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98 results
For some days, global financial markets are in turmoil. Central banks and governments are dealing with the unfolding crisis on a daily basis with seemingly u...
Replay of the financial crisis of 2008? What is different today, and what to expect?
"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.
Bank Underground
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.
The Practice of Central Banking
Examine what would happen if we were to deploy blockchain technology at the sovereign level and use it to create a decentralized cashless economy. This book explains how finance and economics work today, and how the convergence of various technologies related to the financial sector can help us find solutions to problems, such as excessive debt creation, banks getting too big to fail, and shadow banking.
The Blockchain Alternative
This course is an introduction to 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.
European Macroeconomics
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?
Finance at the Threshold
Financialization is one of the most innovative concepts to emerge in the field of political economy during the last three decades, although there is no agreement on what exactly it is. Profiting Without Producing by Costas Lapavitsas puts forth a distinctive view defining financialization in terms of the fundamental conduct of non-financial enterprises, banks and households.
Profiting Without Producing
Economists occupy leading positions in many different sectors including central and private banks, multinational corporations, the state and the media, as well as serving as policy consultants on everything from health to the environment and security. Power and Influence of Economists explores the interconnected relationship between power, knowledge and influence which has led economics to be both a source and beneficiary of widespread power and influence.
Power and Influence of Economists
This article considers the strengths of agent-based modelling and the ways that it can be used to help central banks understand the economy. These models provide a complement to more traditional economic modelling which has been criticised in the wake of the Great Recession.
Agent-based models: understanding the economy from the bottom up
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.
European Macroeconomics
Although money plays a key role in our lives, the workings of our monetary system are a mystery to most of us. ‘The Waterworks of Money’ by cartographer Carlijn Kingma is an attempt to demystify the world of big finance. It visualizes the flow of money through our society, its hidden power made manifest.
If you see money as water, our monetary system is the irrigation system that waters the economy. The better the flow, the more prosperous society will be. Just as water makes crops thrive, so money sets the economy in motion. Or at least that’s the idea. In reality, inequality is growing in many countries and people are dealing with a ‘cost of living crisis’. Meanwhile, the progress with making our economies sustainable is stalling, and financial instability remains an ongoing threat. These problems cannot be seen in isolation from the architecture of our money system. If we truly want to tackle them, we will have to address the design flaws of our current money system.
For more info check: https://www.waterworksofmoney.com or https://www.carlijnkingma.com
For the Dutch version of the animation check: https://www.ftm.nl/waterwerk
Current exhibitions: 'The Future of Money' at Kunstmuseum Den Haag, 14 April, 2023 - 8 September 2023. 'Plumbing The System' at the Dutch Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, 20 May 2023 - 26 November 2023
The second animation video of this series will be released in September 2023.
The Waterworks of Money is a collaboration of cartographer Carlijn Kingma, investigative financial journalist Thomas Bollen, and professor New Finance Martijn van der Linden. Kingma spent 2300 drawing hours, based on in-depth research and interviews with more than 100 experts –ranging from central bank governors and board members of pension funds and banks to politicians and monetary activists.
The structure of our monetary system is not a natural phenomenon. We can choose to change its architecture. Designing the money system– and the laws and institutions that govern it–is ultimately a democratic task, and not a commercial or technocratic one. In practice, however, there is a major obstacle impeding the democratic process: financial illiteracy. By making finance and money needlessly complex, economists, bankers and tax specialists have turned most of us into ‘financial illiterates’. Everyone who doesn’t speak their financial jargon is excluded from the democratic debate on how our monetary system should work.
The Waterworks of Money bypasses the financial jargon. It is an attempt to boost systemic financial literacy. Only if ordinary citizens develop their own vocabulary to participate in the debate about their financial future, can they tell their politicians which kind of ‘financial irrigation system’ they want.
Authors: Carlijn Kingma, Thomas Bollen, Martijn Jeroen van der Linden
Animation: Tiepes, Christian Schinkel, Cathleen van den Akker
Narrator: Loveday Smith
Translation: Erica Moore
Voice recording: Huub Krom
Music and sound: Rob Peters
Photography: Studio OPPA
Partners: Follow the Money, De Haagse Hogeschool, Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, Brave New Works, Rabobank, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Rijksmuseum Twenthe
The Waterworks of Money
The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) is rapidly spreading around the world. The real economy is simultaneously hit by a supply shock and a demand shock by the spread of coronavirus. Such a twin shock is a rare phenomenon in recent economic history.
