Naked Keynesianism

A two part paper by Ariel Dvoskin and Germán David Feldman. From the abstract:In this two-part paper, we explore the interaction between income distribution and the balance of payments, by assessing the contributions of three Argentinian exponents of the Latin American Structuralist School: Oscar Braun, Marcelo Diamand and Adolfo Canitrot. With this aim, we introduce a two-sector model inspired by the classical tradition. Part I of the article examines the implications for prices and...

I can't watch this either For those interested in the Brazilian situation I highly recommend the recently published paper by Franklin Serrano and Ricardo Summa (Review of Radical Political Economics page here). From the abstract: In this paper, we analyze Brazilian inflation under the inflation-targeting system from a conflict inflation perspective and show how the inflation target system only worked well when there was a trend of exchange rate appreciation. Later, the strengthening of...

So the Turkish foreign exchange crisis is all over the news. But the Argentine one is less conspicuous in the international media. Turkey's economy has had many similarities with Latin American economies over the years, in terms of the incomplete process of industrialization, and the types of crises associated with neoliberal reforms over the last three decades. Note, however, that the Argentine nominal depreciation has been larger than the Turkish (the same is true if you go back to the...

[embedded content] Author of a great book on James Buchanan, that is certainly worth reading. The whole thing is related to Buchanan's constitutional economics and how it underpins the Koch's strategy to take over the country (and Pence is their guy, btw). The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that has been so influential in the far- right conservative movement take over of US politics at the State and local level (see this old piece in The Atlantic, or this in The Nation) has a...

Almost a decade ago, The Economist had a cover story about the Brazilian economy taking off. Everything seemed fine, with the Brazilian economy on the verge of surpassing Britain and France, and on its way to economic development. Among the reasons given for the Brazilian success was the fact that the country had “established some strong political institutions.” But many other factors were cited, like fiscal restraint, an independent central bank, openness to foreign direct investment,...

From the Real News Network: [embedded content] This Real News segment with Professor Leo Panitch is worth watching for those that miss Obama (perhaps should be seen together with the reading of this piece on Mike Pence, for those that think that he would be much better than the orange one). At any rate, besides the fact that Obama was not even for more than a very moderate reform of the system, and that he still justifies globalization in neoliberal terms, it seems to me that Panitch (and...

 By Thomas Palley (Guest blogger)The conventional wisdom is there have been two globalizations in the modern era. The first began around 1870 and ended in 1914. The second began in 1945 and is still underway. This paper challenges that view and argues there have been three globalizations, not two. The first half of the paper provides empirical evidence for the three globalizations hypothesis. The second half discusses its analytical implications. The Victorian first globalization and...

By Thomas Palley (Guest blogger)The deepening of economic globalization appears to have ground to a halt and the process may even unravel a little. The sudden stop has surprised economists, whose belief in globalization has strong parallels with Fukuyama’s (1989) flawed end of history hypothesis. The paper presents a simple analytic model that shows how economic globalization has triggered political and geopolitical contradictions. For the system to work, politics within countries and...

Brief note in Spanish (no translation, sorry) on the long history of central banks and the current policies of the Argentinean central bank (BCRA). The gist of the argument is that while central banks where created to finance developmental states in the nascent merchant capitalist societies, in the periphery they tended to follow the Victorian model (implemented later) emphasizing inflation control as the main official goal. However, often, as in the recent case of the BCRA, they are used...

A roundtable with Daniela Gabor, Roberto Lampa and Pablo Bortz, on the IMF and its Programs this Thursday in Buenos Aires, organized by the Masters in Economic Development at the Universidad de San Martín (UNSAM).