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on Post Keynesian Economics |
| By: | Prante, Franz J. |
| Abstract: | In this paper, I show that the income-autonomous demand multiplier of Keynesian-Kaleckian models is endogenous to changes in income distribution. This effect gives rise to non-linearity of distributional effects, even in basic models. Under certain conditions, an important consequence from the distribution-sensitive multiplier is that a higher wage share can have increasingly expansionary effects, which might even shift a profit-led investment regime to a wage-led one in the basic post-Kaleckian model. Surprisingly, the respective literature on distribution and growth largely ignored these features of Keynesian-Kaleckian macroeconomic models. After a theoretical discussion on the implications of the distribution-sensitive multiplier in basic closed- and openeconomy models, I present a counterfactual illustration based on empirical parameter estimations from the literature and the development of functional income distribution for selected EU countries. My analysis indicates that a rising profit share has put partial downward pressure on the wage-ledness of aggregate demand in many EU countries. These results stress the relevance of this particular form of path dependency for empirical research and policy debates on distribution and growth. |
| Keywords: | Keynesian models,Kaleckian models,Multiplier,Income distribution,Open economy |
| JEL: | D31 D33 E11 E12 F41 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ipewps:1212019&r=all |
| By: | Robert W. Dimand (Department of Economics, Brock University) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the development of dynamic modelling of macroeconomic fluctuations at the Cowles Commission from Roos, Dynamic Economics (Cowles Monograph No. 1, 1934) and Davis, Analysis of Economic Time Series (Cowles Monograph No. 6, 1941) to Koopmans, ed., Statistical Inference in Dynamic Economic Models (Cowles Monograph No. 10, 1950) and Klein’s Economic Fluctuations in the United States, 1921-1941 (Cowles Monograph No. 11, 1950), emphasizing the emergence of a distinctive Cowles Commission approach to structural modelling of macroeconomic fluctuations influenced by Cowles Commission work on structural estimation of simulation equations models, as advanced by Haavelmo (“A Probability Approach to Econometrics,” Cowles Commission Paper No. 4, 1944) and in Cowles Monographs Nos. 10 and 14. This paper is part of a larger project, a history of the Cowles Commission and Foundation commissioned by the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale University. Presented at the Association Charles Gide workshop “Macroeconomics: Dynamic Histories. When Statics is no longer Enough,” Colmar, May 16-19, 2019. |
| Keywords: | Macroeconomic dynamics, Cowles Commission, Business cycles, Lawrence R. Klein, Tjalling C. Koopmans |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2195&r=all |
| By: | Antoinette Baujard (CREED and Tinbergen Institute, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands); Muriel Gilardone (Normandie Université, Unicaen, CNRS, CREM UMR 6211, F-14000, France) |
| Abstract: | Our paper offers a novel reading of Sen’s idea of justice, beyond the standard prisms imposed by theories of justice – resting on external normative criteria – and formal welfarism – involving the definition of individual welfare and its aggregation. Instead we take seriously Sen’s emphasis on personal agency and focus on his original contribution to the issue of objectivity. Firstly, we demonstrate that Sen’s idea of justice, with at its core “positional views”, is more respectful of persons’ agency than would be a theory based on individual preference or capability. Secondly, we argue that Sen’s conception of objectivity considers that both information and sentiments are relative to a position. Such an alternative approach to subjectivity allows the formation of more impartial views through collective deliberation and a better consideration of justice by agents themselves. |
| Keywords: | Individual preferences, positional objectivity, sentiments, public reasoning, agency, justice |
| JEL: | A13 B31 B41 D63 I31 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gat:wpaper:1922&r=all |
| By: | Noel Packard (University of Auckland) |
| Abstract: | Marx?s Machine Age theory of capitalism ascribes a unique driving role for alienation and argues new modes of production emerge from past modes of production. Presently so-called surveillance capitalism is superseding Machine Age capitalism and distributing wealth unequally to a 1% global elite. There are debates about what alienation is at work in this changed epoch. Premised on Marx?s idea that modes of production are born in the previous epoch along with the alienation that works with them, a hypothesis about how today?s Internet enables both endless free speech, while inversely and simultaneously, enabling endless spying with impunity is presented here. The hypothesis is a conceptualization of alienation labeled as ?known unknown.? The adaption of the term ?known unknown alienation? stems from the discourse in