How to Manage the Economic Fallout of the Coronavirus
It is perhaps fitting that the seriousness of the coronavirus threat hit most of the Western world around the Ides of March, the traditional day of reckoning of outstanding debts in Ancient Rome. After all, problems and imbalances have accumulated in the Western capitalist system over four decades, ostensibly since it took the neoliberal road out of the 1970s crisis and kept going along it, heedless of the crises and problems it led to.
The Unexpected Reckoning: Coronavirus and Capitalism
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
Mainstream inflation theories in economics do little to explain the recent acceleration in price increases. The associated economic policy recommendations further increase the misery of low-income groups.
The inflation conundrum
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
Austrian economics focuses on the economic coordination of individuals in a market economy. Austrian economics emphasises individualism, subjectivism, laissez-faire politics, uncertainty and the role of the entrepreneur, amongst others.
Austrian Economics
This panel was part of the conference "Next Generation Gentral Banking - Climate Change, Inequality, Financial Instability" 03. - 05.02.2021.
NextGen Central Banking: How the coronavirus almost brought down the global financial system
This panel was part of the conference "Next Generation Gentral Banking - Climate Change, Inequality, Financial Instability" 03. - 05.02.2021.
NextGen Central Banking: Central Banking Beyond Inflation
Approaching the law of nature that determines all forms of economy. The bulk of economic theory addresses the economic process by setting out on a catalogue of aspects, seeking the laws in the aspects and hoping to get together a reliable view of the whole.
Economic theory, methodology, and secure foundations
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
As the Covid-19 fueled economic downturn begins to intensify this winter, an extended study of the Italian cooperative sector’s historical resilience in times of crisis can serve as a learning experience for other countries seeking to create policies that foster more stable economies, with job security, care for marginalized communities and adequate counter-cyclical policies. Particularly, the Italian cooperative sector’s contributions to three aspects should be noted in closing. Firstly, the innovative phenomenon of cooperative enterprises has contributed to social inclusion of immigrant communities, the activation of youth, the unemployed and people with disabilities, a true compensation for both a market and state failure. Secondly, they have contributed to a reduction in income and wealth inequalities at a time when the issue of inequality is of global significance. Thirdly, the Italian cooperative movement has helped local communities revitalize in the face of demographic shifts and rendered them more resilient to the ravages of globalization. Each of these in their own right is a remarkable achievement.
How to strengthen the social economy
Capitalism is dissolving boundaries - not only in the sense of ever-expanding global trade flows, but also in the concrete everyday working lives of individuals. What implications does this have for our understanding of freedom, work and borders?
Capitalism & Boundaries
Recording of the Workshop “The collateral supply effect on central banking”, 04.02.2021, part of the "Next Generation Central Banking - Climate Change, Inequality, Financial Instability" conference by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung
NextGen Central Banking: The collateral supply effect on central banking
This book provides a new methodological approach to money and macroeconomics. Realizing that the abstract equilibrium models lacked descriptions of fundamental issues of a modern monetary economy, the focus of this book lies on the (stylized) balance sheets of the main actors. Money, after all, is born on the balance sheets of the central bank or commercial bank.
Modern Monetary Theory and European Macroeconomics
Florian Kern replies to Zoltan Pozsar's analysis about the effects of the war in Ukraine on the global financial order and refutes the latter's prognosis of the demise of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency
Why the war in Ukraine does not jeopardise the dollar's reserve currency status
The concept of financialisation has undergone a similar career as ‘globalisation’, ‘neoliberalism’ or even ‘capitalism’, in the course of which it changed from the explanandum to the explanans; the process of financialisation is taken for granted, while the concrete historical and empirical causal conditions of its realisation and perpetuation are being moved into the background.
A holistic theory of financialisation
Post-Colonialisms Today researcher Chafik Ben Rouine looks to Tunisia’s post-independence central banking method to provide insight on what progressive monetary policy can look like.
Monetary Policy for Development, During and Beyond Crisis
Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash Networks are ubiquitous in our modern society The World Wide Web that links us to and enables information flows with the rest of the world is the most visible example It is however only one of many networks within which we are situated Our …
Networks
A comprehensive account of how government deficits and debt drive inflation
The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level
This essay focuses on the sources of government revenue within the Middle East and North African (MENA) region and proposes the implementation of a regional tax reset through increased taxation and tax reforms, deregulation in the private sector and economic diversification to reduce macroeconomic volatilities caused by the hydrocarbon industry.
Taxation in the MENA region
As opposed to the conventional over-simplified assumption of self-interested individuals, strong evidence points towards the presence of heterogeneous other-regarding preferences in agents. Incorporating social preferences – specifically, trust and reciprocity - and recognizing the non-constancy of these preferences across individuals can help models better represent the reality.
A fresh perspective to economic theory: Social preferences and their impact on gender and policy
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