The "Nobel" Prize for the Counter-Revolution in Macroeconomics

The 2026 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (aka the Nobel) went to Robert Hall and Michael Woodford, for their contributions to the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilization. The prize is, in many ways, a celebration of the return to pre-Keynesian macroeconomics (including the Keynes of the Treatise on Money, before the General Theory). Not much of a Keynesian revolution left in what is called New Keynesian economics, if anyone had doubts.

Woodford is perhaps the most important representative of the Neo-Wicksellian model that dominates modern macroeconomics (misnamed New Keynesianism). As I noted before, the central idea is that the monetary rate of interest, controlled by the central bank, must be adjusted to the natural rate, determined by the real forces of productivity and intertemporal preferences. I discussed the return of the natural rate of interest a decade ago, noting that Woodford was particularly prominent in its rehabilitation (after it had been largely abandoned following the Keynesian Revolution and the capital debates).

The political implications were considerable. Independent central banks, committed to price stability and capable of credibly anchoring inflation expectations, would also provide the conditions for prosperity. The so-called divine coincidence suggested that price stability would be essentially compatible with full employment (and, with a little more wishful thinking, financial stability too). Fiscal policy was relegated to a secondary role. The central bank would do the heavy lifting. Keynes, of course, had abandoned the natural rate in the General Theory, precisely because there was no reason to believe that monetary policy could guarantee full employment. But who reads that book anymore? See also my discussion of Friedman and Lucas, and why the former was more important for this counter-revolution.

Hall's contribution was central to a parallel transformation of consumption theory. His rational expectations version of Friedman's permanent income hypothesis suggested that consumption followed a random walk, responding to unexpected changes in permanent income rather than current income. This was taken as a major advance over the old Keynesian consumption function. Yet, as I discussed in a post on Duesenberry, the earlier relative income hypothesis had considerable empirical support and provided a socially grounded explanation of consumption, with important implications for income distribution and effective demand. Hall's subsequent work also found very little evidence of intertemporal substitution in consumption (rather inconvenient for the theoretical foundations of the New Keynesian IS curve).

The older structural macroeconometric tradition was also discarded, even though, as Ray Fair has argued (and I noted in my discussion of Romer's criticism of modern macro), it offered a more promising framework for studying actual macroeconomic relationships. Evidence on the importance of housing, household debt for consumption, not to mention the permanent effects of demand on output, suggests that much was lost in that transition.

It is worth remembering that even the old Neoclassical Synthesis (before the 1970s) retained important elements of the Keynesian Revolution. The Keynesian consumption function, and the relevance of income distribution for aggregate demand, remained central to macroeconomic analysis. And while the Synthesis accepted the existence of a natural rate of interest and a tendency toward full employment in the long run (at least in principle), it took seriously the imperfections and institutional obstacles that prevented the economy from getting there. The old structural macroeconometric models reflected precisely that pragmatic concern with the actual functioning of the economy. In that sense, the rational expectations counter-revolution was a step backward even from the rather limited Keynesianism of the Neoclassical Synthesis. It replaced imperfect but empirically grounded models with theoretical (supposedly elegant; whatever that means) ones grounded on individual behavior that assumed away many of the problems the older tradition tried to understand (not exactly an improvement, if the objective is to explain how capitalist economies actually work). And, perhaps more importantly, it derailed potentially more fruitful directions of research.

None of this means that Hall and Woodford made no significant contributions. They have certainly been very influential. But technical sophistication and scientific progress are not necessarily the same thing. The irony is that the “Nobel” celebrates as a revolution what was, fundamentally, a return to the ideas that the Keynesian Revolution had challenged. A counter-revolution, indeed (and one that has been remarkably successful in shaping economic policy).

My short piece on Solow and his relation to the Review of Keynesian Economics

(1924-2023)

Robert Solow, who was a member of the editorial board of the Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE), died in December 2023. Solow holds a special place in the history of macroeconomics, and he was a strong supporter of the ROKE project. In this brief note I want to honor Solow’s contribution to economics and to place on record his contribution to ROKE.

