Multiplier Effect

Jan Kregel | March 15, 2019 We are grieved to announce that Nina Shapiro, Professor of Economics Emeritus at St. Peter’s College, passed away on March 6. Nina was one of the first Levy Institute Visiting Scholars and a major contributor to the field of post-Keynesian economics. She passed away last week at the age of 71 from complications due to cancer. Nina was best known for her work on the post-Keynesian theory of the...

The New Keynesian monetary mainstream has brought out the big guns. Paul Krugman, Kenneth Rogoff, and Larry Summers have come out to shoot down the rising star known as “MMT,” which stands for Modern Monetary Theory. For a while, it was academically convenient to withhold paying any public attention that could foster competition in the field. Like other non-mainstream ideas in economics, MMT was simply ignored by our star mainstream economists, who are always ready and keen to lend...

Michael Stephens | March 11, 2019 This year’s Minsky conference will be a one-day affair, featuring keynote speakers that include St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, former PIMCO chief economist Paul McCulley (now Senior Fellow at Cornell Law), and First Vice President of the Minneapolis Fed, Ron Feldman. The Levy Institute’s Jan Kregel will be discussing reform of the eurozone system; Michalis Nikiforos will be...

Michael Stephens | February 4, 2019 Public interest in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is undergoing a new growth spurt, and progressive politicians are playing a key role in the current phase. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez recently referenced the heterodox framework to push back against the assumption that her ambitious policy proposals must, as a matter of financial necessity, be made budget-neutral (an assumption, as Brendan Greeley...

A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the next (2020) decennial census is illegal. The administration has already begun the process of appealing the ruling. One way to understand the broader context behind this proposed change is to see it as part of ongoing attempts to influence the outcome of the democratic process (efforts which include gerrymandering, voter registration purges, and so on). In this case, the addition of the...

L. Randall Wray | November 13, 2018 (These remarks will be delivered today at the UBS European Conference in London.) Q: These questions about deficits are usually cast as problems to be solved. You come from a different way of framing the issue, often referred to as MMT, which—at the risk of oversimplifying—says that we worry far too much about debt issuance. Can you help us understand where fears may be misplaced? Wray:...

Mainstream neoclassical economics is hooked on the idea of individual worker-savers as prime movers in capitalist market economies. As workers, individuals choose how much to work, determining the economy’s output; as savers, they determine how much of that output takes the shape of the economy’s capital investment. With banks as conduits channeling saving flows into investment, firms churn inputs into outputs that match worker-savers’ tastes. In this way, the neoclassical world gets...

L. Randall Wray | October 1, 2018 My remarks for the 2018 MMT Conference, September 28-30, NYC. I was asked to give a short presentation at the MMT conference. What follows is the text version of my remarks, some of which I had to skip over in the interests of time. Many readers might want to skip to the bullet points near the end, which summarize what I include in MMT. ****************************************************************************** As an undergraduate I...

Michael Stephens | September 24, 2018 We are accepting applications for the 2019 Hyman P. Minsky Summer Seminar, held here at the Levy Institute and the wider Bard College campus June 16–22: The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is pleased to announce the tenth Minsky Summer Seminar will be held from June 16–22, 2019. The Seminar will provide a rigorous discussion of both the theoretical and applied aspects of Minsky’s...

The 10th anniversary of the September collapse of the US financial system has led to a number of commentaries on the causes of the Lehman bankruptcy and cures for its aftermath. Most tend to focus on identifying the proximate causes of the crisis in an attempt to assess the adequacy of the regulations put in place after the crisis to prevent a repetition. It is interesting that while Hy Minsky’s work became a touchstone of attempts to analyze the crisis as it was occurring, his work is...