the film, ?The Unknown Known? which highlights aspects of known unknown alienation, in the form of so-called national security experts who are mentally divided about what they can and can not know (or talk about) and also the divide between the expert and the taxpayer, who does not qualify to have access to the same information that the expert has. This personal internal contradiction and social alienation is compounded because Americans are proud of US constitutionally protected free speech rights (which according to The Citizens United Act allows corporations to be individuals); these contradictions help drive surveillance capitalism. The historical-comparative argument is: ?Communist hunting? intelligence agents, scientists, and contractors, backed by neoliberal economists, built a military-industrial-complex that obligated them to both known and not know, or in the case of the CIA be ?witting? of national security secrets, which alienated them from US constitutional free speech. Their alienation manifest in their interactive inventions - the Internet, pc and cell phone - devices that today dialectically give customers the ability to express free speech endlessly in electronic memory form, while inversely giving spies unlimited access to that speech with impunity. This process works in tandem: enabling appropriation of data for government surveillance and service fee payments for corporations. |
| Keywords: | alienation, Internet, neoliberal, Cold War, intelligence, surveillance, witting |
| JEL: | H54 H56 O33 |
| Date: | 2019–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:9211641&r=all |
| By: | Mahnkopf, Birgit |
| Abstract: | Elmar Altvater was a renowned political economist and professor at the Otto-Suhr-Institute of Freie Universität Berlin from 1970 until 2006. Until his death in 2018 he was a point of reference for several generations of students, left-wing academics and politicians, trade union activists, representatives of civil society organizations in Germany, across Europe and in Latin America. He became one of the few academics in Germany who based the analysis of contemporary economic and political developments on a critical reading of Marxian approaches to understand the historical cycles of growth, recession and crisis in modern capitalism. The following text attempts to sketch some elements of a remarkable leftist intellectual history of the Federal Republic of Germany through the prism of Elmar Altvater while referring to some of the political initiatives Elmar Altvater was involved in and touching on some of the most important topics he has dealt with: the causes and consequences of the numerous debt crisis; the role of neoliberalism which emerged in the course of crisis of world finance since the late 1970s; the impact of "finanzialization" on social cohesion and politics at national, European and international level and, most importantly, his attempt to analyze the degradation of nature as the "price of progress" - on the basis of an ecologically expanded critique of political economy. |
| Keywords: | Marx,capitalism,critical political economy,debt crisis,globalization,nature |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ipewps:1232019&r=all |
| By: | Gabriella Conti (University College London); Giacomo Mason (University College London); Stavros Poupakis (University College London) |
| Abstract: | Building on early animal studies, 20th-century researchers increasingly explored the fact that early events – ranging from conception to childhood – affect a child’s health trajectory in the long-term. By the 21st century, a wide body of research had emerged, incorporating the original ‘Fetal Origins Hypothesis’ into the ‘Developmental Origins of Health and Disease’. Evidence from OECD countries suggests that health inequalities are strongly correlated with many dimensions of socio-economic status, such as educational attainment; and that they tend to increase with age and carry stark intergenerational implications. Different economic theories have been developed to rationalize this evidence, with an overarching comprehensive framework still lacking. Existing models widely rely on human capital theory, which has given rise to separate dynamic models of adult and child health capital, within a production function framework. A large body of empirical evidence has also found support for the developmental origins of inequalities in health. On the one hand, studies exploiting quasi-random exposure to adverse events have shown long-term physical and mental health impacts of exposure to early shocks, including pandemics or maternal illness, famine, malnutrition, stress, vitamin deficiencies, maltreatment, pollution and economic recessions. On the other hand, studies from the 20th century have shown that early interventions of various content and delivery format improve life course health. Further, given that the most socioeconomically disadvantaged groups show the greatest gains, such measures can potentially reduce health inequalities. However, studies of long-term impacts, as well as the mechanisms via which shocks or policies affect health, and the dynamic interaction amongst them, are still lacking. Mapping the complexities of those early event dynamics is an important avenue for future research. |