Histories of macroeconomics tend to emphasize the disputes between Keynesians and Monetarists, at least up to the 1970s. Those disputes very often pitted Milton Friedman against either Paul Samuelson, with whom he alternated in a famous Newsweek column, or James Tobin who was, perhaps, the most prominent of Friedman’s opponents when the Journal of Political Economy edited a debate with Friedman’s critics. In the broader cultural wars, Friedman was often pitted against John Kenneth Galbraith, and his Free to Choose series was seen as a response to the latter’s BBC series The Age of Uncertainty. Solow appears, if at all, as Samuelson’s co-author of a paper on anti-inflation policy (Samuelson and Solow 1960), which is widely viewed as introducing the Phillips curve to the American economics profession.

Yet Solow is, in many ways, the central figure of ‘American’ Keynesianism, and he was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Economics. His work was central to the building of what Samuelson referred to as the Neoclassical Synthesis, which was dominant during the post-war era up to the 1970s. This synthesis combined microeconomic competitive general equilibrium theory, Keynesian macroeconomics, and Solow’s (1956) Neoclassical growth theory. It gave short-run space for Keynesian policy effectiveness but asserted a long-run belief in market forces and Say’s Law, which Solow defended in his growth model and in the Cambridge debates with more heterodox Keynesians. Additionally, Solow contributed decisively to the development of what eventually would be called New Keynesian Economics, with the development of the efficiency wage model in the late 1970s. He lived long enough to see fiscal policy rehabilitated after the Great Recession of 2007–2009, and to see what many view as the return of Keynesian Economics.

Read rest here.

Gatekeepers and herd behavior: On Tooze and the radicalization of Krugman

"But that one is holding the poop!"

Adam Tooze, the author of the monumental Crashed (who was, incidentally,  student of Wynne Godley, one of my mentors), wrote a piece for the London Review of Books that has received a lot of praise. While it reviews Paul Krugman's latest book, it provides an overview of the radicalization of New Keynesians, or at least some, that dominate both in academia, and in the corridors or power. The gatekeepers of knowledge and academic  and intellectual influence, with a close connection to power, so to speak. He tells us at the outset that Krugman, the economist that was a bulwark of free trade, even when the theories for which he received his Sveriges Riksbank Prize (aka the Nobel) suggested that some degree of intervention might be good, and that remained even after the 2008 crisis a defender of the conventional macroeconomic model, not only has moved to the left, but also that "in Joe Biden’s Washington, Krugmanism rules."

This is, however, a misinterpretation of the current situation. Tooze suggests that Krugman is one of the "high-powered centrists inching their way towards seemingly obvious political conclusions." The group includes "three centrists – Biden, Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell [that are] undertaking an experiment in economic policy of historic proportions." And he, also, argues that: "what sets Krugman apart within this cohort is the way he has, since the 1990s, stopped being a gatekeeper of the status quo and instead become its critic. In this respect his closest analogue is Joseph Stiglitz, also once of MIT, a member of the Clinton administration and chief economist to the World Bank. Both men have indisputable standing as members of the elite club of New Keynesians."

I see Krugman as being closer to what Colander, Holt and Rosser referred to as the cutting edge of the profession. The role of cutting edge of the profession, in my reply to them (see the paper in Fred Lee and Marc Lavoie's book here), is to make more reasonable policy propositions, while maintaining the notion that markets do produce efficient outcomes, in spite of the unsurmountable logical problems brought by the capital debates, and that led to the rise of vulgar economics. Krugman in that sense is the epitome of the cutting edge. Of course, in order to make reasonable points he would discard many of his own ideas. But he is no critic of the mainstream. The problem with Tooze's argument lies in there. Krugmanism cannot rule, if he basically had to discard his ideas in order to remain relevant. And relevant here simply means that he can be seen to be on the right side of history, more skeptical of free markets, free trade, and willing to accept significant expansion of deficits and debt.

The ideas that won the day and rule in Biden's America are heterodox ideas, that in fact, until very recently Krugman dismissed as not serious. The possibility of continuous expansion of the welfare state, and the expansion of fiscal deficits and debt were anathema to him. Not only he was against expansionary fiscal policy, but even 'Medicare for All,' the signature proposal of Senator Bernie Sanders, something that is common in all advanced economies, was dismissed as a political nonstarter. And certainly that idea, which is not that radical, has remained in the background, and is unlikely to be pushed by the 'radicalized' Biden administration. Perhaps even Krugman still thinks is far too lefty to be acceptable in the United States.

