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The Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE) and the Progressive Economic Forum (PEF) are hosting a: “Post-Keynesian Summer School”, on the campus of the University of Toronto, June 23-25, 2017. Over 2 and a half days, the summer school will introduce students to post-Keynesian economics, both theory and policy, and will feature some of the biggest names in post-Keynesian economics.  Registration is only $50 US, and includes all coffee breaks and a reception. The school is open to both...

Highlights Factory orders, like much of the economy, fizzled in March, up only 0.2 percent and skewed higher for a third month in a row by aircraft. The split between the report’s two main components shows a 0.5 percent dip for nondurable goods — the new data in today’s report where weakness is tied to petroleum and coal — and a 0.9 percent rise for durable orders which is 2 tenths higher than last week’s advance report for this component. The gain for durables looks...

from Peter Radford Jamie Galbraith’s conclusion in his essay at Dissent magazine: “The progressive alternative to an economic program of reckless stimulus and real-estate capital gains is a program of full employment, fair wages, and broad investment in social, cultural, and environmental needs, backed by taxes that fall directly on rents, monopoly profits, and on inheritances, thus directly dismantling the dynastic oligarchy that has been running the United States, through both parties,...

from Peter Söderbaum, Judy Brown and Małgorzata Dereniowska and WEA Commentaries What would an alternative economics and economy look like for a sustainable future? As with any normative vision, such as that of a sustainable economy and society, a variety of responses and perspectives can be legitimately sought. Out of those, for many economists, only the perspectives that result in outcomes that are (potentially) Pareto improvements are economically meaningful. But sustainability and...

U.S. small business borrowing stalls in March By Ann Saphir May 1 (Reuters) — Borrowing by small U.S. firms stalled in March, as business owners remained cautious about investing amid policy uncertainty, data released on Monday showed. The Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index for March registered 134, down 1 percent from last March. The index was up 4 percent from February, which had four fewer working days. Doesn’t seem to scale very well… ;) Tesla said net...

from Lars Syll The completeness of the Ricardian victory is something of a curiosity and a mystery. It must have been due to a complex of suitabilities in the doctrine to the environment into which it was projected. That it reached conclusions quite different from what the ordinary uninstructed person would expect, added, I suppose, to its intellectual prestige. That its teaching, translated into practice, was austere and often unpalatable, lent it virtue. That it was adapted to carry a...

from Dean Baker The NYT had an article reporting on how the Pew Research Center had discovered work done by the Economic Policy Institute for a quarter century (the middle class is hurting). At one point the piece compares the United States with France and Germany: “The United States, including the middle class, has a higher median income than nearly all of Europe, even if the Continent is catching up. The median household income in the United States was $52,941 after taxes in 2010,...

from Dean Baker There has been growing attention in recent years to the near monopolization of many sectors of the U.S. economy. For example, Google completely dominates the search engine market, while Facebook has an overwhelming presence in social media. Amazon controls close to 70 percent of book sales in the United States and an ever growing share of retail more generally. Microsoft remains by far the dominant force in computer operating system software. Recent research has found an...

Low and worse than expected, and inline with the deceleration in bank auto lending, as previously discussed, which doesn’t bode well for other sales measures tied to credit expansion: Highlights The earliest hint on whether consumer spending bounced back in April is positive. Unit vehicle sales rose from March’s very soft 16.6 million annualized rate to 16.9 million which however is below expectations for 17.2 million. Sales to consumers and sales to businesses are not...

from Lars Syll Ricardo’s … interest was in the clear-cut result of direct, practical significance. In order to get this he cut that general system to pieces, bundled up as large parts of it as possible, and put them in cold storage — so that as many things as possible should be frozen and ‘given.’ He then piled one simplifying assumption upon another until, having really settled everything by theses assumptions, he was left with only a few aggregative variables between which, he set up...