Tag Archives: MMT

The recent internet debates about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) have been interesting, but the various critics of MMT have largely missed the elephant in the room: automatic fiscal stabilisers. In my view (which may not reflect the official "MMT Party Line"), one of the keys strengths of MMT is that it is largely built around the importance of automatic stabilisers, and institutional details. The conventional view is to acknowledge the existence of automatic stabilisers, but otherwise...

The video below is of a three-part presentation by Bill Mitchell, L. Randall Wray and Martin Watts concerning their forthcoming MMT textbook. Throughout the presentation and in the Q&A session that follows there are interesting observations on the current state of university economics and prospects for MMT and the economics discipline in general. The presentation was given at the First International Conference on Modern Monetary Theory…. heteconomistMitchell, Wray and Watts on Teaching...

Bill addresses many issues in this post that MMT economists don't ordinarily focus on like capital markets, capital flows, capital flight, capital controls, and exchange rate depreciation. Since most progressives don't understand the background and dynamics they generally get sucked into commonly deployed neoliberal traps. Bill shows how they don't need to.Bill Mitchell – billy blogPrime Minister Corbyn should have no fears from global capital marketsBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics...

Perhaps the two greatest current macroeconomic problems are   a failure to optimally use resources (including people) the design and/or manipulation of the financial system to divert real resources from producers to a financial class The logical approaches to these problems are functional finance in the first case and changes in and/or enforcement of regulation of the financial system in the second case. Two groups that have gained visibility (academic, policy, and/or popular) on these...

Breaking into the big time!The New York Times | OpinionHow We Think About the Deficit Is Mostly WrongStephanie Kelton | former chief economist for the Senate Budget Committee Democratic staff and professor of public policy and economics at Stony Brook University

As I said, Italy, is now experimenting with paying for public services with tax credits. Presumably, this is happening because Italy doesn’t possess enough Euros to pay its citizens to provide all the goods and services needed to maintain and run the public sector of its social economy. And Italy can’t “create” the additional Euros it needs because that prerogative is the exclusive right of the EU Central Bank which Italy, even as a sovereign member of the EU, has no control over. But, as...

In a previous article, I explained why I am complacent about the state of economic theory in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). This matters for someone like myself, who is attempting to write primers explaining various economic concepts. However, for many followers of MMT, the more important question is how its theoretical concepts get translated into a new policy framework. This raises the question of political economy, which I largely shy away from. However, I will offer my eccentric...

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has been in the news quite a bit in the last few weeks.¹ It’s refreshing to see this considering how bad the state of macroeconomics is. I say this as someone who has been very critical of MMT for many years. I think they overreach on some items, but as a general theory I think they provide a much clearer and more useful picture of the macroeconomy than most mainstream economic schools do. Among the important things they get right: Pragmatic CapitalismWhy MMT is...

I am now in Helsinki where the weather is distinctly cooler (did I say colder) than it has been down in Southern Europe the past week. I don’t have much time for writing today. Tomorrow, we will be conducting a dual book launch (see www.reclaimthestate.org for details) and on Thursday, I will be presenting a public lecture at the University of Helsinki which is open to all to attend. For today’s blog, I am now able to provide a full video (minus Q&A) of my presentation at the British...

Alexander Douglas replies to Simon Wren-Lewis on MMT.Stories by Alexander Douglas on Medium by Alexander DouglasSimon Wren-Lewis, MMT, mathsAlexander Douglas | Lecturer in Philosophy, University of St. Andrews