Biden might be the president, and he has a lot of power about what elements of the agenda to push, and he has certainly moved to the left. No doubt about that. Not surprisingly Heather Boushey and Jared Bernstein, economists with heterodox and labor connections, are defending the fiscal expansion from the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), while Larry Summers, the quintessential insider of the Clinton and Obama administrations, is criticizing from outside. But the Democratic Party has moved to the left, and the politicians have followed. It is the party of Bernie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). And the establishment knows they need to move if they want to remain relevant, and have a fighting chance in 2024, since the working class is radicalized, and many will abandon the party if Biden does not deliver.

They are like the French politician that, seeing the masses pass in protest, tells his friends in the café he must leave and follow them, since he is their leader. This is, it goes without saying, more like herd behavior, than leadership. Krugman is, in that sense, the leader of an intellectual sea change about views on the role of the state in the economy.

Tooze may think that these arguments are just the diatribes of those in the left that are angry,* infuriated he argues, with the slow pace of change in the center. The issue is that, even though Krugman is following the herd, he certainly is a central gatekeeper in the economics profession. A profession that has been attacked for good reasons, for its excessive influence in policy, and the recurrent blunders of its luminaries.

Krugman still argues in terms of the conventional model, that he defends, as having done a good job explaining the 2008 crisis. People like Wynne Godley, that truly foresaw the 2008 crisis, often only received the acknowledgement ex-post, sometimes too late, after passing away.** Krugman dismisses heterodox economists as not serious. A type of red-baiting of heterodox economists with significant impact on the ability of the profession to change. He also validates some of worst within the mainstream and is willing to play by their harsh rules.+ This is, of course, because the prestigious teaching positions he held, and still holds, the 'Nobel', that was created to give respectability to certain ideas, the weekly column in the NYTimes are all powerful platforms. The danger in this, in accepting Krugman's narrative that he has been right all along, is to convince ourselves that the profession has indeed changed. Now the dangers of neoliberalism and their main defenders, mainstream economists, are gone. The profession is rehabilitated. But the retreat of neoliberalism is only temporary. Krugman and other gatekeepers will change their tune when the current Keynesian moment passes. If the Bidenomics experiment ends up being of historic proportions, and I do hope it does, although that is still too soon to tell, it will not be a victory of Krugmanism. It will be a victory in spite of it.

* I am not as angry as Paul Romer, though.

** On Krugman critique of Godley's 'hydraulic' model, and my response go here.

+ He famously said: "By the early 1980s it was already common knowledge among people I hung out with that the only way to get non-crazy macroeconomics published was to wrap sensible assumptions about output and employment in something else, something that involved rational expectations and intertemporal stuff and made the paper respectable. And yes, that was conscious knowledge, which shaped the kinds of papers we wrote." [Italics added] See the quote and a discussion of the role of another gatekeeper in France that also won a 'Nobel' here.

Larry Summers on Effective Demand

On of the issues between more mainstream Keynesians and their more heterodox counterparts is whether frictions are central for Keynesian results or not. Since the Neoclassical Synthesis the conventional view is that some rigidity or friction was behind the problems of unemployment, be that the liquidity trap (the Keynesian case with the flat LM, since Hicks 1937), the rigidity of wages (since Modigliani 1944), or some other coordination problem (mostly in the New Keynesian literature).

In this recent thread (worth reading all) Summers (as shown above) notes that posties might have been right on emphasizing the fundament issue of effective demand. That of course is closer to what Keynes himself would have thought. The paper he cites, by Tom Palley, co-editor of the Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE) is free and available here.

Tom Palley on Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) Economics

From the abstract:

This paper explores zero lower bound (ZLB) economics. The ZLB is widely invoked to explain stagnation and it fits with the long tradition that argues Keynesian economics is a special case based on nominal rigidities. The ZLB represents the newest rigidity. Contrary to ZLB economics, not only does a laissez-faire monetary economy lack a mechanism for delivering the natural rate of interest, it may also lack such an interest rate. Moreover, the ZLB can be a stabilizing rigidity that prevents negative nominal interest rates exacerbating excess supply conditions.

Read full paper here.

