A short but useful interview with Professor Geoffrey Hodgson, whose politics blog can be found here, on the needs and potential development of the current discipline of economics. Hodgson’s work draws great inspiration from the Institutionalist tradition of Thorstein Veblen, which should be distinguished from the more mainstream theory of New Institutional Economics.
Last week I posted several times on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a set of ideas which seems to have plenty of support, or at least generates plenty of debate, judging by its presence on the internet.
MMT is an offshoot of post-Keynesianism. The policies which flow from its main theses suggest that a wise and benevolent state can ‘print’ money, within certain limits, to achieve full employment and moderate inflation.
Some MMTers also support an Employer of Last Resort (ELR) function for the state too. In other words, the state should provide a job at a set wage for all those who want one, so that full employment can be sustained even when economic growth slows or the economy goes into recession. The ELR policy was supported by Hyman Minsky whose ideas have also influenced MMT. He saw it as a more productive alternative to forms of welfare which pay people while they are inactive in terms of formal employment. Continue reading
Continuing this week’s slightly eclectic series of posts on Modern Monetary Theory, here is a repost of a repost(!) of some thoughts on MMT and Marxism by blogger Scott Ferguson, via the Union for Radical Political Economy blog. The link is below.
David M. Fields has kindly asked me to expand my critique of David Harvey’s latest project for the Union for Radical Political Economics blog. The result is a brief essay titled, “Some Remarks on MMT & Marxism in Light of David Harvey’s “Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason”.
By William Lazonick, The prevailing stock market ideology enriches value extractors, not value creators. Conventional wisdom holds that the primary function of the stock market is to raise cash that companies use to invest in productive capabilities. The conventional wisdom is wrong. Academic research on corporate finance shows that, compared with other sources of funds, […]
via How “Shareholder Value” is Killing Innovation — Radical Political Economy
A short video featuring L. Randall Wray, one of the leading proponents of Modern Monetary Theory. He discusses the reasons why economists and politicians struggle to understand it, and why non-economists, particularly those working in financial markets, apparently do not have this problem.
Towards the end, he mentions policymakers’ fears regarding the potential for inflation, which I shall return to in the context of MMT in a future post.
There is an enormous amount of information across the internet on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). A search in google gives around 2.6 million results, while that for post-Keynesian produces a mere 974 thousand! Marxist economics gives even fewer, at 913 thousand.
Having said that, a search for Marxism produces 13.3 million results. Of course, Marxist thought has had an influence far beyond economics, and even philosophy, politics and sociology, into such fields as anthropology and psychology.
Here is maverick economics Professor Michael Hudson on MMT, taken from his book J is for Junk Economics (p.155-7). Hudson is supportive of the theory and the economic policies which it implies.
Later in the week I will outline some ideas on money and inflation drawn from Anwar Shaikh‘s 2016 work Capitalism. Shaikh is critical of some aspects of MMT and provides extensive theoretical discussion and empirical evidence to make his case for a ‘Classical’ theory of modern money and inflation. Continue reading
An interesting take on the reasons for the continued weakness of investment and growth in the aftermath of the Great Recession. For Marxist Michael Roberts, it is mostly about the failure of the rate of profit to recover to pre-recession levels. The link to his post is below.
Recently, Larry Elliott, the economics correspondent of the British liberal newspaper, The Guardian raised again the puzzle of the gap between rising corporate profits and stagnant corporate investment in the major capitalist economies. Elliott put it “The multinational companies that bankroll the WEF’s annual meeting in Davos are awash with cash. Profits are strong. The return on […]
via Profitability and investment again – the AMECO data — Michael Roberts Blog
