Tag Archives: Economics

Pubblicato da Brave New Europe, a breve la versione italiana. Sergio Cesaratto – The Next EU Degeneration February 2, 2021 Austerity, Economics, EU politics, EU-Institutions, Finance, Inequality, National Politics, Neo-Liberalism in the EU, Regulation, Solutions The Next Generation EU programme is full of pitfalls for many EU nations, as here in Italy. Sergio Cesaratto is Professor of Growth and Development Economics and of Monetary and Fiscal...

What is wrong with modern economics? It is simply that modern economists persist in insisting that a set of tools be everywhere adopted that are mostly inadequate to social analysis, given the nature of social phenomena … To put the matter bluntly (the pun may be useful), it is like attempting to cut the grass with a hammer or a piece of paper. The latter objects have their uses, but mowing the lawn is not one of them. Methods of applied mathematics of the...

Best advice to an aspiring economist — don’t be an economist 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...

It’s time to tax the Wall Street casino! Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.The measure of success attained by Wall Street, regarded as an institution of which the proper social purpose is to direct new...

Steht der Fall GameStop tatsächlich für eine Krise des Aktienmarkts, gar des Kapitalismus? Und sorgen die Anleger mit ihren Absprachen in den sozialen Netzwerken für eine Demokratisierung des Handels? Offen ist auch, ob es überhaupt legal ist, sich online abzusprechen und dann gemeinsam einen bestimmten Wert einfach aufzukaufen. “Darauf gibt es keine einfache Antwort”, sagt Michael Grote, Professor für Kapitalmärkte an der Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. “Es ist...

This paper presents a macroeconomics-friendly Post Keynesian model of the firm describing both an inventory theoretic approach and an entry deterrence approach to choice of excess capacity. The model explains why firms may rationally choose to have excess capacity. It also shows the two approaches are complementary and reinforcing of each other. Analytically, the paper […]

Affaire Gamestop — les fonds spéculatifs pris à leur propre jeu Cette semaine, le groupe new-yorkais Melvin Capital a perdu sa chemise sur les marchés – sur l’action de la société Gamestop, pour être précis –, le contraignant à mendier 2,75 milliards de dollars (2,27 milliards d’euros) auprès de ses concurrents pour éviter une faillite. Ses vainqueurs : une foule de boursicoteurs, saisis par l’ennui pendant la pandémie et qui se sont mis à jouer à Wall...

Mainstream economics — nonsense masquerading as science Assumptions in scientific theories/models are often based on (mathematical) tractability (and so necessarily simplifying) and used for more or less self-evidently necessary theoretical consistency reasons. But one should also remember that assumptions are selected for a specific purpose, and so the arguments (in economics shamelessly often totally non-existent) put forward for having selected a...

Häften för Kritiska Studier År 1968 utkom det första numret av Häften för kritiska studier. Under de mer än femtio år som gått sedan dess har mer än 200 nummer utkommit. För att fira detta tog några av tidskriftens redaktions-medlemmar ett initiativ till en jubileumsskrift som kom ut i början av år 2020. Yours truly har ett bidrag med i skriften och tänkte därför ta tillfället i akt att säga något lite mer personligt om denna fantastiska tidskrift som...

Let me conclude the discussion of rational-choice theory by emphasizing again its radically subjective nature … The rationality of beliefs is a completely different matter from that of their truth. Whereas truth is a feature of the relation between the belief and the world, rationality is a feature of the relation between the belief and the evidence possessed by the agent. Although rationality may require the agent to invest in new information, the investment is always...