Simon Wren-Lewis on New Classical Economics and the Financial Crisis

New paper by Wren-Lewis titled "Unravelling the New Classical Counter Revolution." It provides a strong New Keynesian critique of the New Classical/Real Business Cycle schools. He argues, correctly in my view, that the problem is the abandoning of the Keynesian method of analysis. I'm less keen on microfoundations. Or at least on marginalist microfoundations. But it is important to understand how much the fundamentalist views of Lucas and Prescott have affected the profession.

From the abstract:

To understand the position of Keynes's The General Theory today, and why so many policy-makers felt they had to go back to it to understand the Great Recession, we need to understand the New Classical Counter Revolution (NCCR), and why it was so successful. This revolution can be seen as having two strands. The first, which attempted to replace Keynesian policy, failed. The second, which was to change the way academic macroeconomics was done, was successful. Before the NCCR, macroeconomics was an intensely empirical discipline: something made possible by the developments in statistics and econometrics inspired by The General Theory. After the NCCR and its emphasis on microfoundations, it became much more deductive. 

As a result, most academic macroeconomists today would see the foundation of their discipline as not coming from The General Theory, but as coming from basic microeconomic theory – arguably the ‘classical theory’ that Keynes was so keen to cast aside. Students are also taught that pre-NCCR methods of analysing the economy are fatally flawed, and that simulating DSGE models is the only proper way of doing policy analysis. This is simply wrong. The problem with the NCCR was not the emergence of microfoundations modelling, which is a progressive research programme, but that it discouraged the methods of analysis that had flourished after The General Theory. I argue that, had there been more academic interest in these alternative forms of analysis, the discipline would have been better prepared ahead of the financial crisis.

Read the whole paper here. 

The rise of vulgar economics and the end of dissent

Funny thing, the rise of vulgar economics, which I discussed before (here, here, and here; see also this and this papers for more on the topic) didn't just lead to the ostracism of heterodox approaches to economics. It also led to a significant decrease in the debate within the mainstream. Or at least is what the figure below, from the interesting blog post by Joe Francis, seems to indicate. At some point in the 1960s, more than 20% of the papers in the main journals were a reply, a comment or a rejoinder to the work of someone else. Not anymore.

It is clear that the Great Depression and the Keynesian Revolution seemed to increase debate within the mainstream, and that, as Joe says, the: "decline in debate... appears to have been associated with the emergence of a ‘neoliberal’ hegemony from the 1970s onwards." That's essentially correct.

And the decline in debate explains why Lucas could say in the early 1980s that: "at research seminars, people don't take Keynesian theorizing seriously anymore; the audience starts to whisper and giggle to one another." And also why if you wanted to publish you basically had to accept the crazy New Classical models. Krugman admitted to that before, as I've already noticed. He argued that: “the only way to get non-crazy macroeconomics published was to wrap sensible assumptions about output and employment in something else, something that involved rational expectations and intertemporal stuff and made the paper respectable.” You must remember, you don't publish, you don't get tenure. So crazy models became the norm.

Not only heterodox economists were kicked out of mainstream departments, and had to create their own journals in the 1970s, but also the pressure within the mainstream to conform and silence dissent was strong indeed. Note that many, like Blanchard and Woodford for example, in the mainstream continue to suggest that there is a lot of consensus between New Keynesians, and Real Business Cycles types. In fact, they say there is more agreement now than in the 1970s. How is the consensus methodology in macroeconomics, you ask. From Blanchard's paper above:

"To caricature, but only slightly: A macroeconomic article today often follows strict, haiku-like, rules: It starts from a general equilibrium structure, in which individuals maximize the expected present value of utility, firms maximize their value, and markets clear. Then, it introduces a twist, be it an imperfection or the closing of a particular set of markets, and works out the general equilibrium implications. It then performs a numerical simulation, based on calibration, showing that the model performs well. It ends with a welfare assessment."

And yes that is also the basis of New Keynesian models. The haiku basically describes the crazy models in which reasonable results must be disguised if you're to be taken seriously in academia. When everybody agrees, there is little need for debate. And you get stuck with crazy models. The lack of debate within the mainstream to this day is also, in part, what provides support for austerity policies around the globe, even when it is clear that they have failed.

