This paper explores the economics and political economy of financialization using Matt Taibbi’s vampire squid metaphor to characterize it. The paper makes five innovations. First, it focuses on the mechanics of the “vampire squid” process whereby financialization rotates through the economy loading sector balance sheets with debt. Second, it identifies the critical role of government budget deficits for the financialization process. Third, it identifies the critical role of central banks, which are the lynchpin of the system and now serve as de facto guarantors of the value and liquidity of private sector liabilities. Fourth, the paper argues financialization imposes a form of policy lock-in. Fifth, it argues financialization transforms popular attitudes and understandings, thereby generating political support despite poor economic outcomes. In effect, there is a politics of financialization that goes hand-in-hand with the economics. The paper concludes with some observations on why mainstream macroeconomics has no equivalent construct to financialization and discusses the disquieting unexplored terrain that the economy is now in.
Archive for the ‘Economics’ Category
Financialization revisited: the economics and political economy of the vampire squid economy
Wednesday, September 1st, 2021The economics of New Developmentalism: a critical assessment
Thursday, July 1st, 2021This paper critically assesses the economics of New Developmentalism (ND). It begins by identifying and formalizing the principal components of ND which are identified as neutralizing Dutch disease, ending growth with foreign saving, development driven by a technologically advanced and internationally competitive manufacturing private sector, and getting macroeconomic prices right. It then examines four strands of critique consisting of internal economic logic critiques, Classical Developmentalism (CD) critiques, Keynesian and Neo-Kaleckian critiques, and the fighting the last war critique. To this author, ND is best understood as a Third Way styled analysis that blends CD heterodoxy and Neoliberalism. However, ND’s substantive policy recommendations lean in the Neoliberal direction, particularly as regards budget deficits and state intervention in the development process. From a Classical Development perspective, the problematic of development cannot be solved as easily as suggested by ND.
The Macroeconomics of Government Spending: Distinguishing Between Government Purchases, Government Production, and Job Guarantee Programs
Monday, June 14th, 2021This paper reconstructs the Keynesian income – expenditure (IE) model to include distinctions between government purchases of private sector output, government production, and government job guarantee program (JGP) employment. Analytically, including those distinctions transforms the model from a single sector model into a multi-sector model. It also surfaces the logic behind the automatic stabilizer property of JGP employment. The model is then extended to include Kaleckian income distribution effects which contribute to explaining why expenditure multipliers vary by type of fiscal expenditure. The Kaleckian version generates a new balanced budget multiplier driven by changed composition of government spending. It also illuminates some macroeconomic implications of privatization of government produced services.
Life among the Econ: fifty years on
Tuesday, April 20th, 2021Almost fifty years ago, the Swedish econographer Axel Leijonhufvud (1973) wrote a seminal study on the Econ tribe titled “Life among the Econ”. This study revisits the Econ and reports on their current state. Life has gotten more complicated since those bygone days. The cult of math modl-ing has spread far and wide, so that even lay Econs practice it. Fifty years ago the Econ used to say “Modl-ing is everything”. Now they say “Modl-ing is the only thing”. The math priesthood has been joined by a priesthood of economagicians. The fundamental social divide between Micro and Macro sub-tribes persists, but it has been diluted by a new doctrine of micro foundations. The Econ remain a fractious and argumentative tribe.
Keywords: Micro, macro, economagicians, Keynesians, New Classicals, New Keynesians.
JEL ref.: A10, B00, B2, Z0, Z1.
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2021 Godley-Tobin Lecture: Marc Lavoie, “Godley versus Tobin on Monetary Matters”
Friday, February 12th, 2021
Rethinking capacity utilization choice: the role of surrogate inventory and entry deterrence
Saturday, January 30th, 2021This paper presents a macroeconomics-friendly Post Keynesian model of the firm describing both an inventory theoretic approach and an entry deterrence approach to choice of excess capacity. The model explains why firms may rationally choose to have excess capacity. It also shows the two approaches are complementary and reinforcing of each other. Analytically, the paper makes three principal contributions. First, it provides a simple framework for understanding the microeconomics of capacity utilization choice. Second, it reframes the Post Keynesian discussion of capacity utilization by making excess capacity choice the key to understanding normal capacity utilization. Third, it implicitly challenges Neo-Kaleckian wage-led growth theory as the model shows choice of the optimal excess capacity rate is independent of the level of demand.
