In this enlightening video, Professor Geoff Harcourt, who was a distinguished pupil and colleague of Joan Robinson at Cambridge University, discusses a range of issues in Keynesian and post-Keynesian economics.
He covers the need for pluralism in economics; his definition of post-Keynesianism; the work of some of its key protagonists; uncertainty and its impact on business and the economy; the capital theory debates; and finally his vision for analysing a modern capitalist economy, and his most enduring intellectual influences.
Here is the latest post from Heiner Flassbeck, formerly of UNCTAD, and who now runs his own consultancy which focuses on macroeconomic questions.
The post explores how a decade of wage repression following the Harz IV reforms in Germany resulted in weak growth in wages relative to productivity, which in turn weakened growth in domestic demand and led to a boom in exports. The piece contains some useful charts comparing the growth in foreign and domestic demand in Germany and France.
These trends created major economic imbalances in the eurozone which in the long run proved unsustainable as they weakened economic performance in the region and were a major factor behind the global financial and eurozone crises.
Whether you are a supporter or detractor of the ‘European project’, these arguments should not be ignored. They point to the need for reforms to the structure of policymaking in the eurozone, particularly in Germany, it being the largest country with the largest current account surplus. Such reforms are needed in order to promote widespread prosperity and help to safeguard the future of the region. On the other hand, if this need is neglected, the disruptive breakup of the eurozone cannot be ruled out.
Flassbeck concludes as follows:
“In order to counter the centrifugal forces in Europe, Germany must lead the way by withdrawing its reforms and normalising wage developments. On the other hand, Germany would undoubtedly be hit hard economically in an exit scenario of Italy or France. It would have to reckon with its production structure, which is extremely export-oriented and which was formed in the years of monetary union, being subjected to a hard adjustment. The German recession is already showing how susceptible the country is to exogenous shocks.
The basic decision in favour of the euro can still be justified today with good economic arguments. The dominant economic theory, however, has ignored these arguments from the outset and politically disavowed them. Built on monetarist ideas in the European Central Bank and crude ideas about competition between nations in the largest member state, the monetary union could not function. All those who want to save Europe as a political idea must now realise that this can only be achieved with a different economic theory and a different economic policy that follows from it. Only if the participation of all members of society in economic progress is guaranteed under all circumstances and the competition of nations is abandoned can the idea of a united Europe be saved.”
Perhaps the most striking application of hyper-rationality occurs in Analytical Marxism, whose doctrines were outlined clearly and concisely by its leading philosopher Gerald Cohen … It is an anti-dialectical and anti-holistic attempt to ground Marxist notions in neoclassical methodology. It “believes that [neoclassical] economics is essentially sound” and consequently relies on rational choice theory, game […]
In this rare video, Hyman Minsky explains his financial instability hypothesis. The video dates from 1987, but Minsky was prescient in originating a theory that characterises capitalist economies with developed financial systems as inherently unstable and requiring the intervention of ‘Big Government’ (counter-cyclical fiscal policy) and a ‘Big Bank’ (the central bank acting as lender of last resort). His FIH has become much more widely known since the advent of the 2008 financial crisis.
Minsky was influenced by his teacher at Harvard, Joseph Schumpeter, as well as by John Maynard Keynes and Michal Kalecki. His work falls under the post-Keynesian tradition, emphasising the role of finance and the importance of effective demand in the economy, with the former a major cause of instability in the form of booms and busts. His thinking also incorporated ideas on institutions such as households, firms, banks, and governments, and explored how their balance sheets of assets and liabilities evolve over business cycles.
John Weeks has a new book out, The Debt Delusion, which takes a progressive line in debunking a number of what he terms the myths that surround fiscal policy.
Weeks is an Emeritus Professor of Development Studies at SOAS, and coordinator of the Progressive Economy Forum. He is heavily critical of austerity and proposes an ‘anti-austerity’ agenda on tax and spending for today’s policymakers.
Weeks has long been critical of mainstream economics in general, not least in his previous book for the layman, Economics of the 1%.
Summing up his proposed fiscal policy framework, he writes (p.182-3): Continue reading →
Joan Robinson was a brilliant economist at the University of Cambridge and a member of the ‘circus’ of thinkers led by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. In the lecture below, John Eatwell, a pupil and co-author of Robinson, and who advised the British Labour Party on economic policy in the 1980s and 90s, gives a very clear and stimulating introduction to her life and work.
Eatwell covers topics in economics addressed by Robinson that remain highly relevant today, such as disguised unemployment and the trade protectionism that tends to result from a deflationary global economic environment.
As the talk makes clear, Robinson published path-breaking work on imperfect competition as distinct from theories of perfect competition and monopoly; she later contributed to the development of Keynes’ magnum opus The General Theory, which put forward an explanation for the persistence of mass unemployment under capitalism and gave birth to the modern discipline of macroeconomics. After the war she attempted to extend Keynes’ theory to deal with problems of economic growth in a number of books and papers, particularly her own magnum opus The Accumulation of Capital.
A strong intellectual personality and something of a zealot, one of Robinson’s most notable quotes regarding economics was: “I never learned mathematics, so I’ve had to think”.
As a liberal socialist, latterly she increasingly favoured central planning to achieve full employment and social justice, as well to promote economic development in the poorest countries. On this, as well as in her enthusiasm for Maoist China, she was perhaps naive and misled and these aspects of her thinking discredited her somewhat in her later years.
Robinson also supervised Amartya Sen who went on to win the Nobel Memorial Prize for his work on welfare economics.
One of the major economic phenomena of our time seems to be an enormous accumulation of elite wealth amidst rising inequality within nations, even while output and productivity growth, particularly since the Great Recession, have been mediocre across much of the world.
In his book Capitalism without Capital, Alan Shipman draws together a wealth of economic ideas, from the theory of the global savings glut and the Cambridge controversies in the theory of capital to Thomas Piketty’s writings on inequality, to argue that we are living in an era of abundant ‘wealth’ alongside a shortage of real productive capital assets. It is growth in the latter which remains the driver of rising living standards for the majority. Continue reading →
John Weeks has a new book out, The Debt Delusion, which takes a progressive line in debunking a number of what he terms the myths that surround fiscal policy.