Lars P. Syll on how wrong Krugman & Mankiw are on loanable funds

By Lars P. Syll

Earlier this autumn yours truly was invited to participate in the New York Rethinking Economics conference. A busy schedule didn’t allow me to “go over there.” Fortunately some of the debates and presentations have been made available on the web, as for example here. Listening a couple of minutes into that video one can hear Paul Krugman strongly defending the loanable funds theory. Unfortunately this is not an exception among “New Keynesian” economists. Neglecting anything resembling a real-world finance system, Greg Mankiw — in the 8th edition of his intermediate textbook Macroeconomics — has appended a new chapter to the other nineteen chapters where finance more or less is equated to the neoclassical thought-construction of a “market for loanable funds."

Read rest here.

For an explication and presentation of the extent to which LFT is derivative of modern neo-Wicksellian macroeconomics, see here.

Krugman is actually right on ISLM and Minsky

I tend to disagree a lot with Krugman, at least on theoretical issues. His brand of Keynesianism supposes that the system doesn't work because of imperfections. For him, the current slow recovery is due to the fact that the natural rate of interest is basically negative and you cannot use monetary policy to stimulate the economy (see critique of this here). However, on his recent debate with Lars Syll (and here; Brad De Long also posted here), a post-Keynesian, with whom I probably share a more radical interpretation of Keynes and its relevance for economic theory, Krugman seems to get things right.

The main points in Lars initial post, based on Minsky's book John Maynard Keynes is that traditional representations of Keynes do not emphasize the cyclical component of Keynes' theory and that true or fundamental (non-probabilistic) uncertainty is often ignored. Lars adds a little bit more on his response to Krugman and De Long, but essentially is the same argument. Keynes didn't like the ISLM (which is from a historical point of view difficult to defend, after all the only stuff he wrote on this, to Hicks, was quite positive, even if it is of little relevance), that it is static (not paying attention to cyclical or dynamic phenomena), and perhaps more interestingly that the interaction of real and monetary variables in the model is simplistic.

Krugman points out that the General Theory (GT) is NOT about cyclical fluctuations per se. It is about the determination of the long run level of output and employment, around which the economy fluctuates, and he correctly notes that cycles only appear as an afterthought in chapter 22 of the GT. And that is precisely correct. The GT is revolutionary because it suggests that with price flexibility (not price rigidity as in the old Neoclassical Synthesis or the New Keynesian stories) the system gets stuck in a situation of unemployment equilibrium. Emphasis on equilibrium. Yes, unemployment at less than full employment and output below its potential level are both together in an equilibrium situation.

Patinkin suggested that Keynes meant unemployment disequilibrium, since within the neoclassical framework, unless there is a rigidity of some sort, and the system should go to its long run equilibrium position with full employment. Minsky (1975, p. 268), in the book cited above, says that Keynesian economics should be seen as the: "economics of permanent disequilibrium." That has no basis on the GT. Actually, the GT would be a less radical book if it only said that with instability the system might be always in a disequilibrium position. Keynes was very radical since he argued that the very notion of a natural rate should be abandoned (on this Paul and Brad have a lot to learn). Some Post Keynesians tend to dislike the idea of equilibrium (echoes of Joan Robinson's late critique of the idea), which ends up making them closer in many respects to the modern mainstream authors with their dislike for long term equilibrium positions.

So the GT is not about cycles (Keynes' Treatise on Money, a very conventional and Wicksellian book was about cyclical disequilibrium caused by differences between the natural and banking rates of interest, which, interestingly enough is closer to Krugman's way of thinking than the GT, or than to Lars, who is aware of the limitations of the natural rate concept). But that's not all that Krugman got right this time.

He quotes the famous passage in which Keynes says that the system is not violently unstable (GT, p. 249). And while Post Keynesians are correct to note the relevance of fundamental uncertainty, it is important also to consider the stabilizing role of conventions and institutions, to which Keynes alludes. Expectations play a role, but investment is not completely volatile, and it was a problem for Keynes only when "the capital development of a country becomes the by product of the activities of a casino" (GT, p. 159). In fact, given the relevance of the accelerator in determining investment, the central role of expectations is about the level of demand. For example, in the US investment has been subdued since demand is not growing fast and there are not reasonable expectations that it will any time soon.