| Keywords: | developmental origins, health inequality, early intervention, health production function, health economics |
| JEL: | I14 J13 H52 |
| Date: | 2019–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2019-041&r=all |
| By: | Robert W. Dimand (Department of Economics, Brock University) |
| Abstract: | Founded in 1932 by a newspaper heir disillusioned by the failure of forecasters to predict the Great Crash, the Cowles Commission promoted the use of formal mathematical and statistical methods in economics, initially through summer research conferences in Colorado and through support of the Econometric Society (of which Alfred Cowles was secretary-treasurer for decades). After moving to the University of Chicago in 1939, the Cowles Commission sponsored works, many later honored with Nobel Prizes but at the time out of the mainstream of economics, by Haavelmo, Hurwicz and Koopmans on econometrics, Arrow and Debreu on general equilibrium, Yntema and Mosak on general equilibrium in international trade theory, Arrow on social choice, Koopmans on activity analysis, Klein on macroeconometric modelling, Lange, Marschak and Patinkin on macroeconomic theory, and Markowitz on portfolio choice, but came into intense methodological, ideological and personal conflict with the emerging “Chicago school.” This conflict led the Cowles Commission to move to Yale in 1955 as the Cowles Foundation, directed by James Tobin (who had declined to move to Chicago to direct it). The Cowles Foundation remained a leader in the more technical areas of economics, notably with Tobin’s “Yale school” of monetary theory, Scarf’s computable general equilibrium, Shubik in game theory, and later Phillips and Andrews in econometric theory but as formal methods in economic theory and econometrics pervaded the discipline of economics, Cowles (like the Econometric Society) became less distinct from the rest of economics. |
| Keywords: | Cowles Commission, Formalism in economics, Mathematics in economics, Cowles approach to econometrics |
| JEL: | B23 B41 C01 C02 |
| Date: | 2019–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2198&r=all |
| By: | Harold Carter |
| Abstract: | Social intervention by governments in liberal democracies faces two major problems. The first is that it tends to reward the majority at the expense of the weak; there is no agreed way to trade-off the claims of different groups on a limited pool of resources, so it comes down to political muscle. The second is that support for intervention depends on a continuing flow of new resources, to fix each new problem while still preserving the interests of existing clients – and as a result, subsidies and controls multiply, despite the fact that they often pursue conflicting goals. In the early days of the British welfare state these dilemmas were resolved by shared assumptions that were fundamentally illiberal, excluding some groups altogether and enabling a clear pecking order amongst the rest. By the end of the century these narratives had largely been rejected. What happened was not a collapse in the fact of collective provision (which continued to grow) but a collapse in the narrative by which it was understood. Unable to resist popular pressure to spend more, governments were also unable to build the public confidence necessary to persuade taxpayers to pay for what they wanted. The easiest course of action was to give in to vested interests; to fund as much as possible by borrowing, on and off the balance sheet; and once the money started to run out, to give in to the most powerful groups, and to pay proportionately less attention to the less vocal. |
| Date: | 2019–02–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:esohwp:_168&r=all |
| By: | Steven Henry Dunga (North West University, Vaal Triangle Campus) |
| Abstract: | Based on the literature analysis, housing insecurity does not have a universally validated measure or scale that can be used across societies and contexts to measure housing insecurity. The literature on housing and housing insecurity is marred with individualised preferences of what individual researchers or organisations appropriate to measure housing insecurity. This paper takes the first step of proposing a scale of measuring housing insecurity that can be adopted for any context be it in developed countries or developing societies. The paper recognises the economic thinking that claims that the tools of mathematics are not always appropriate in the analysis of social reality (Lawson 2015) hence cognisance of the fact that functions and calculus are not always the best, this paper still makes use of mathematical calculations involving weights and still relies on the development of constructs that can be useful in explaining the reality of housing insecurity. We ask the question, to what extent is the ontology of housing so abstract that the numbers can be misleading? It is argued in this paper that the conception of reality and hence housing insecurity can still depend on the mathematical tools to understand the ontology of housing insecurity. Going deeper this paper does not claim to belong to the pluralism, or neoclassical thought, but as anticipated, devoid of that discourse and make use and hence benefit from both mainstream economic theory and aspects utilised by the pluralist school of thought and hence makes reference to the ontology of economics. |
