrowing in response to distributive pressures. Using annual data for Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands over the period 1980–2025, the results reveal substantial cross-country heterogeneity in real wage developments, providing only partial support for a uniform mark-up compression mechanism. Real consumption exhibits significant persistence in Germany and the Netherlands, with the estimated parameter approaching unity, consistent with martingale-like smoothing and strong path dependence. However, the borrowing channel does not emerge as statistically robust across countries, suggesting that debt does not systematically function as a long-run stabilizing device for demand. The findings therefore support the relevance of Kaleckian distributional dynamics and consumption inertia while offering limited empirical confirmation for sustained debt-led stabilization in the selected Eurozone economies. |
| Keywords: | Kaleckian pricing; Distributive conflict; Debt-financed consumption; Consumption smoothing; Financial fragility |
| JEL: | D33 E12 E25 E31 E44 |
| Date: | 2026–03–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:128395 |
| By: | Catelén, Ana Laura |
| Abstract: | For decades, Argentina's long-run divergence has intrigued economic historians. While by the late nineteenth century the country ranked among the world's richest economies, it now occupies a middle position in the global income distribution (Bolt and van Zanden, 2020). A distinctive feature of Argentina's experience, relevant for explaining this outcome, is the marked rise in macroeconomic volatility since the mid-1970s. Unlike other South American economies, this instability has intensified over time (Catelén, 2025), and elevated volatility undermines long-run growth (Badinger, 2010; Loayza & Hnatkovska, 2004; Pastor, 2017; Ramey & Ramey, 1994). Latin American structuralist theory provides a useful framework to understand why volatility itself becomes persistent through the emergence of vicious cyclical dynamics. These dynamics involve recurrent interaction processes that amplify and prolong fluctuations. A central mechanism in this approach is structural distributive conflict, defined as the gap between workers' wage aspirations and the economy's productive capacity (Rapetti & Gerchunoff, 2016). This paper revisits this theoretical tradition and combines it with a modern empirical approach based on a structural VAR framework that allows for causal interpretation to assess whether the interaction between distributive conflict and economic policy can account for Argentina's recurrent cycles of instability that undermine long-run growth. The analysis examines the historical evolution of distributive conflict across three development regimes (the agro-export model, state- led industrialization, and the second globalization) within a structuralist framework linking external constraints, distributive conflict, and macroeconomic instability. |
| Keywords: | Crecimiento Económico; Volatilidad; Ciclos Económicos; Argentina; 1890-2020; |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nmp:nuland:4470 |
| By: | Asuamah Yeboah, Samuel |
| Abstract: | This study examines Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) as a literary representation of institutional and socio-economic dynamics in pre-colonial and colonial African societies. While previous scholarship has primarily focused on cultural identity and colonial critique, this paper interprets the novel through the combined lenses of institutional economics, political economy, and behavioural economics to investigate how governance structures, cultural norms, and individual incentives shaped economic behaviour and social stability within Igbo society. Using a qualitative textual-economic analysis, key narrative events were coded and analysed in relation to indigenous institutions, agricultural production, and colonial intervention. The findings reveal that pre-colonial Igbo institutions effectively coordinated economic activity and maintained social cohesion, while the introduction of colonial institutions generated institutional displacement, social fragmentation, and economic disruption. Behavioural factors, including leadership rigidity and social identity, further mediated responses to institutional change. The study contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship by demonstrating that literary texts can illuminate historical and economic processes, offering insights for contemporary governance and development policy in African contexts. These findings underscore the importance of integrating traditional institutions, aligning development initiatives with cultural norms, and promoting adaptive leadership to enhance institutional resilience and socio-economic development. |
| Keywords: | Things Fall Apart, institutional economics, political economy, behavioural economics, African development, governance, institutional change |
| JEL: | B52 D91 N37 O10 Z11 |
| Date: | 2026–02–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:128278 |
| By: | Simon Bittmann (SAGE - Sociétés, acteurs, gouvernement en Europe - ENGEES - École Nationale du Génie de l'Eau et de l'Environnement de Strasbourg - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Ulysse Lojkine (AxPo - AxPo Observatory of Market Society Polarization - Sciences Po - Sciences Po) |
| Abstract: | This paper sets a new empirical agenda for exploitation theory, through the notion of chains. Exploitation generally offers three attractive properties compared to more commonly used concepts—inequality and domination—in that it is simultaneously distributive, relational, and openly counterfactual, yet it remains an underexplored notion. While both Marxist and neoclassical traditions focus on dyadic relations—either worker-employer or through market exchange—most exploitative situations bear several relational components, where agents can simultaneously stand as exploited and exploiters. Building on a sociological-relational tradition, we identify four chains—I (connected), L (hinged), V (dual) and C (complicit)—which we argue represent the elementary structures of exploitation. We then contend that this meso-level approach, complementary to individual-transactional and structural accounts, bears potential for sociological analysis and then explore how these chains materialize in various economic sites—within the production unit, on the market, in the domestic sphere, and by the state. |
| Keywords: | Domination, Labor, Inequality, Theory, Exploitation |
| Date: | 2025–12–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04435653 |
| By: | Juan CARVAJALINO; Herrade IGERSHEIM |
| Abstract: | This article revisits the debate between John Rawls and John Harsanyi by drawing on newly explored archival materials. Traditionally viewed as a short-lived, technical disagreement of the 1970s over the rational criterion for choice under uncertainty—the maximin versus average utility rules—their exchange in fact spanned nearly four decades, from their first encounter in 1964 to the late 1990s. The paper reconstructs this dialogue to reveal its ethical and philosophical depth, showing that what began as a technical dispute gradually evolved into a confrontation over the moral foundations of justice. The paper traces four stages of this evolving relationship, emphasizing Harsanyi’s later overlooked “philosophical turn” and his continuing attempts to defend utilitarianism against Rawls’s egalitarianism. By revealing all the facets of their exchange, the study enriches our understanding of the modern dialogue between economics and philosophy and of the enduring opposition between utilitarian and egalitarian conceptions of social justice. |
| Keywords: | John Rawls, John Harsanyi, Maximin, Utilitarianism, Social justice. |
| JEL: | B21 B31 D60 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2026-07 |
| By: | Asuamah Yeboah, Samuel |
| Abstract: | Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is widely recognised as a literary satire, yet its economic insights have received limited systematic analysis. The study presents a novel interdisciplinary examination, applying institutional and behavioural economic frameworks to Swift’s four voyages, Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms, to illuminate enduring economic and governance principles. By interpreting Swift’s allegorical societies through the lenses of rent-seeking, moral governance, resource misallocation, and bounded rationality, the paper demonstrates that his satire anticipates core concepts of modern economics, including public choice theory, welfare economics, institutional economics, and behavioural economics. Uniquely, the analysis extends beyond literary critique to draw contemporary policy implications for developing economies, with a particular focus on Ghana. The study shows that political patronage, bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption, and behavioural biases observed in these contexts mirror those in Swift’s fictional societies, underscoring the relevance of ethical leadership, rational institutions, and behaviourally informed policy design. By bridging literature, economic theory, and practical governance, this research contributes to the emerging field of “literary economics” and provides a novel framework for understanding how cultural narratives can inform economic reasoning, institutional reform, and sustainable development. |
| Keywords: | Gulliver’s Travels, institutional economics, behavioural economics, governance, moral economy, literary economics, policy reform. |
| JEL: | D03 D72 O11 O17 P48 |
| Date: | 2026–01–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:128279 |