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With the onset of an economic crisis that has been universally acknowledged since the end of March, two main questions arise: To what extent is the corona pandemic the starting point (or even the cause) of this crisis? And secondly: can the aid programmes that have been adopted prevent a deep and prolonged recession?
Economic crisis only because of the Corona pandemic?
Exploring Economics, an open-source e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.
Yes, Money is Endogenous. Who Cares?
The notion that the demand and supply side are independent is a key feature of textbook undergraduate economics and of modern macroeconomic models. Economic output is thought to be constrained by the productive capabilities of the economy - the ‘supply-side' - through technology, demographics and capital investment. In the short run a boost in demand may increase GDP and employment due to frictions such as sticky wages, but over the long-term successive rises in demand without corresponding improvements on the supply side can only create inflation as the economy reaches capacity. In this post I will explore the alternative idea of demand-led growth, where an increase in demand can translate into long-run supply side gains. This theory is most commonly associated with post-Keynesian economics, though it has been increasingly recognised in the mainstream literature.
It’s Demand All the Way Down
Michael Kalecki famously remarked “I have found out what economics is; it is the science of confusing stocks with flows”. Stock-Flow Consistent (SFC) models were developed precisely to address this kind of confusion. The basic intuition of SFC models is that the economy is built up as a set of intersecting balance sheets, where transactions between entities are called flows and the value of the assets/liabilities they hold are called stocks. Wages are a flow; bank deposits are a stock, and confusing the two directly is a category error. In this edition of the pluralist showcase I will first describe the logic of SFC models – which is worth exploring in depth – before discussing empirical calibration and applications of the models. Warning that there is a little more maths in this post than usual (i.e. some), but you should be able to skip those parts and still easily get the picture.
Stock Flow Consistent Macroeconomics
One of the pluralist theories which has gained prominence following the 2008 financial crisis is Hyman Minsky and his Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH). Minsky was unique in viewing balance sheets and financial flows as the primary components of capitalist economies, and his focus on the financial system meant he was well-equipped for foresee a crisis much like 2008. Although he died long before 2008 his framework anticipated many of the processes which led to the crash, particularly increased risk-taking and financial innovation which would outstrip the abilities of regulators and central banks to manage the system.
Minsky’s Moments
How countries achieve long-term GDP growth is up there with the most important topics in economics. As Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas put it “the consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.” Ricardo Hausmann et al take a refreshing approach to this question in their Atlas of Economic Complexity. They argue a country’s growth depends on the complexity of its economy: it must have a diverse economy which produces a wide variety of products, including ones that cannot be produced much elsewhere. The Atlas goes into detail on exactly what complexity means, how it fits the data, and what this implies for development. Below I will offer a summary of their arguments, including some cool data visualisations.
GDP Growth: It’s Complicated
Feminist economics is a key component of the movement for pluralism in economics and one that has, to some extent, been acknowledged by the mainstream of the profession. It seeks to highlight issues which affect women because (it claims) they have not traditionally been recognised in a field dominated by men. On top of this, it seeks to carve out a space for women in the discipline, both for intrinsic reasons of fairness and diversity and because it means that women’s issues are more likely to be highlighted going forward.
Why Feminist Economics is Necessary
The most successful multialternative theories of decision making assume that people consider individual aspects of a choice and proceed via a process of elimination. Amos Tversky was one of the pioneers of this field, but modern decision theorists – most notably Neil Stewart – have moved things forward. At the current stage the theories are able to explain a number of strictly ‘irrational’ but reasonable quirks of human decision making, including various heuristics and biases. Not only this, but eye movements of participants strongly imply that the decision-making process depicted in the theories is an accurate one.
The Quirks of Human Decisions, Explained
One method of economic modelling that has become increasingly popular in academia, government and the private sector is Agent Based Models, or ABM. These simulate the actions and interactions of thousands or even millions of people to try to understand the economy – for this reason ABM was once described to me as being “like Sim City without the graphics”. One advantage of ABM is that it is flexible, since you can choose how many agents there are (an agent just means some kind of 'economic decision maker' like a firm, consumer, worker or government); how they behave (do they use complicated or simple rules to make decisions?); as well as the environment they act in, then just run the simulation and see what happens as they interact over time.
Agents, agents everywhere
Die ökonomische Theorie hat mit Moral wenig oder gar nichts zu tun. In den gängigen Lehrbüchern der Mikroökonomie findet sich in den Stichwortverzeichnissen kein Eintrag zu Moral oder Ethik. Die Studierenden lernen über die Wirtschaft nachzudenken, aber sie lernen dabei nicht, systematisch über ethische Fragen zu reflektieren. Nach der neoklassischen Lehre, wie sie in den Lehrbüchern präsentiert wird, weist wirtschaftliches Handeln nicht grundsätzlich moralische Aspekte auf.