National Policy Space: Reframing the Political Economy of Globalization and its Implications for National Sovereignty and Democracy
Friday, January 8th, 2021This paper critiques the trilemma framing of the political economy of globalization, and offers a new framing based on the construct of national policy space. The paper makes three main contributions. First, building on Stein (2016), it deconstructs the categories used by Rodrik (2011) and introduces distinctions between the “degree”, “type”, and “dimensions” of globalization; “effective” versus “formal” national sovereignty; “content” versus “process” of democracy; and “national” versus “global” democracy. The deconstruction shows countries face choices involving a series of margins, not a trilemma. Second, that suggests reframing the problematic in terms of national policy space, which is the “funnel” through which globalization impacts democracy and national sovereignty. Third, the paper shows a country can be impacted by globalization even if it does nothing because other countries’ actions change its possibility set. The reframing shows globalization is an intrinsically political project. To the extent it is now driving a nationalistic anti-democratic turn in politics, responsibility lies with political elites.
READ MORE: Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, July 2021.
What’s wrong with modern money theory (MMT): macro and political economic restraints on deficit financed fiscal policy
Wednesday, October 21st, 2020The essential claim of MMT is sovereign currency issuing governments, with flexible exchange rates and without foreign currency debt, are financially unconstrained. This paper analyzes the macroeconomic arguments behind that claim and shows they are suspect. MMT underestimates the economic costs and exaggerate the capabilities of deficit financed fiscal policy. Those analytic shortcomings render it poor economics. However, MMT’s claim that sovereign governments are financially unconstrained is proving a popular political polemic. That is because current distressed economic conditions have generated political resistance to fiscal austerity, and MMT fits the moment by countering the neoliberal polemic that government lacks fiscal space because it is akin to a household.
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Do current times vindicate Keynes and is New Keynesian macroeconomics Keynesian?
Saturday, February 8th, 2020Thomas I. Palley, Esteban Pérez Caldentey, and Matias Vernengo, Review of Keynesian Economics, January 2020.
Professor Robert Rowthorn delivered the second annual Godley-Tobin lecture in New York City on March 1, 2019. The title of his lecture was “Keynesian economics: back from the dead?” and it is published in this issue of the Review of Keynesian Economics. The lecture was attended by a large audience and the Question & Answer session provoked a stimulating discussion. Prompted by that discussion, we thought it would be interesting to invite some leading (Keynesian-leaning) economists to independently address Professor Rowthorn’s lecture topic. This symposium is the outcome of that invitation.
We are living in a time which many believe has a distinctly Keynesian character. That is captured in the belief that many economies appear to suffer from aggregate demand shortage or, at least, a proclivity to demand shortage. It is also captured in the revival of the concept of “economic stagnation” which was an idea that had much traction in the 1930s and 1940s, but then fell away in the 1950s with the post-war boom and the non-reappearance of depression-like conditions.
A Stock Market Boom is Not the Basis of Shared Prosperity
Wednesday, January 22nd, 2020The US is currently enjoying another stock market boom which, if history is any guide, also stands to end in a bust. In the meantime, the boom is having a politically toxic effect by lending support to Donald Trump and obscuring the case for reversing the neoliberal economic paradigm.
For four decades the US economy has been trapped in a “Groundhog Day” cycle in which policy engineered new stock market booms cover the tracks of previous busts. But though each new boom ameliorates, it does not recuperate the prior damage done to income distribution and shared prosperity. Now, that cycle is in full swing again, clouding understanding of the economic problem and giving voters reason not to rock the boat for fear of losing what little they have. READ MORE