The distinction between wage-led and profit-led growth is a major feature of Post-Keynesian economics and it has triggered an extensive econometric literature aimed at identifying whether economies are wage or profit-led. That literature treats the economy’s character as exogenously given. This paper questions that assumption and shows an economy’s character is endogenous and subject to policy influence. This generates a Post-Keynesian analogue of the Lucas critique whereby the econometrically identified character of the economy depends on policy rather than being a natural characteristic. Over the past twenty years, policy has made economies appear more profit-led by lowering workers’ share of the wage bill and tax rates on shareholder income. Increasing workers’ wage bill share increases growth and capacity utilization regardless of whether the economy is wage-led, profit-led or conflictive. That speaks to making it the primary focus of policy efforts. [READ MORE].
Archive for the ‘Economics’ Category
Rethinking wage vs. profit-led growth theory with implications for policy analysis
Tuesday, November 11th, 2014The theory of global imbalances: mainstream economics vs. structural Keynesianism
Thursday, August 7th, 2014Prior to the 2008 financial crisis there was much debate about global trade imbalances. Prima facie, the imbalances seem a significant problem. However, acknowledging that would question mainstream economics’ celebratory stance toward globalization. That tension prompted an array of explanations which explained the imbalances while retaining the claim that globalization is economically beneficial. This paper surveys those new theories. It contrasts them with the structural Keynesian explanation that views the imbalances as an inevitable consequence of neoliberal globalization. The paper also describes how globalization created a political economy that supported the system despite its proclivity to generate trade imbalances. [READ MORE]
The Phillips Curve: Missing the Obvious and Looking in All the Wrong Places
Thursday, July 17th, 2014There is an old story about a policeman who sees a drunk looking for something under a streetlight and asks what he is looking for. The drunk replies he has lost his car keys and the policeman joins in the search. A few minutes later the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here and the drunk replies “No, I lost them in the park.” The policeman then asks “So why are you looking here?” to which the drunk replies “Because this is where the light is.”That story has much relevance for the economics profession’s approach to the Phillips curve. (more…)
Milton Friedman’s economics and political economy: an old Keynesian critique
Thursday, July 3rd, 2014Milton Friedman’s influence on the economics profession has been enormous. In part, his success was due to political forces that have made neoliberalism the dominant global ideology, but Friedman also rode those forces and contributed to them. Friedman’s professional triumph is testament to the weak intellectual foundations of the economics profession which accepted ideas that are conceptually and empirically flawed. His success has taken economics back in a pre-Keynesian direction and squeezed Keynesianism out of the academy. Friedman’s thinking also frames so-called new Keynesian economics which is simply new classical macroeconomics with the addition of imperfect competition and nominal rigidities. By enabling the claim that macroeconomics is fully characterized by a divide between new Keynesian and new classical macroeconomics, new Keynesianism closes the pincer that excludes old Keynesianism. As long as that pincer holds, economics will remain under Friedman’s shadow.
More on the mainstream (not wonkish)
Thursday, May 1st, 2014Paul Krugman wrote a reply to my two postings (Part 1 and Part 2) on the flimflam of mainstream economics. Below is my response to Paul that was posted as a comment on his Conscience of a Liberal website. I am posting it because I think it sheds more light on the failings of so-called New Keynesianism.
Dear Paul,
I enjoy what you write and have great admiration for your work, but this piece is unfair.
(1) Here is an article of mine on what you term the paradox of flexibility, published in 2008 and extending James Tobin’s seminal paper on “Keynesian Models of Recession and Depression”.
(2) I do not think I am misportraying you. Your own macroeconomic framework seems unconvincing to me as a description of a capitalist economy, being Keynesian at the zero lower bound and classical the rest of the time. I think of Keynesianism as being a macroeconomic theory that applies at all times. But these are issues that require more space for discussion.
Best,
Tom
Looking for flimflam: some hints on where to find it
Thursday, May 1st, 2014Simon Wren-Lewis has graciously replied to my post on mainstream economics’ flimflam and says he cannot find it (the flimflam). Here are some hints on where to look.
(1) A first con is the labeling adopted by New Keynesians. As I showed in my post, New Keynesianism has near-nothing to do with Keynes’s theoretical thinking as expressed in The General Theory. I too am not interested in an exegesis of what Keynes meant, but I am interested in honesty in labeling to help avoid damaging confusions. (more…)
The flimflam defense of mainstream economics
Tuesday, April 29th, 2014The teaching of economics has recently been in the news. One reason is the activities of Manchester University undergraduates who have formed the Post-Crash Economics Society to protest the monopoly of mainstream neoclassical economics in university lecture halls. A second reason is criticism of the neoclassical reasoning in Thomas Piketty’s runaway best seller Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
This criticism and calls for including heterodox economic theory in the curriculum have prompted a defense of mainstream economics from Princeton University’s Paul Krugman and Oxford University’s Simon Wren-Lewis. Both hail from the mainstream’s liberal wing, which muddies the issue because it is easy to conflate the liberal wing with the critics. In fact, the two are significantly different and their defense of mainstream economics is pure flimflam. (more…)
The accidental controversialist: deeper reflections on Thomas Piketty’s “Capital”
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2014Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a six hundred and eighty-five page tome that definitively characterizes the empirical pattern of income and wealth inequality in capitalist economies over the past two hundred and fifty years, and especially over the last one hundred. It also documents the grotesque rise of inequality over the past forty years and ends with a call for restoration of high marginal income tax rates and a global wealth tax.
His book has tapped a nerve and become a phenomenon. In laying a solid blow against inequality, Piketty has also become an accidental controversialist. That is because his book has potential to unintentionally trigger debate over so-called “free market” capitalism. The big question is will that happen? (more…)
Monetary policy after quantitative easing: The case for asset based reserve requirements (ABRR)
Wednesday, April 9th, 2014This paper critiques the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE) exit strategy which aims to deactivate excess liquidity via higher interest rates on reserves. That is equivalent to giving banks a tax cut at the public’s expense. It also risks domestic and international financial market turmoil. The paper proposes an alternative exit strategy based on ABRR which avoids the adverse fiscal and financial market impacts of higher interest rates. ABRR also increase the number of monetary policy instruments which can permanently improve policy. This is especially beneficial for euro zone countries. Furthermore, ABRR yield fiscal benefits via increased seignorage and can shrink a financial sector that is too large.
Effective demand, endogenous money, and debt: a Keynesian critique of Keen and an alternative theoretical framework
Sunday, March 30th, 2014This paper presents a Keynesian critique of Steve Keen’s treatment of the endogenous money – credit – aggregate demand (AD) nexus. It argues his analytic intuition is correct but is developed in the wrong direction. Keen’s fundamental relation describing determination of AD in an endogenous credit money economy suffers from two flaws. First, it neglects the core Keynesian problematic of leakages from and injections into the circular flow of income. Second, it falls into the theoretical morass regarding the black box of velocity of money via its adoption of a form of Fisher equation to determine AD. The paper contrasts Keen’s treatment with a Keynesian structural framework. [READ MORE HERE]