Post-Keynesian

Despite the label at the bottom of this post, this is not really a profile of Amin. I happen to have started reading Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx's Law of Value (Monthly Review Press, 2018) last month. Here are a couple of quotations: "Vulgar economics is obsessed with the false concept of 'true prices,' whether for ordinary commodities, for labor, for money, for time, or for natural resources. There are no 'true prices' to be 'revealed' by the genius of the...

Apparently, a character in a current movie, Crazy Rich Asians is an economist. Dan Kopf considers whether she is a good economist. In a couple of recent tweets, Paul Krugman reacts: "Actually, I can fill this gap. "There was a movie titled The Internecine Project ... with James Coburn as a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers who gets a bunch of people to kill each other to hide his evil past. Sounds good to me, but the movie was terrible." -- Paul Krugman, 9 August 2018 I...

1.0 Introduction In explaining the policy implications of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory, Hayek argued that the central bank should try to keep the money rate of interest rate equal to the natural rate. Sraffa famously criticized Hayek by describing a model with multiple interest rates, not necessarily all equal. In reply, Hayek asserted that all the interest rates in Sraffa's example would be equilibrium rates. Sraffa had a rejoinder: "The only meaning (if it be a meaning) I can...

1.0 Introduction This is some well-established mathematics. I do not know of any use in economics. 2.0 The Field of Real Numbers I start by taking real numbers R, with binary operations for addition and multiplication, as known. 3.0 A Ring of Polynomials Consider polynomials with coefficients taken from the reals as a formal object: R[X] = { anXn + ... + a1X + a0 | n ≥ 0, coefficients from the reals. } The symbol X is known as an indeterminate. One does not consider it here as a...

A Switch-Point Perturbation Diagram I have a new working paper at SSRN. Abstract: This article presents an analysis based on a comparison of stationary states. With technology and relative markups among industries taken as exogenous, the long-period trade-off between wages and rates of profits is determined. A long-period change in relative markups among industries can create a switch point exhibiting capital-reversing. Around such a switch point, a higher wage is associated with firms...

I guess this is a post on current events in the United States. Some articles I have recently found interesting are: Sean Wilentz defends liberals from those further left. Gilad Edelman reacts in the Washington Monthly. Nathan Robinson on the range of ideas connected with socialism. I take it socialists want to work towards a society in which, "The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" (Karl Marx). The idea is that each person should be able to develop...

Whether or not the government should intervene in the economy is a false choice. Government and the economy are not too separate and non-intertwined entities. The standard introductory graduate microeconomics textbook now current was written by Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green. This happens to be from Chapter 15, in the part on the Edgeworth box: "We can now verify a simple but important fact: Any Walrasian equilibrium allocation ... necessarily belongs to the Pareto set... Thus, at any...

I have written up this result here Abstract: Paul A. Samuelson extends the Ricardian theory of foreign trade to a model of small open economies in which countries can trade semi-finished capital goods on international markets, as well as trade in produced consumer goods. He argues that this extension provides an additional gain from trade, which he labels the Sraffian bonus. This article demonstrates that trade in consumer and capital goods can result in a loss for an economy, given...

Figure 1: PPFs in Portugal1.0 Introduction This post continues these two posts. I change the model here to have wages advanced, not paid out of the surplus at the end of the year. I here consider an example of a model of stationary states in which two countries can trade in produced commodities to be used for consumption. The countries face given prices on international markets for traded commodities. (They are small open economies, in the jargon.) I take the rate of profits as given in...

Figure 1: Rates Of Profits for Specialization in Consumer Goods1.0 Introduction This post is a continuation of this example. How a country specializes in foreign trade depends on distribution. And foreign trade can reduce the consumption basket to be divided among the inhabitants of a country, as compared with autarky. 2.0 Patterns of Specialization Assume that the consumption basket in both countries contains both corn and linen. In a steady state, international prices and the...