Tag Archives: neoclassical economics

Ramanan analyzes the sleight of hand going on in the neoclassical world now regarding employment and fiscal policy.The Case for Concerted ActionTwin DeceitsV. Ramanan

Good analysis of utopian versus utopianism. Short and important. The difference is that between ideal and real.  If the core assumptions are unrealistic and infeasible, then the consequent conceptual model will be "utopian" in the pejorative sense, and the project unachievable — "pie in the sky." If there is a disconnect between the ideal and the real, then it's utopianism. If the assumptions are realistic and feasible, then the conceptual model will be "utopian" in the positive...

Brad rates this as a should-read. For anyone interested in Keynesianism, Post Keynesianism and MMT, the history of economics, or economic theory, it is a must-read. Conventional economists have apparently concluded that they don't need to read it if they even thought about, which most probably haven't, being under the spell of the "normal paradigm" in spite of its poor results empirically.Washington Center for Equitable GrowthJohn Maynard Keynes: Essays In Biography Brad DeLong Here...

History lesson. Trading one dogmatism for another?Michael Roberts BlogThe economics of Luther or Munzer?Michael Roberts

In other words, it is not the behaviour of the individual agents that determines the model’s overall structure, nor even the structure of the preference ranking. Instead it is the macro requirement for a particular structure which dictates the behaviour attributed to the individual agents.[2] The “purpose” of this “particular, useful structure” is to rationalize the macro “conclusion” assumed at the beginning of the exercise. The resulting model shows micro phenomena determining macro...

Fun.Lars P. Syll's BlogOn Econs and HumansLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

All this does not mean there is no natural unemployment rate, only that there is nothing natural about it. There never was. Project SyndicateNothing Natural About the Natural Rate of Unemployment Edmund S. Phelps | 2006 Nobel laureate in economics, and Director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University

… as the authors of the new report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development have explained, there is a growing concern that increasing market concentration in leading sectors of the global economy and the growing market and lobbying powers of dominant corporations are creating a new form of global rentier capitalism to the detriment of balanced and inclusive growth for the many. And they’re not just talking about financial rentier incomes, which has been the focus of...

As an historian, I am somewhat appalled at the inability of economists, including those on this blog to get the history of their own discipline straight.  The obsession has been with neoclassical economic’s attempt to turn economics into a physico-mathematical discipline as Walras phrased it, and the economists usually discuss this attempt within the historical context of their discipline pre-1945, with references, to  Walras, Marshall, Keynes, and others. It  became clear to me over...

‘America needs its unions more than ever.’ And ‘Labour reform could help restore the bargaining power of US workers.’ Can you believe that these are titles from articles in the Financial Times?  Mario Draghi, the president of the ECB, recently boasted that since 2015 the euro-zone gained more than 5 million jobs. New cheap jobs yes, and productivity remains historically low. Today’s lacking investment means that technology does not substitute for labour – the normal trajectory in...