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388 results

Central banks have once again proven to be the first line of defense in crisis-ridden times. With their far reaching actions they prevented the world from experiencing a collapse of financial markets on top of the severe health and economic crisis caused by Covid-19.
2021
Level: advanced
NextGen Central Banking: Central Banking and Climate change - A new era of monetary financing?
As part of the 2019/2020 Exploring Economics Experience, one of our supporters Prof. Steve Keen gave a presentation to our editorial team. Read more
2020
Level: expert
The foundations of monetary macroeconomics - Steve Keen | Exploring Economics Global Lecture
This essay analyses how the role of central banks changed since the global financial crisis, and how this directional change was accelerated by the outbreak of Covid-19.
2021
Level: advanced
Revolution without revolutionaries: interrogating the return of monetary financing
Source image New Economic Thinking Youtube channel Some years ago in the aftermath of the great financial crisis GFC of the first decade of the twentieth century Paul Krugman famously remarked that most macroeconomics of the last thirty years was spectacularly useless at best and positively harmful at worst It …
Level: advanced
Monetary Macroeconomics
The video presents different ways of how to measure the money supply and thereby explains the differences between M0, M1 and M2.
2012
Level: beginner
Money supply: M0, M1, and M2 | The monetary system
The article discusses whether the turning point in EU's Russia policy with sanctions aimed directly at Putin's war chest of foreign reserves will change the landscape of countries' foreign assets.
2022
Level: beginner
The Monetary Consequences of Vladimir Putin
This book challenges the mainstream paradigm, based on the inter-temporal optimisation of welfare by individual agents. It introduces a methodology for studying how institutions create flows of income, expenditure and production together with stocks of assets and liabilities, thereby determining how whole economies evolve through time.
2012
Level: advanced
Monetary Economics
This is a new online course at bachelor level. It presents an introduction into macroeconomics with a specific focus on the euro area. The theoretical part provides a critical presentation of the two key macroeconomic models: the (neo)classical approach and the Keynesian approach. This allows a comparative analysis of important macroeconomic topics: unemployment inflation government debt and Modern Monetary Theory banks and financial crises. The policy-oriented part discusses the monetary policy of the ECB and the specific challenges for fiscal policy in the euro area. The course also presents other euro area specific topics: Optimum currency area, euro crises, Next Generation EU and Green New Deal.
2021
Level: advanced
European Macroeconomics
Most mainstream neoclassical economists completely failed to anticipate the crisis which broke in 2007 and 2008. There is however a long tradition of economic analysis which emphasises how growth in a capitalist economy leads to an accumulation of tensions and results in periodic crises. This paper first reviews the work of Karl Marx who was one of the first writers to incorporate an analysis of periodic crisis in his analysis of capitalist accumulation. The paper then considers the approach of various subsequent Marxian writers, most of whom locate periodic cyclical crises within the framework of longer-term phases of capitalist development, the most recent of which is generally seen as having begun in the 1980s. The paper also looks at the analyses of Thorstein Veblen and Wesley Claire Mitchell, two US institutionalist economists who stressed the role of finance and its contribution to generating periodic crises, and the Italian Circuitist writers who stress the problematic challenge of ensuring that bank advances to productive enterprises can successfully be repaid.
2014
Level: advanced
Finance and Crisis: Marxian, Institutionalist and Circuitist approaches
The last 15 years have seen extensive research into ecosystem service valuation (ESV), spurred by the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005 (Baveye, Baveye & Gowdy, 2016). Ecosystem services are defined as “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems” (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, p.V). For example, ecosystems provide the service of sequestering carbon which helps regulate the climate. Valuation means giving ecosystems or their services a monetary price, for example researchers have estimated that the carbon sequestration services of the Mediterranean Sea is between 100 and 1500 million euros per year. The idea of ESV was a response to the overuse of natural resources and degradation of ecosystems, allegedly due to their undervaluation and exclusion from the monetary economy. ESV can be used (1) for policy decision-making, for example allocating funding to a reforestation project (2) for setting payments to people who increase ecosystem services, for example a farmer increasing the organic carbon content of their soil, and (3) for determining fees for people who degrade ecosystem services, for example a company that causes deforestation.
2021
Level: beginner
A Pluralist Perspective on Ecosystem Service Valuation Introduction
The mandate of central banks has seemed clear for decades : keep inflation low. Nevertheless borders between monetary, financial and economic policy have been blurry even before the pandemic.. Faced with the challenges of the climate crisis, slow growth, unemployment and inequality, does the financial and monetary system need a new constitutional purpose.
