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Real-World Economics Review

real-world economics review issue no. 100

real-world economics review issue no. 100 download whole issue Introduction to RWER issue 100          3 Real Science Is Pluralist           issue no. 5 – 2001Edward Fullbrook         5 Is There Anything Worth Keeping in Standard Microeconomics?          issue no. 12 – 2002Bernard Guerrien          11 How Reality Ate Itself: Orthodoxy, Economy & Trust          issue no. 18 – 2003Jamie Morgan          14 What is Neoclassical Economics?         issue no. 6 – 2006Christian...

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Inflation: should we take away the soup bowl?

The graph below has been constructed by economists of the European Central Bank. It’s based on national accounts data. It shows that present day inflation is profit driven, not wage driven. Money flows to profits, not wages. What does this mean for monetary, fiscal and income policy, taking some other aspects of inflation into consideration? Quite a lot. High central bank interest rates have a dual purpose. First, they are intended to show that central banks are serious. Let’s...

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Economics as ideology

from Lars Syll Although I never believed it when I was young and held scholars in great respect, it does seem to be the case that ideology plays a large role in economics. How else to explain Chicago’s acceptance of not only general equilibrium but a particularly simplified version of it as ‘true’ or as a good enough approximation to the truth? Or how to explain the belief that the only correct models are linear and that the von Neuman prices are those to which actual prices converge...

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People are not spending down their savings II

from Dean Baker Last month I wrote a piece where I managed to mangle a very simple point. While the reported saving rate had fallen in April, it was actually due to people paying more capital gains taxes, not the result of households spending down savings. The issue here is straightforward. Saving is defined as the portion of disposable income that is not consumed. Savings can fall either because either consumption has increased, or disposable income has fallen. We are not seeing...

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The Law of Demand

from Lars Syll Mainstream economics is usually considered to be very ‘rigorous’ and ‘precise.’ And yes, indeed, it’s certainly full of ‘rigorous’ and ‘precise’ statements like “the state of the economy will remain the same as long as it doesn’t change.” Although ‘true,’ this is, however — like most other analytical statements — neither particularly interesting nor informative. As is well known, the law of demand is usually tagged with a clause that entails numerous interpretation...

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Neoliberals do not like a free market, but they want you to think they do

from Dean Baker    It was very frustrating to read Noam Scheiber’s profile of Jaz Brisack, the person who led the first successful union organizing drive at a Starbucks. Brisack does sound like a very impressive person and it is good to see her getting the attention her efforts warrant. However, Scheiber ruins the story by repeatedly telling readers that the neoliberals, who have dominated political debate in recent decades, want a free market. Nothing could be further from the truth....

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Mainstream economics — the art of building fantasy worlds

from Lars Syll Mainstream macroeconomic models standardly assume things like rational expectations, Walrasian market clearing, unique equilibria, time invariance, linear separability and homogeneity of both inputs/outputs and technology, infinitely lived intertemporally optimizing representative household/ consumer/producer agents with homothetic and identical preferences, etc., etc. At the same time, the models standardly ignore complexity, diversity, uncertainty, coordination problems,...

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Should Ukraine be part the EU?

Ukraine applied for EU membership. The application has been accepted, the long journey towards membership has started. Good? Bad? Let’s first be honest about the EU. And the Russian empire – which of course is the main motivator behind the Ukrainian application. We can be short about the Russian empire. It is large, resource rich, not exactly a failed state but governed by a closed self- enriching criminal gang of with fantasies about a Russian greatness which never existed. It’s also...

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