| Keywords: | housing insecurity; validated scale; household; poverty |
| JEL: | A10 A13 B41 |
| Date: | 2019–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:9010627&r=all |
| By: | JORGE OMAR RAZO-DE ANDA (INSTITUTO POLITÉCNICO NACIONAL); SALVADOR CRUZ-AKÉ (INSTITUTO POLITÉCNICO NACIONAL); ANA CECILIA PARADA-ROJAS (INSTITUTO POLITÉCNICO NACIONAL) |
| Abstract: | Minsky's idea of triggering a financial crisis is the adoption of risky financial positions by companies and their relationship with the financial system through banks and the credit they provide. The present work seeks to provide an explanation from a microeconomic point of view through the behavior of agents and their decision making under a Theory of evolutionary games, especially population games. The great advantage of this type of games is that it allows us to obtain proportions of the different decisions that a population or subpopulation is taking and how their interaction promotes equilibrium and the dynamics towards (or around) them.This allows us to determine the dynamics and equilibria of the credit cycle, following Minsky's idea of financial fragility. Additionally, the dynamics of the replicator allows transforming the differential equations in a Lotka-Volterra system, from which it can be concluded that both companies and banks adopt a predatory prey relationship in order to survive. |
| Keywords: | Capital Structure, Evolutionary Games, Behavioral Microeconomics |
| JEL: | G02 C73 G01 |
| Date: | 2019–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:9010806&r=all |
| By: | Julia M. Puaschunder (The New School, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces Mental Temporal Accounting – the behavioral economics application of mental accounting in the time domain. While most discounting studies are in the finance domain, social and environmental components have not gotten as much attention as appearing to require based on the novel perspectives this research grants. Theoretically we may also derive conclusions for contact theory and point at opening monetary gains focuses to social and environmental cues that may nudge people to perceive time differently and act on it accordingly. As mental accounting was successfully introduced to be extendable onto time, traditional mental accounting theory (Thaler 1999) should be revisted for attention to time discounting in the social and environmental spheres alongside the economic attention. Elucidating how contexts and experiencing critical life stages of parenthood influence temporal activity allocation choices promises to improve manifold decisions on education, health, asset management, career paths and common goods preservation throughout life for this generation and the following. |
| Keywords: | discounting, economic time, environmental time, mental temporal discounting, social time, time |
| Date: | 2019–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:dpaper:014jp&r=all |
| By: | Carlos Mallorquin (Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas); ; |
| Abstract: | The article discusses a recent book publication by Philip Pilkington, in which an interesting and novel reconceptualizing of the investment (accumulation) process and economic growth is proposed. The gaze and critique through which the book is examined underlines certain theoretical similarities found in the Latin American economic discourse during the 1950´s, denominated as “Latin American structuralism”, in Anglo Saxon or European academia. Central to its perspective is the examination of economic formations and its agents as a configuration of power asymmetries. |
| Keywords: | Desarrollo, crecimiento económico, asimetrías. |
| JEL: | B22 B41 B50 |
| Date: | 2019–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cjz:ca41cj:53&r=all |
| By: | Adam Villa (Providence College) |
| Abstract: | Tableau is a software application that can help you visualize and understand your data. It can connect to almost any data type and allows users to quickly drag and drop data items to create visualizations that can be shared across platforms. Tableau can be infused into any course that works with data and several examples of data analysis in different disciplines will be demonstrated and explained. This talk will showcase some of the software?s capabilities, including a variety of visualizations, tables, dashboards, and stories. It is also an excellent tool for a data analytics course and provides a great supplemental application for a database systems course, as Tableau can interface with most popular database systems. At the end of the talk, sample class exercises, and projects from an introductory data analytics course will also be discussed and presented. |
| Keywords: | Data Analytics, Teaching Tool, Software |
| Date: | 2019–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:9011181&r=all |