Real-World Economics Review

from Dean Baker I have written repeatedly on how we should have been looking for a collective solution to the pandemic, where countries open-source their research and allow anyone with manufacturing capacity to produce any treatment, test, or vaccine. (We pay upfront, like with Moderna, for those wondering why anyone would do the work.) Anyhow, we obviously did not go that route under Donald Trump. Along with many others, I have argued that we should still go this route, sharing all our...

from Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan Capital as power, differential accumulation and dominant capital According to the theory of capital as power (CasP), capitalists and corporations are driven not to maximize profit, but to ‘beat the average’. Their yardstick is not an unmeasurable theoretical abstraction, but the readily observable performance of others. Their aim is not to increase their ‘material gain’, counted in fictitious utils or socially necessary abstract labour time, but...

from Lars Syll Clearly, neoclassical economists believe that neoclassical microeconomic theory is theoretically coherent and provides the best explanation of economic activity; therefore there is no good reason to not teach it, if not exclusively. Many heterodox economists also broadly agree with this position, although not with all the particulars. However, sufficient evidence exists showing that as a whole neoclassical microeconomic theory is theoretically incoherent and without...

from Peter Radford This is a long speculation, for which I apologize, provoked by the following: “In an information civilization, societies are defined by questions of knowledge — how it is distributed, the authority that governs its distribution and the power that protects that authority. Who knows? Who decides who knows? Who decides who decides who knows? Surveillance capitalists now hold the answers to each question, though we never elected them to govern. This is the essence of the...

from Dean Baker It’s fair to say that the U.S. performance in dealing with the pandemic has been disastrous. With the effort led by Donald Trump, this is not surprising. His main, if not only, concern was keeping up appearances. Preventing the spread of the pandemic, and needless death, was obviously not part of his agenda. Unfortunately, many other wealthy countries, like France, Belgium, and Sweden, have not done much better. They don’t have the excuse of having a saboteur in charge who...

from Asad Zaman  “my views are based on insights acquired from MMT, but  .  . . . . . . . . . . . ”          In this post, I will provide a critique of Raguram Rajan’s article “How Much Debt is Too Much?”. (Alternative link to Rajan’s article) The article opens with a description of the governments “opening their coffers, to support small households and firms” in the COVID era. Required spending has been on the order of 15-20% of the GDP, and the article examines the extent to which...

Rick and Dean discuss the recent market uncertainty and how the GameStop revolution is likely to play out.

from Lars Syll And still, amidst all this tumult, many economists are disinclined to rethink the foundations of their field. It reminds me of the closing joke in Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall. A guy has a crazy brother who thinks he is a chicken.  The doctor asks, ‘Why don’t you turn him in?’ The guy replies, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.’ ” Why is the free-market discourse so perdurable despite so many social, ecological, and political realities that call its logic and categories of...

Intellectual property like pharmaceutical patents is part of the story of why so many people face a long wait for COVID-19 vaccines says Dean Baker discussing the high cost of policy choices that make the rich richer at public expense.

Covid 19 vaccinations are going well. Quite a number of vaccines have been approved. And these are being used. At the time of writing close to 100 million ‘jabs’ have already been provided, not just of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine but also of the Sputnic, AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines. And the pace is quickening, for instance in countries like Brazil and Morocco (which uses AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines in its 3.000 vaccination centres). Look here for the scientific...