The theory of monetary disorder

 

 “When I discovered that the economic order produced social disorder, they took away my scholarship.”

New working paper by Tom Palley. From the abstract:

This paper introduces the notion of monetary disorder. The underlying theory rests on a twin circuits view of the macro economy. The idea of monetary disorder has relevance for understanding the experience and consequences of the recent decade-long period of monetized large budget deficits and ultra-easy monetary policy. Current policy rests on Keynesian logic whereby a large fall in aggregate demand warrants robust offsetting monetary and fiscal policy actions. That logic neglects potential monetary disorder being bred within the financial circuit in the form of inflated asset prices and leveraged balance sheets. That disorder is likely to develop long before inflation accelerates so that inflation targeting fails to protect against it. Political factors increase the policy danger as the benefits of disorder are front-loaded and the costs backloaded. The paper concludes with a policy discussion regarding how to prevent Keynesian goods market counter-cyclical stabilization policy from causing monetary disorder.

Download it here.

Neoliberalism, Keynesian Economics, and Responding to today's Inflation

 

 

Q&A Session

The lecture here. Note that it missed a few minutes at the beginning and the slides are not showing, with Professor Stiglitz at the upper right corner. It is still pretty engaging and wroth reading. There is a link to the slides that are not showing up. The actual lecture will be published in the first issue of ROKE in 2024.

 

I'll post link to the published version when it's done.

 

Was Keynes a Keynesian?

Mike Beggs wrote an interesting Review of the book In the Long Run We Are All Dead (which I started, but have not finished yet). Beggs argues that: "Marx lived long enough to declare himself 'not a Marxist.' Keynes was not so lucky. Followers would make the distinction between 'Keynesian economics' and 'the economics of Keynes.' But by then the word had well and truly transcended the man." That's not altogether correct.

Dave Colander retells the Abba Lerner story of Keynes' famous presentation at the Fed in 1943, which according to Colander might be the source for the Alan Meltzer (based on Terence Hutchison) argument that Keynes indeed did say "I am not a Keynesian," where Keynes was essentially against deficit spending, and that Evsey Domar, who was next to Lerner, "whispered: 'He ought to read the General Theory'."

Leaving aside the fact that the GT, in fact, does not deal with fiscal deficits, but more inscrutably with the socialization of investment, there is a certain amount of truth that Keynes was not always Keynesian, in the simple sense of for fiscal expansion. But that essentially puts an emphasis on Keynes' economics as essentially concerned with economic policy.

As I noted recently, Keynes arguments for public works precede the GT, and the book was published when the worst of the Great Depression was already over, clearly and expressly with a theoretical preoccupation. That is why Mann's view, which is central to his book, seems somewhat misguided. For him:

“Keynes and Keynesianism were not 'resurrected' following the financial meltdown of 2007–2008, because neither was ever 'dead,' however hard some mainstream economists might have tried to convince us otherwise. Capitalist modernity, in fact, is and always has been Keynesian on the inside.”


In his view, Keynesianism is just a name for the mechanism by which liberal capitalism tries to save itself from the contradictions that overwhelm the system in periods of crisis. And he is not wrong that Keynes is resurrected every so often (one can say the same about Minsky, now that most crisis have a financial/bubble component too).

My point is that Keynes notion that there is no unique (natural) level of employment around which the system fluctuates, and that it normally oscillates around sub-optimal levels was never actually adopted by the mainstream. What is often resurrected is the mainstream version of Keynesianism. Instead of the perennial persistence of Keynesianism, a more accurate description would be the idea that the Keynesian Revolution was really aborted.

Keynesian vs. Supply-side Economics: Causality

In one graph.

Classic Paper by Arestis & Eichner: "The Post-Keynesian and Institutionalist Theory of Money and Credit"

Recently, (see here) Matias posted a link to Fred Lee's collection of a classic set of by papers by the late Alfred S. Eichner. He mentioned that this not a complete set of Eichner's remarkable work, and that there are plenty of other exceptional pieces; in particular is Eichner's paper with Philip Arestis: "The Post-Keynesian and Institutionalist Theory of Money and Credit." This work has influenced my research tremendously (especially concerning the authors adherence to the tradition of Veblenian Institutionalism, and their emphasis of an 'open-systems' approach to political economy).