Ökonomie und Moral: Eine kurze Theoriegeschichte
Während die Pluralismus-Debatte in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften an Fahrt aufgenommen hat, gibt es seit einigen Jahren vermehrt Forschung zur Vielfalt der wirtschaftlichen bzw. wirtschaftspolitischen Berichterstattung. Die Studie „Qualifiziert für die Zukunft? Zur Pluralität der wirtschaftsjournalistischen Ausbildung in Deutschland“ hat diese Debatten erstmals zusammengeführt und die Frage aufgeworfen: Wie ökonomisch plural und reflexiv werden angehende Wirtschaftsjournalist:innen ausgebildet? Kernergebnis: Vor allem ökonomische Grundlagenveranstaltungen sind überwiegend orthodox ausgerichtet und prägen potenziell nicht nur Ökonomie-Studierende, sondern auch zukünftige Journalist:innen – und damit zentrale mediale „Gatekeeper“ für ökonomische Theorien und Perspektiven.
Pluralismus-Debatte meets Wirtschaftsjournalismus
This article demonstrates Schumpeter s propagated approach to monetary analysis in macroeconomics so as to provide for a better understanding of the relation between finance and growth Peter Bofinger Lisa Geißendörfer Thomas Haas Fabian Mayer voxEU
Discovering the 'true' Schumpeter: New insights on the finance and growth nexus
This syllabus provides an overview of the contents of the course "Understanding Economic Models" at the University of Helsinki.
Understanding Economic Models
This article explores the production function, the prevailing view of capital that underpins it, and the main alternative perspective. By exploring these perspectives, the authors aim to provide students with a foundational understanding of the controversies surrounding the treatment of capital in production, a topic expressly excluded from mainstream textbooks.
Why We Should Think Twice About Production Functions
Der Fokus der Österreichischen Schule liegt auf der wirtschaftlichen Koordination von Angebots- und Nachfrageplänen zwischen Individuen. Konstitutiv sind u.a. der Subjektivismus, das Nutzenprinzip, Laissez-faire-Politik, fundamentale Unsicherheit sowie der Fokus auf den/die Unternehmer*in.
Österreichische Schule
Der Fokus der Neoklassik liegt auf dem Umgang mit knappen Ressourcen. Analysen beschäftigen sich mit der effizienten Allokation von Ressourcen, um den Wohlstand zu vermehren.
Neoklassik
In 18th century Europe figures such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Friedrich List and Jean Baptiste Colbert developed theories regarding international trade, which either embraced free trade seeing it as a positive sum game or recommended more cautious and strategic approaches to trade seeing it as a potential danger and a rivalry and often as a zero-sum game. What about today?
Free trade in economic theories
Fabian Georgi analyses how migration and borders are connected to capitalism.
Recruiting skilled labour, while closing borders? The connection between migration, border regimes and capitalism
Extractivism is a development model based on exploiting and exporting raw materials. It is fundamental to reproducing entire societies, mainly in the Global South, while generating manifold dilemmas. This text situates extractivism within the broader landscape of global economic asymmetries, emphasizing the role of rents—excess revenues generated from resource extraction due to international price differentials—as a central analytical lens.
The Political Economy of Extractivism
The general idea of a Job Guarantee (JG) is that the government offers employment to everybody ready, willing and able to work for a living wage in the last instance as an Employer of Last Resort. The concept tackles societal needs that are not satisfied by market forces and the systemic characteristic of unemployment in capitalist societies. Being a central part of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), attention for the JG concept rose in recent years.
The Job Guarantee
Was ist Inflation? Warum ist sie relevant? Und gibt es eine einheitliche Theorie über ihre Wurzeln und Ursachen, oder ist sie ein umstrittenes Konzept? Genau darum geht es in diesem Text: Wir definieren, was Inflation eigentlich bedeutet, bevor wir uns mit einem interdisziplinären und pluralistischen Ansatz in die theoretische Debatte stürzen: Wie entsteht sie, welche Faktoren können sie beeinflussen, und was kann man dagegen tun?
