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on Post Keynesian Economics |
| By: | Assa, Jacob; Morgan, Marc |
| Abstract: | Paradoxes have long functioned as diagnostic devices in economic theory, revealing tensions between individual behaviour, aggregate outcomes, and the conceptual foundations of economic reasoning. Building on the paradox of thrift, this paper develops a distinct but related puzzle: the deficit paradox . The deficit paradox arises from a persistent fallacy of identification between fiat currency users and fiat currency issuers; whereby radically different monetary actors are treated as if they faced symmetric budget constraints. For households and firms, deficits (expenditure in excess of income) reduce net worth and are constrained by solvency, and desired net saving. When generalised, these constraints can generate demand contraction and financial instability. For a sovereign fiat currency issuer, by contrast, spending and income are operationally unrelated: public expenditure creates money, taxation destroys it, and the relevant constraints are political and real rather than financial. Interpreting public deficits through household budgeting analogies therefore produces conceptual contradiction rather than insight. The paper combines stock‑flow analysis with insights from the philosophy of language to show how fiscal discourse is shaped by misleading metaphors and grammatical forms that obscure the distinction between accounting identities and binding constraints. Extending the argument, it shows how the same conceptual error structures debates over fiscal sustainability, economic development, and global imbalances. The deficit paradox thus reframes disputes over public finance as problems of conceptual clarity, rather than fiscal irresponsibility. |
| Keywords: | Deficit Paradox, Paradox of Thrift, Monetary-Production Economy, Liquidity Preference, Stock-Flow Consistency |
| JEL: | B41 H62 E12 E41 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gnv:wpaper:unige:195744 |
| By: | Lane, Edward |
| Abstract: | Proposals to privatize Social Security through personal investment accounts rest on the assumption that equity markets will deliver real returns of 6 to 7 percent, exceeding what the current program can pay. This paper examines that claim from actuarial, financial, and fiscal perspectives and finds it fails in each. Actuarially, Social Security is not an investment account but a package of inflation-indexed insurance benefits, retirement, disability, survivor, and family coverage, delivered through a progressive formula; no private portfolio replicates this package at comparable cost. Financially, the paper applies the inelastic markets hypothesis (Gabaix and Koijen, 2021), which holds that a dollar of net equity inflow raises total market capitalization by roughly five dollars, to a 2005-style carve-out diverting approximately $330 billion annually into automatic, price-insensitive equity purchases. Under this framework, valuations rise approximately 28 percent above baseline within a decade, compressing forward returns by nearly one percentage point annually and generating roughly $15 trillion in capital gains accruing predominantly to the top decile of households. Crucially, the classical framework of Diamond and Geanakoplos (2003), in which bond issuance offsets equity flows and prices barely move, reaches the same policy verdict by a different route: the equity risk premium shrinks as risk spreads across the workforce, eliminating the excess return the proposal requires. Both models therefore undermine the projected returns, and neither changes the real economics of retirement, which is funded by future production, not financial claims. Fiscal analysis in the functional finance and Modern Monetary Theory traditions confirms that personal accounts financed by government borrowing create no new national saving. The paper concludes that if broader asset ownership is the goal, the appropriate instrument is a voluntary, low-cost add-on savings vehicle layered atop an intact Social Security system, not a carve-out of the payroll tax. In preparing this paper, the author used an AI assistant (Anthropic's Claude and Perplexity, powered by GPT-5.1) for drafting, editing, and formatting support. All analysis, arguments, and conclusions are the author's own, and all references and figures were verified against primary sources. |
| Keywords: | Social Security, Privatization, Personal Accounts, Inelastic Market Hypothesis, Equity Risk Premium, Asset Pricing, Wealth Distribution, Supeannuaation, Functional Finance, Modern Monetary Theory, Modern Money Theory |
| JEL: | H5 H51 H53 H55 I38 |
| Date: | 2026–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:130383 |