From the Introduction (which is worth quoting at length):

The purpose of this article is two-fold: first, to identify the main elements of what constitutes post-Keynesian and institutionalist monetary theory and, second, to put forward a model general enough to encapsulate most, if not all, of the constituent elements of the post-Keynesian and institutionalist theory of money and credit. One further novel aspect of this article is that we account for the possibility of the openness of economic systems. This is an aspect that has been ignored by the literature on both post-Keynesian and institutionalist economics. 

The emphasis in post-Keynesian and institutionalist monetary theory is on the proposition that "Monetary economics cannot help being institutional economics" [Minsky 1982, p. 280] and that "Capitalism is a monetary economy" [Dilland 1987, p. 1641]. In this view money capital is an institution that is inseparable from the other institutions that comprise economic systems. Money is not merely a medium of exchange. It is tightly linked to the behavior of the enterprise sector and the economy as a whole. Therefore, the basic theme in this approach is inevitably, "The Monetary Theory of Production" [Keynes 1973; Veblen 1964]. It is in fact this Veblenian/Keynesian premise that constitutes the core of what we have labelled in this study "the post- Keynesian and institutionalist theory of money and credit." 

In this monetary theory of production, it is not surprising to find that credit rather than money is the mechanism that enables spending units to bridge any gap between their desired level of spending and the current rate of cash inflow. Money is viewed as essentially endogenous in a credit-based economy, responding to changes in the behavior of economic entities, rather than being subject to the control of the monetary
authorities. Money, in this view, is an output of the system, with the endogenous response by the financial sector governed by the borrowing needs of firms, households, and the government. Once it is recognized that money is credit-driven and therefore endogenously determined, any money creation emanating from fiscal or debt management operations initiated by the authorities or from a favorable balance of payments, can be neutralized through an equivalent reduction in commercial bank credit brought about by the actions of private economic agents.' It clearly follows that government may not be able to create money directly (see, however, Chick [1986]). 

What it can do, instead, is redistribute money among different groups of economic agents. This can happen when governments, in their attempt to increase/reduce the stock of money, set in motion the process whereby bank credit is created/destroyed by groups of economic agents. To the extent that the latter groups are different from those initially receiving/destroying money following the government's initiatives, redistribution of money between those groups takes place. 

The endogenous nature of money and credit is further elaborated upon in the next section with the constituent elements of the model under discussion being brought together in the section that follows. It is precisely here that the openness of economic systems is emphasized and its implications for the post-Keynesian and institutionalist theory of money and credit are compared with the neoclassical view. A final section summarizes the argument.

Read rest here (subscription required).

Chick & Tily on whatever happened to Keynes’s monetary theory?

New Cambridge Journal of Eeconomics paper by Victoria Chick and Geoff Tily.

From the abstract:

Some see a return to Keynes’s ideas in response to the crisis that began in 2007, but we argue that the resurrected ideas belong to that betrayal of Keynes’s thought known as ‘Keynesian’ economics. What happened is almost a reversal of the Whig history view of economics, in which past knowledge is embodied in later theory: Keynes has been made a pre-Keynesian. We trace this transformation mainly through his monetary theory, though we range more widely where necessary. We state what we consider to be his monetary theory, then identify and summarize the key contributions to its destruction. Then, in a speculative section, we suggest a variety of motivations for this subversion of his ideas. We end by assessing what has been lost, in particular his monetary policy, and suggest social and political pressures that may have been partly responsible.

Read the rest here (subscription required).

Lars P. Syll On What’s wrong with IS-LM?

By Lars. P. Syll

Yesterday, David Fields of Naked Keynesianism wondered what was my position on the fact that many heterodox economists would consider the IS-LM framework “to still be relevant if given enough flexibility without neoclassical synthesized elements.”

I will sure come back on this when time admits a more thorough analysis, but let me start by giving at least a tentative answer — focusing on where I think IS-LM doesn’t adequately reflect the width and depth of Keynes’s insights on the workings of modern market economies.

Read the rest here.

Marx, Kalecki, and The Monthly Review School

By John Bellamy Foster

A historical perspective on the economic stagnation afflicting the United States and the other advanced capitalist economies requires that we go back to the severe downturn of 1974–1975, which marked the end of the post-Second World War prosperity. The dominant interpretation of the mid–1970s recession was that the full employment of the earlier Keynesian era had laid the basis for the crisis by strengthening labor in relation to capital. As a number of prominent left economists, whose outlook did not differ from the mainstream in this respect, put it, the problem was a capitalist class that was “too weak” and a working class that was “too strong.” Empirically, the slump was commonly attributed to a rise in the wage share of income, squeezing profits. This has come to be known as the profit-squeeze theory of crisis ...

Read the rest here.

