Tag Archives: Economics

Stephanie Kelton läxar upp Sveriges finansminister En av USA:s mest uppmärksammade och omdebatterade nationalekonomer, Stephanie Kelton, kritiserar nu finansminister Magdalena Andersson. Enligt Kelton hade regeringen i vårbudgeten kunnat välja att låna ännu mer för att få fart på ekonomin. När finansministern på torsdagen presenterade vårbudgeten pratade hon åter igen om att regeringen har sparat i ladorna och därför kan satsa nu under pandemin. Hon har...

Debunking the trickle-down myth .[embedded content] What we see happen in the US and many other countries is deeply disturbing. The rising inequality is outrageous — not the least since it has to a large extent to do with income and wealth increasingly being concentrated in the hands of a very small and privileged elite. Societies where we allow the inequality of incomes and wealth to increase without bounds, sooner or later implode. The cement that keeps...

Barfuß Am Klavier (personal) [embedded content] Yours truly. Café Einstein, Berlin 1988. Photo by Bengt Nilsson.

Following the greatest economic depression since the 1930s, Robert Solow in 2010 gave a prepared statement on “Building a Science of Economics for the Real World” for a hearing in the U. S. Congress. According to Solow modern macroeconomics has not only failed at solving present economic and financial problems, but is “bound” to fail. Building microfounded macromodels on “assuming the economy populated by a representative agent” — consisting of “one single combination...

In general terms, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) defines the value of the currency as “what must be done to obtain it”. As MMT authors have noted, this general definition can be interpreted in terms of labor time. A Marxist interpretation, consistent with MMT’s general definition, is to define currency value in terms of socially necessary labor time. Two interpretations seem particularly suitable. A first approach is to define currency value as the reciprocal of the average money wage....

Tony Lawson and the nature of heterodox economics Lawson believes that there is a ‘coherent core’ of heterodox economists who employ methods that are consistent with the social ontology they implicitly advance. However, Lawson also acknowledges that many also use mathematical modelling, a method that presupposes a social ontology that is in severe tension with it. Therefore, I repeat, Lawson proposes that heterodox economists in fact exist in two groups,...

Reasoning is the process whereby we get from old truths to new truths, from the known to the unknown, from the accepted to the debatable … If the reasoning starts on firm ground, and if it is itself sound, then it will lead to a conclusion which we must accept, though previously, perhaps, we had not thought we should. And those are the conditions that a good argument must meet; true premises and a good inference. If either of those conditions is not met, you can’t say whether...

.[embedded content] Un viaggio in fondo ai tuoi occhi “dai d’illusi smammai” / Un viaggio in fondo ai tuoi occhi solcherò / Dune Mosse … Dentro una lacrima / E verso il sole / Voglio gridare amore  / Uuh, non ne posso più  / Vieni t’imploderò / A rallentatore, e … / E nell’immenso morirò! … Questa canzone è un’opera d’arte. Musica d’altissimo livello. Meravigliosa!

Nick Rowe was looking for the role of money in the Heuristic Macro Model, which is often used to introduce students to Trade economics. The problem he discovered is that there is only a role for money if there is friction in the model, and therefore a two-household (or household-firm or firm-firm) model makes money if not superfluous, then at least a poor substitute to direct barter. Following is a “finger exercise” for introductory economics the...

.[embedded content] Paul Samuelson once famously claimed that the ‘ergodic hypothesis’ is essential for advancing economics from the realm of history to the realm of science. But is it really tenable to assume — as Samuelson and most other mainstream economists — that ergodicity is essential to economics? In economics ergodicity is often mistaken for stationarity. But although all ergodic processes are stationary, they are not equivalent. So, if nothing else, ergodicity is an...