2020
Level: beginner
Beyond Price Stability
This Blog Post describes the U.S. federal reserve money system from the perspective of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Therefore it presents a theory of money creation, gives simple examples how this influences the economy and the historical process of why the monetary system of the US has developed this way.
2019
Level: beginner
An Introduction in the Federal Reserve Money system
The principle of effective demand, and the claim of its validity for a monetary production economy in the short and in the long run, is the core of heterodox macroeconomics, as currently found in all the different strands of post-Keynesian economics (Fundamentalists, Kaleckians, Sraffians, Kaldorians, Institutionalists) and also in some strands of neo-Marxian economics, particularly in the monopoly capitalism and underconsumptionist school In this contribution, we will therefore outline the foundations of the principle of effective demand and its relationship with the respective notion of a capitalist or a monetary production economy in the works of Marx, Kalecki and Keynes. Then we will deal with heterodox short-run macroeconomics and it will provide a simple short-run model which is built on the principle of effective demand, as well as on distribution conflict between different social groups (or classes): rentiers, managers and workers. Finally, we will move to the long run and we will review the integration of the principle of effective demand into heterodox/post-Keynesian approaches towards distribution and growth.
2015
Level: advanced
The principle of effective demand: Marx, Kalecki, Keynes and beyond
"The New Classical Macroeconomics "gives an accessible, rigorous, critical account of the central doctrines of the new classical economics, without unnecessarily difficult mathematics. It focuses on four central issues: the foundation of monetary theory; monetary and fiscal policy; labour supply and business cycles; and the attack on econometric models.
1990
Level: advanced
The New Classical Macroeconomics
Environmental cost-benefit analysis was developed by economists in the belief that monetary valuation of the environmental repercussions of economic activity is essential if the "environment " stands any chance of being included in government and business decisions.
2006
Level: advanced
Alternatives for Environmental Valuation
In a challenge to conventional views on modern monetary and fiscal policy, this book presents a coherent analysis of how money is created, how it functions in global exchange rate regimes, and how the mystification of the nature of money has constrained governments, and prevented states from acting in the public interest.
2015
Level: advanced
Modern Money Theory
"Bank Underground" is the staff blog of the Bank of England, founded to publish the views and insights of the people working for one of the world's oldest central banks. The blog covers a wide range of macroeconomic topics, mostly linked to the effects of monetary policy, of course, but not all the time. It provides timely, relevant analysis of contemporary challenges in economic policy and is thus often a perfect primer.
Level: advanced
Bank Underground
Post-Keynesians focus on the analysis of capitalist economies, perceived as highly productive, but unstable and conflictive systems. Economic activity is determined by effective demand, which is typically insufficient to generate full employment and full utilisation of capacity.
Post-Keynesian Economics
In this article, Rob Hoveman breaks down concepts like historical materialism and materialist analysis that are pivotal to understand Marx. He argues that abstractions are necessary for a concrete analysis of society that in turn should inform political practice.
2018
Level: advanced
Marx and historical materialism
The article compares market fundamentalism and right-wing populism on the basis of its core patterns of thinking and reasoning. Based on an analysis of important texts in both fields we find many similarities of these two concepts in their "inner images". Thus, we develop a scheme of the similar dual social worlds of right-wing-populism and market fundamentalism and offer some recent examples of market fundamentalism and right-wing populism mutually reinforcing each other or serving as a gateway for each other. We then apply our scheme for the analysis of the recent political developments and its ideological roots in the US under Donald Trump.
2017
Level: advanced
Right-wing populism and market-fundamentalism: Two mutually reinforcing threats to democracy in the 21st century
The Currency of Politics explains why only through greater awareness of the historical limits of monetary politics can we begin to articulate more democratic conceptions of money.
2022
Level: advanced
The Currency of Politics
"First published more than a decade ago, Globalizing Capital has remained an indispensable part of economic literature. This classic book emphasizes the importance of the international monetary system for understanding the international economy. The second edition, published in October 2008, has consistently appeared on syllabuses since its release
2019
Level: advanced
Globalizing Capital
This book discloses the economic foundations of European fiscal and monetary policies by introducing readers to an array of alternative approaches in economics. It presents various heterodox theories put forward by classical economists, Marx, Sraffa and Keynes, as a coherent challenge to neoclassical theory.
2020
Level: advanced
Heterodox Challenges in Economics
Colonialism persists in many African countries due to the continuation of imperial monetary policy. This is the little-known account of the CFA Franc and economic imperialism.
2021
Level: beginner
Africa's Last Colonial Currency
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.
2020
Level: beginner
The Job Guarantee
This teaching pack focuses on the practice and real-world activities of central banks. It assumes students have a grasp of basic macroeconomic concepts already, and is therefore most suitable to be used at the end of introductory macro courses, or in more advanced macro or monetary economics courses.