New Issue of ROKE out soon

A new issue of ROKE will soon be available (see contents here). A teaser here. It's the paper by co-editor Tom Palley. From the abstract:

"This paper compares Cambridge and neo-Kaleckian growth theory. Both are members of the post-Keynesian approach to growth and distribution, but the Cambridge model is a hybrid of Keynesian and classical features whereas the neo-Kaleckian model is Keynesian. The Cambridge approach assumes full capacity utilization, while the neo-Kaleckian approach assumes variable capacity utilization. The two theories rely on fundamentally dif- ferent theories of income distribution. The Cambridge model has a class structure of saving that generates Pasinetti’s (1962) theorem regarding irrelevance of worker saving for steady-state growth and distribution. That class structure can be included in the neo- Kaleckian model, generating a variant of the Pasinetti result whereby steady-state capacity utilization is independent of worker saving. Fiscal policy has similar growth effects in the two models, albeit via very different mechanisms. Both models suffer from lack of attention to the labor market."

The rest of the issue has papers by Dutt, Fazzari, Michl, Setterfield, Stockhammer, and Ryoo. More papers will be available as samples at Elgar's site soon. Enjoy!

PS: See the FB site here.

An Alternative Vision for the Eurozone Crisis

The Eurozone crisis has been reduced, according to the mainstream diagnosis, to a fiscal crisis caused by excessive public spending and a competitiveness gap between North and South. The mainstream solution is to close this gap by means of ‘expansionary fiscal austerity’ and wage reductions. This has been admitted even by the IMF to be a dead end.

In our opinion the root of the Euro crisis lies in both the inadequate institutional set up of the Eurozone, which lacks a genuine lender of last resort and sufficiently coordinated fiscal and wage policies, and on an over-liquid and under-regulated international financial market that was more than happy to finance any imbalance - no matter how unsustainable it was.

What we had in Continental Europe were mutually dependent models of growth. The mercantilist export-led growth of the North could not have been sustained without a (remarkably easy-to-finance) debt-driven model in the South, accumulating trade deficits and private and public debt. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the private debt was turned into sovereign debt. The Irish case is an extreme example of this process. The ensuing austerity policies enforced upon the governments increased unemployment to a socially unacceptable level. If continued these policies will lead to a prolonged depression and even more social unrest.

European institutions were and still are not able to deal with such structural imbalances in an adequate way. Mass unemployment and social deprivation resulting from austerity policies is threatening the survival of democracy in the European Union.

Alternative perspectives

On the basis of our diagnosis we are convinced that Europe should reverse the current austerity policy regime. This would require profound institutional and policy change.

In terms of monetary policy, we believe that ECB should act as a credible lender of last resort to relieve the sovereign debt crisis. Strict regulation of financial markets is a further step, and it is necessary to separate investment banking from commercial banking.

In terms of fiscal policy, the link between the ECB and fiscal conditionality should be fundamentally changed. Monetary policy should support and accommodate progressive fiscal rules aiming at employment creation and growth. Budget deficits can only be consolidated in a growing economy.

These growth stimulating policies are consistent with the desired long run stabilization of debt-to-GDP ratios. In the present situation of mass unemployment, these policies do not carry a significant risk of inflation.

We also believe that the adjustment has to be supported by stimulation of consumption via higher wages starting from the core surplus countries (like Germany) where wage restraint policies have considerably contributed to the growing income inequalities and current account imbalances in the Eurozone.

If the German finance minister believes in what he said, that no country can live forever beyond its means, then it must also be clear that no country can live indefinitely below its means. This implies that the change in the wage policy in Germany has to be an important part of the solution.

Mutual prosperity of the Eurozone countries and their citizens through demand expansion, rather than demand contraction through fiscal consolidation for the benefit of high finance, must be recognized as the imperative for the political viability of the Euro project. We must have the intellectual honesty and courage to act accordingly.

Signed by

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Amit Bhaduri
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Thomas Boylan 

National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

Sergio Cesaratto 

Università degli studi, Siena, Italy

Nadia Garbellini 

Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy

Torsten Niechoj 

Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, Kamp-Lintfort, Germany

Gabriel Palma 

University of Cambridge, UK

Srinivas Raghavendra 

National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

Rune Skarstein 

Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Herbert Walther 

Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

Ariel L. Wirkierman 

Università Cattolica di Milano, Italy

Kazimierz Laski 

University of Linz, Austria 

Corresponding author: Srinivas Raghavendra  (s.raghav@nuigalway.ie)