Naked Keynesianism

 A Socialist Rag My old Will Lyons  Lecture at Franklin & Marshall College in the Spring of 2021 is now a working paper. Prof. Lyons was a Bucknell Graduate, and a professor at F&M. The topic was based on the, at that time, recent reading of Jim Crotty's book. From the abstract:Right-wing critics of Keynes have often suggested that he was a socialist. His policy proposals were very often described as a slippery slope that would lead society into a totalitarian nightmare....

[embedded content] First part of my interview with Diego Polanco on the Argentine election, and the never ending crisis of the economy. Second part in a couple of weeks.

Javier Milei will be Argentina’s next president. Milei is an extreme right-wing populist, with authoritarian, some may say Fascistic, tendencies. He is an admirer of Trump and Bolsonaro. He is rumored to talk with his deceased dog, that he had cloned. His party’s proposals range from the dangerous – like dollarization, the closing of the Central Bank, the drastic reduction of social spending, the loosening gun ownership laws, and the criminalization of abortions – to the insane – like...

  “When I discovered that the economic order produced social disorder, they took away my scholarship.”New working paper by Tom Palley. From the abstract:This paper introduces the notion of monetary disorder. The underlying theory rests on a twin circuits view of the macro economy. The idea of monetary disorder has relevance for understanding the experience and consequences of the recent decade-long period of monetized large budget deficits and ultra-easy monetary policy. Current policy rests...

The 7th Godley-Tobin Lecture will be given by Antonella Stirati at the Eastern Economic Association meeting next Spring in Boston. The previous lecture by Professor Joseph Stiglitz will be published in the January issue of ROKE.

My piece in Phenomenal World on the Milei phenomenon, the possibility of dollarization, and the recent electoral results in Argentina. Read it here.

Updated version of a textbook chapter on exchange rate arrangements. It is for undergraduate use. From the abstract:The paper tries to provide a concise summary of the main debates on exchange rate arrangements. It a simple taxonomy of exchange rate arrangements, fixed, flexible and managed, and a brief analysis of the main debates about their advantages and disadvantages. It emphasizes the different policy objectives of mainstream and heterodox schools of thought, suggesting that they tend...

The talk here. Recording is not the best, and the Power Point cannot be seen. It is available here for those interested. [embedded content]Paper is here. From the abstract:In the overlapping global emergencies of the pandemic, climate change and geopolitical confrontations, supply shocks have become frequent and inflation has returned. This raises the question how sector-specific shocks are related to overall price stability. This paper simulates price shocks in an input-output model to...

Students will have a midterm soon. There will be some questions on the very likely shutdown (using the ISLM) and the minimum wage. The figure below shows the real (deflated with CPI) and nominal minimum wage for the US since 1939.No surprises in the story. Minimum wage in real terms peaked in 1969, a culmination of an expansion that started in the 1950s. It fell significantly starting in 1979, with the Volcker shock and the fixed nominal minimum wage during the Reagan years, and never...

The dollar's hegemony rests on the economic, military, and international political power of the USA. There have been two eras of dollar hegemony which were characterized by different models. Dollar hegemony 1.0 corresponded to the Bretton Woods era (1946-1971). Dollar hegemony 2.0 corresponds to the Neoliberal era (1980-today). The deep foundation of both models is USA power, but the two models have different economic operating systems. The articles in this book explore this and consider two...