2022
Level: beginner
The Practice of Central Banking
This course offered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on edX provides an introduction in the major econometric tools used in standard Macroeconomics.
Level: advanced
Macroeconometric Forecasting
Finance at the Threshold offers a unique perspective from an English economic and monetary historian. In it the author asks: Why did the banks stop lending to one another, and why now? Was it merely a matter of over-loose credit due to the relaxation of traditional prudence, or did global finance find itself at its limits?
2016
Level: advanced
Finance at the Threshold
Banking 101 is a series of 6 short videos that ask the following questions: How do banks work and how is money created? Is reveals common misunderstandings of money creation and the role of banks. Furthermore, the videos show how models taught in many introductory classes to economics (Econ 101) do not reflect those processes: Part 1) “Misconceptions around Banking” questions common comprehensions of how banks work (savings = investments). Part 2) “What's wrong with the money multiplier” states that the model of the money multiplies is inaccurate. Part 3) “How is money really made by banks” explains the process of money creation, loans and inter-bank settlement. Part 4) “How much money banks create?” asks what limits the money creation by banks and presents the difference between reserve ratio, liquidity ration, equity and refers to the inter-bank market. Part 5) Explores the question if banks create money or just credit and especially refers to credit risks. Part 6) Explains how money gets destroyed when loans are paid back. Note: The videos refer to the UK monetary and banking system, some explanations don't apply to other banking systems, e.g. the reserve ratio.
2012
Level: beginner
How money gets destroyed - Banking 101 (Part 6 of 6)
Banking 101 is a series of 6 short videos that ask the following questions: How do banks work and how is money created? Is reveals common misunderstandings of money creation and the role of banks. Furthermore, the videos show how models taught in many introductory classes to economics (Econ 101) do not reflect those processes: Part 1) “Misconceptions around Banking” questions common comprehensions of how banks work (savings = investments). Part 2) “What's wrong with the money multiplier” states that the model of the money multiplies is inaccurate. Part 3) “How is money really made by banks” explains the process of money creation, loans and inter-bank settlement. Part 4) “How much money banks create?” asks what limits the money creation by banks and presents the difference between reserve ratio, liquidity ration, equity and refers to the inter-bank market. Part 5) Explores the question if banks create money or just credit and especially refers to credit risks. Part 6) Explains how money gets destroyed when loans are paid back. Note: The videos refer to the UK monetary and banking system, some explanations don't apply to other banking systems, e.g. the reserve ratio.
2012
Level: beginner
Misconceptions around Banking - Banking 101 (Part 1 of 6)
Banking 101 is a series of 6 short videos that ask the following questions: How do banks work and how is money created? Is reveals common misunderstandings of money creation and the role of banks. Furthermore, the videos show how models taught in many introductory classes to economics (Econ 101) do not reflect those processes: Part 1) “Misconceptions around Banking” questions common comprehensions of how banks work (savings = investments). Part 2) “What's wrong with the money multiplier” states that the model of the money multiplies is inaccurate. Part 3) “How is money really made by banks” explains the process of money creation, loans and inter-bank settlement. Part 4) “How much money banks create?” asks what limits the money creation by banks and presents the difference between reserve ratio, liquidity ration, equity and refers to the inter-bank market. Part 5) Explores the question if banks create money or just credit and especially refers to credit risks. Part 6) Explains how money gets destroyed when loans are paid back. Note: The videos refer to the UK monetary and banking system, some explanations don't apply to other banking systems, e.g. the reserve ratio.
2012
Level: beginner
Do banks create money or just credit? - Banking 101 (Part 5 of 6)
Banking 101 is a series of 6 short videos that ask the following questions: How do banks work and how is money created? Is reveals common misunderstandings of money creation and the role of banks. Furthermore, the videos show how models taught in many introductory classes to economics (Econ 101) do not reflect those processes: Part 1) “Misconceptions around Banking” questions common comprehensions of how banks work (savings = investments). Part 2) “What's wrong with the money multiplier” states that the model of the money multiplies is inaccurate. Part 3) “How is money really made by banks” explains the process of money creation, loans and inter-bank settlement. Part 4) “How much money banks create?” asks what limits the money creation by banks and presents the difference between reserve ratio, liquidity ration, equity and refers to the inter-bank market. Part 5) Explores the question if banks create money or just credit and especially refers to credit risks. Part 6) Explains how money gets destroyed when loans are paid back. Note: The videos refer to the UK monetary and banking system, some explanations don't apply to other banking systems, e.g. the reserve ratio.
2012
Level: beginner
What's wrong with the money multiplier? - Banking 101 (Part 2 of 6)

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