Tag Archives: neoclassical economics

Thomas A. Boylan and Paschal F. O’Gorman’s paper “Kaldor on Debreu: The Critique of General Equilibrium Reconsidered” (2009) makes rewarding reading.Boylan and O’Gorman review Kaldor’s work on general equilibrium in, for example, Kaldor (1972) and (1985), in which Kaldor had argued that the repudiation of Walrasian general equilibrium theory, especially as newly expounded in the models of Debreu and others (e.g., see Debreu 1959), was a precondition for any proper and truly empirical...

The blogosphere has recently seen a new debate on the origin of money between George Selgin and David Graeber: Ilana E. Strauss, “The Myth of the Barter Economy,” The Atlantic, February 26, 2016 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/barter-society-myth/471051/ Though not by Selgin or Graeber, I gather that this article set off the debate.George Selgin, “The Myth of the Myth of Barter,” Alt-M Ideas for an Alternative Monetary Future, March 15, 2016....

William K. Black February 29, 2016     Brooklyn, N.Y. A blogger has trolled all heterodox economists as believers in the “occult.”  More precisely, he is upset about “econ people” (who are likely not economists) and who tweet him or post comments on his blog site.  The blogger further complains that these commenters say that they believe in heterodox economics and “new methodologies [that] are poised to topple mainstream economics.”  He then goes on to say:  “My typical response is to ask...

This is a major error of neoclassical theory, and the mistaken view some people still attribute to Keynes: that wage and price flexibility in theory is still a reliable and effective mechanism for reaching full employment, even if the real world has wage and price rigidities. In fact, Keynes rejected that view.Curiously, even some Institutionalist economists have failed to understand it. For example, even Gardiner C. Means – the American Institutionalist who developed administered price...

Robert Skidelsky, author of Keynes: The Return of the Master (London, rev. edn. 2010), speaks below in an interview on the state of neoclassical economics, banks, and inequality. Unfortunately, I don’t think Skidelsky sees the how rotten the current EU is and the merits of a possible Brexit, but apart from this there is much of interest here.[embedded content]

This is a talk Steve Keen recently gave at Cartanega University in Colombia on the flaws of equilibrium modelling in neoclassical economics.[embedded content]