Lars P. Syll

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Macroeconomics after the financial crisis A new volume of Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy series is out, featuring accessible, informative and provocative contributions by leading Post-Keynesian scholars on the shortcomings of mainstream microfoundeds DSGE modeling and the need for new — relevant and realist — views on economic — both fiscal and monetary — policies. Oh, and yes, yours truly is one of the contributors — as are e. g. James Galbraith, Engelbert Stockhammer and Jesper...

Keynes’ deadheads — still alive I am not confident, however, that on this occasion the cheap-money phase will be sufficient by itself to bring about an adequate recovery of new investment. It may still be the case that the lender, with his confidence shattered by his experiences, will continue to ask for new enterprise rates of interest which the borrower cannot expect to earn … If this proves to be so, there will be no means of escape from prolonged and perhaps interminable depression...

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Vienna and me (personal) An absolutely fabulous week in Vienna with visits to Café Central, Hofburg, Vienna State Opera, Belvedere, Pratern, etc., etc., but also, of course, giving a couple of lectures. Many thanks to University of Vienna, Rote Börsenkrach, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Society for Pluralism in Economics, and The Austrian Chamber of Labour.

Krugman and ‘what Keynes really meant’ Paul Krugman has often been criticized by people like yours truly for getting things pretty wrong on  the economics of  John Maynard Keynes. When Krugman has responded to the critique, by himself rather gratuitously portrayed as about ‘what Keynes really meant,’ the overall conclusion is — ‘Krugman doesn’t care.’ Responding to a post up here on the blog, Krugman writes: Surely we don’t want to do economics via textual analysis of the masters. The...

So much for pluralism … It comes as no surprise to me—but it probably does to everyone outside of economics—that a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow, Alberto Paloni, an expert in post-Keynesian theory, has been stopped from teaching a core degree module on macroeconomics. This, after an essay in the Royal Economic Society newsletter specifically cited Paloni’s course as introducing a necessary pluralism into the teaching of economics … All Paloni did was teach students some Post...

Lucas’ FORTRAN caricature of economics Lucas … internalized the caricature he extracted from Samuelson’s Foundations: that mathematical analysis is the only legitimate way of doing economic theory, and that, in particular, the essence of macroeconomics consists in a combination of axiomatic formalism and philosophical reductionism (microfoundationalism). For Lucas, the only scientifically legitimate macroeconomic models are those that can be deduced from the axiomatized...

  Back in the 80’s yours truly had the pleasure of studying German at University of Vienna. A wonderful town full of history and Kaffeehäuser. I’m really looking forward to visiting it again. In case you can’t be there, here’s an admittedly insufficient substitute, but still …  [embedded content]