Naked Keynesianism

My interview on the Argentinean crisis with Javier Lewkowicz from Página/12 is available here. In Spanish, though.

On of the issues between more mainstream Keynesians and their more heterodox counterparts is whether frictions are central for Keynesian results or not. Since the Neoclassical Synthesis the conventional view is that some rigidity or friction was behind the problems of unemployment, be that the liquidity trap (the Keynesian case with the flat LM, since Hicks 1937), the rigidity of wages (since Modigliani 1944), or some other coordination problem (mostly in the New Keynesian literature).In...

The inverted yield curve, as it is well-known, indicates a forthcoming recession. I used it last year to suggest that the recession was not in the near horizon. The conventional explanation follows Wicksellian ideas (see this old post). In the Wicksellian story, one can think of the 10 year bond rate as a proxy for the natural rate of interest, and the Fed Funds for the monetary or banking rate. Hence, whenever the short-term rate (Fed Funds) is above the long-term one, it would be...

Geoff Schneider sent a reminder that the deadline (9/4) for the ICAPE call for papers, for the San Diego conference next January 5 and 6, is just a couple of weeks away. See details for submitting a paper, panel or workshop proposal. in the following link. The main topic is Policy, Politics and Pluralism: Pluralistic economics for the post-Trump era. As we approach the 2020 elections, it is an opportune time for heterodox economists to articulate their vision for modern economic...

Table of contents of the next issue of the Review of Keynesian EconomicsThirlwall’s law at 40 Esteban Pérez Caldentey and Matías VernengoWhy Thirlwall’s law is not a tautology: more on the debate over the law J.S.L. McCombie Endogenous growth, capital accumulation and Thirlwall’s dynamics: the case of Latin America Ignacio Perrotini-Hernández and Juan Alberto Vázquez-MuñozThirlwall’s law and the terms of trade: a parsimonious extension of the balance-of-payments-constrained growth...

The Argentinean primary elections, which are very peculiar and take place all at once with all parties, were last Sunday. The primaries made some sense when the Peronist party was all divided and that allowed the main candidate to proceed, but with the move of Cristina Kirchner to the vice-presidential spot next to Alberto Fernández, and the unification of a good part of Peronism (in particular Sergio Massa), the primaries become essentially an anticipated election. And Peronism won...

Last summer readings The issue of class conflict and its relation to accumulation of capital was central for classical political economists of the surplus approach. That tradition has survived in political science mostly through the work of Marxist authors. And in many recent discussions of the Brazilian crisis, that started with the 2013 protests, the 2015 turn in economic policy (the so-called New Economic Matrix), the 2016 mediatic/parliamentary coup against Dilma, and the 2018...

Thirty pieces of silver As they discuss the new candidate for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and it seems that the lead candidate for Lagarde's position is the former Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, a pro-austerity member of the Labor Party (which I guess is at least nominally on the left), it is worth reading the new CEPR report on the possible effects of IMF programs in Latin America, more specifically the one in Ecuador, now that the country has been brought back...

The theory of value and distribution is at the heart of economics. To be clear, when I say that it is at the center, it means that discussions of almost any topic in economics, in one way or another, depend on a certain theoretical position about the theory of value and distribution. However, most economists have no clue about it, about the centrality of value. Not only they don't understand the original and now infamous labor theory of value (LTV), that dominated between Petty and Ricardo...

From original draft by Thirlwall Thirlwall's seminal paper on the balance of payments (BOP) constrained growth is forty years old. Paul Davidson once referred to the BOP constrained growth as a positive Post Keynesian contribution to economics. The Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE) will publish soon a special issue with many well-known contributors to the literature, and with a paper by Thirlwall himself.The idea built on the Kaldorian supermultiplier model (Kaldor mark II), and with...