| By: | Hataka, Sara (Malmö University); Liu, Ju (Malmö University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how informal entrepreneurs in Maun, Botswana, practise circular economy under conditions of material scarcity, institutional hybridity and livelihood constraint. Addressing the dominance of technocentric and design-led models in circular economy research, it develops a grounded alternative based on the concept of livelihood-oriented circularity. The study draws on eleven semi-structured interviews, field observations and photographic documentation, analysed through a triangulated framework combining circular practice typology, material flow analysis and institutional perspectives. The findings identify three main forms of circular practice-reuse, functional upcycling and symbolic upcycling and show how these are sustained through hybrid institutional arrangements and translocal material networks. Circularity in this context emerges as a socially embedded system organised through frugality, improvisation and community knowledge rather than formal policy design. The paper contributes theoretically by advancing livelihood-oriented circularity as a Global South model of socially embedded and learning driven innovation. It repositions informality as a site of systemic creativity and adaptive capacity, extending circular economy theory beyond Global North assumptions. Policy implications include the need for transitional licensing mechanisms, shared workshop spaces and the recognition of peer-based coordination to foster inclusive and transformative innovation systems. |
| Keywords: | Livelihood oriented circularity; Informal economy Circular Economy; Institutional hybridity; Translocal material flows; Botswana |
| JEL: | O17 O35 |
| Date: | 2026–09–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2026_009 |
| By: | Talley, Vanessa M. |
| Abstract: | Social work acknowledges Black Feminist Thought as a framework and praxis, yet the profession has not established a social work framework that explicitly centers Black women’s epistemologies as foundational to education, theory, research, policy, and practice. Although social work maintains a historical commitment to social justice, person-in-environment, and human rights perspectives, dominant theories and knowledge systems continue to reflect Eurocentric assumptions regarding knowledge production and professional expertise. This article introduces Black Feminist Social Work (BFSW) as a conceptual framework that centers Black women’s individual and collective lived experiences, intellectual traditions, historical resistance, and knowledge to inform social work theory, education, research, policy, and practice. Drawing upon Black feminism, Black Feminist Thought, Womanism, Intersectionality, and the profession’s ethical commitments, the BFSW framework proposes a necessary shift from positioning Black women primarily as a population to be studied to recognizing them as producers of transformative knowledge. This article introduces four organizing principles, the Four C’s: Centering, Contextualizing, Co-Creating, and Changing, as foundational processes for Black Feminist Social Work and discusses the implications for curriculum development, clinical practice, research methodologies, policy advocacy, and future scholarship. Rather than positioning Black Feminist Social Work as an alternative specialization, this framework argues that centering Black women’s knowledge expands the social work profession’s capacity to pursue equity, liberation, and social transformation. |
| Date: | 2026–08–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:khn9f_v1 |
| By: | Mahmood Alaghmandan |
| Abstract: | Emile Durkheim's Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897) predates much of the statistical machinery that quantitative modellers now take for granted. Yet, working with sparse and imperfect observational data, Durkheim repeatedly arrives at practices that remain remarkably relevant to modern modelling. This paper revisits Suicide from the perspective of quantitative risk modelling, not for its substantive conclusions, but for the reasoning by which Durkheim reached them. His approach illustrates how careful definition, common sense, logical investigation, scepticism toward convenient explanations, and close attention to what the data can and cannot support---all of which must precede, and can often substitute for, statistical sophistication. The broader lesson is simple: good modelling begins not with technique, but with understanding the problem, interrogating the evidence, and reasoning carefully about what it can actually tell us. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.21506 |
| By: | Anna Schlaack; Christian Zimmermann |
| Abstract: | RePEc is an initiative created by economists for economists in 1997. It functions primarily as a bibliographic tool, but it also collects various linked metadata about economists, their institutions, and their impact. Thus, a labor economist may be interested in RePEc beyond literature searches and tracking—namely, as a dataset describing a profession, its members, and their output. This essay describes RePEc’s origins and history, the many facets of its data and how the data can be accessed. It also provides some examples of scholarly studies leveraging RePEc data that could be of interest to labor economists and lead them to other uses of RePEc data. |
| Keywords: | RePEc; dataset; sociology of economics; economics profession |
| JEL: | A11 A14 J44 J45 |
| Date: | 2026–08–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:103698 |