Inflation
Das Paradigma der ökologischen Ökonomie (Ecological Economics) stellt einen multidisziplinärern Ansatz dar, um ein ganzheitliches Bild der wachsenden ökologischen Probleme und ihrer Verflechtungen mit der Ökonomie zu erhalten. Sie beschäftigt sich mit Ressourcenknappheit, Umweltverschmutzung, Klimawandel, Nahrungsmittelknappheit oder sozialer Ungleichheit. Hierbei werden wissenschaftliche Disziplinen wie Ökologie, Ökonomie, Physik und zunehmend auch andere Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften (z.B. Soziologie oder Philosophie) herangezogen, mit dem Ziel, im ökonomischen Denken auch ökologische, ethische, politische, institutionelle und soziale Faktoren zu berücksichtigen. In diesem Zusammenhang werden nichtzuletzt deshalb auch wesentliche Grundannahmen der orthodoxen Ökonomie sehr kritisch betrachtet (Constanza 1989, Ayres 2008, Spash 2010).
Ökologische Ökonomie
Bei der feministischen Ökonomie geht es darum, den unbezahlten Teil der Ökonomie sichtbar zu machen und die Geschlechterblindheit von ökonomischen Prozessen aufzudecken. Entstanden ist diese Theorierichtung in den 1960er Jahren, wobei die Wurzeln bis ins 19 Jahrhundert zurück reichen. Zu Beginn setzten sich die Feministen und Feministinnen vor allem für das Erreichen des Frauenwahlrechtes, für den Zugang zur Bildung und der Abschaffung der Vernunftehe ein. Die Gleichberechtigung von Mann und Frau war in der zweiten Welle des Feminismus zu finden. Bis heute gibt es zwischen Männern und Frauen Unterschiede, welche durch den Feminismus versucht werden aufzudecken und zu beseitigen. Zum Beispiel die Care-Arbeit, den Gender-Wage-Gap, keine Berücksichtigung in ökonomischen Modellen, etc.
Feministische Ökonomie
Die marxistische Ökonomie stellt eine Wirtschaftstheorie dar, die im Wesentlichen auf Karl Marx Hauptwerk „Das Kapital“ beruht. Aufbauend auf den Ansätzen der klassischen Nationalökonomie werden hierbei die kapitalistischen Produktionsweisen sowie der Grundwiderspruch zwischen Kapital und Arbeit analysiert und kritisiert (vgl. Kirchgässner 1988, S. 128). Ausgehend von der marxistischen Kapitalismuskritik werden insbesondere das Wesen der kapitalistischen Ausbeutung und der Klassenkonflikt zwischen Bourgeoisie und Proletariat behandelt (vgl. Utz 1982, S. 22-23).
Marxistische Ökonomie
Wie könnte eine ganzheitliche Theorie des Kapitalismus aussehen? Diese Einführung in die Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) kann helfen, die Verwobenheit von Produktionsverhältnissen und Unterdrückungsmechanismen im Kapitalismus zu analysieren und zu verstehen.
Social Reproduction Theory: Ein neuer Ansatz der feministischen Ökonomik?
David Harvey illustrates the five most common narratives on why the financial and economic crisis took place – from human frailty to policy failure.
RSA ANIMATE: Crises of Capitalism
What does political economy say about the global sugar production? Take a look at global trade regulations, intercountry inequalities, and the role of marketing.
Global sugar production - regulations, intercountry inequalities, and marketing
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Economic theory is centuries out of date and that's a disaster for ...
Why it's time for 'Doughnut Economics'
Happy International Women s Day This International Women s Day 2018 is an opportune moment to highlight prominent scholars of Feminist Economics As a subdiscipline of economics Feminist Economics analyzes the interrelationship between gender and the economy often critiquing inequities and injustices perpetuated by mainstream paradigms Work of this nature …
Happy International Women’s Day!
Andreas Siemoneit zu den Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer sozialen Utopie. „Man kann Marktwirtschaft und Kapitalismus deutlich voneinander abgrenzen und Marktwirtschaft als eine noch nicht realisierte soziale Utopie betrachten…“
Kapitalistische Wachstumszwänge mit Marktwirtschaft überwinden – Zu den Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer sozialen Utopie
Professor Jennifer Clapp explains the dynamics of financialization of land and agricultural commodities in Subsaharan Africa. She points to the historical roots of accelerated land speculation and their connection to financial institutions, both generating and reinforcing the process of financialization of African land. Besides talking about roots and dynamics of speculation with land on financial markets, she puts the perspective of scholarly investigation onto the investor's side in discussing guidelines of responsible investment and regulation in the front instead of focussing on the receiving countries.
Land and Financialization: Role of International Financial Actors in Land Deals in Africa
This Forum in the Boston Review deals with the role of economics in modern policymaking and presents a wide set of perspectives on the topic. The opening text by Suresh Naidu, Dani Rodrik and Gabriel Zucman aims to answer a range of common criticisms against the modern, neoclassical science of economics and its influence on public discussions.
Economics After Neoliberalism
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