Where New Keynesians go wrong, and in this case is actually Brad, not Paul (but he would certainly agree) is on the relevance of the marginal efficiency of capital, criticized by Minsky (even though it's far from clear that Minsky abandoned it). Brad thinks that Minsky critique of it is myopic and basically a PR problem. He says that it is: 

"Short-sighted, in that it is not Hicks who would be Minsky’s long-run intellectual adversary but rather Freidman [sic], Lucas, and Hayek, and so building bridges to the Hicksians ought to be a very high priority."

Probably true, but from a policy point of view. From a theoretical point of view, Hicks use of the marginalist notion of an investment function inversely related to the rate of interest (something Keynes also used) implies that there would be a rate of interest low enough that would produce full employment, that is a natural rate, which would preclude Keynes' claim about unemployment equilibrium (and the absence of a natural rate). In other words, with the marginal productivity of capital you have that unemployment must be a disequilibrium situation caused by some imperfection that inhibits the system from reaching the natural rate.

And yes the capital debates are relevant since they show that the inverse relation is only possible in a one commodity world. No natural rate, and no need to think about imperfections. And that's why the comment by Lars on the connection between real and monetary variables being simplistic within the ISLM is right on the mark. The idea that the central bank controls a monetary rate, that may get out of whack with the natural, and that by manipulating it can affect real variables is limited at best.

PS: For my previous defense of a modified ISLM go here and here. 

Notes on the Policy Implications of the New Macroeconomic Consensus

The New Macroeconomic Consensus (NMC) model is based on three simple equations. An IS equation that, contrary to what most discussions within the heterodoxy suggest, is based on a Ramsey model intertemporal approach to savings and investment, a Phillips curve (PC) equation, normally with rational expectations, and a monetary policy (MP) rule, typically Taylor’s rule. From the IS and the MP an aggregate demand (AD) curve is derived, while the PC provides an aggregate supply (AS) curve, similar to Lucas’ supply curve. Business cycles are seen as being determined by shocks, either monetary, that affect the AD curve, or real, which impact the AS curve.

A few things are important to note with respect to the NMC model. First, the IS curve now is not based on the traditional Keynesian multiplier process, by which savings adjust to investment (or in more sophisticated models with endogenous investment, to autonomous demand) as a result of variations to the income level. Agents make intertemporal decisions on consumption and savings, and investment adjusts, in the absence of imperfections, to full employment savings as in the pre-Keynesian models. That is the reason why in order to stimulate the economy it is often suggested that what is needed is higher inflationary expectations (which in this framework could be caused by the central bank announcing a higher inflation target), which would in turn lead to an increase in current consumption (since inflation would reduce future consumption possibilities; see my critique of this view, which I refer to as the inflation expectations fairy, here).

Second, both the New Keynesian Phillips Curve and the Taylor rule presuppose the existence of a natural rate of unemployment, in line with Milton Friedman. Further, stabilizing the rate of inflation around its target is tantamount to stabilizing output around its full employment level, a result sometimes referred to as the ‘Divine Coincidence.’ Thus, inflation is always the result of a level of unemployment that is below its natural level, or in other words caused by demand-pull. Supply-side shocks may eventually cause inflation too, but those are seen, at least by most New Keynesians as being of secondary importance. Even Lucas, who has accepted for the most part the Real Business Cycle story, admits that one cannot explain the Great Depression and other such crises with real shocks.

Third, the MP rule implies that money is endogenous, and that central banks control the rate of interest and NOT the quantity of money. In other words, the old Monetarist rules about the rate of growth of money supply are out, since actual central banks very rarely have behaved in that way. This ‘innovation’ (not much of an invention since Wicksell used more than a century ago) within the mainstream took place without ever acknowledging the contributions of Kaldor (accomodationist tradition to endogenous money), Minsky (financial innovation tradition to endogenous money), Moore and other post-Keynesian authors.

Finally, it is rather clear that the NMC is essentially a neo-Wicksellian model (for a simple description go here), rather than Keynesian (New or otherwise). Not only the multiplier model was abandoned (and with it even the basis for fiscal policy activism, since the logic of Barro’s Ricardian Equivalence has been incorporated; see Wren-Lewis here), but also the concept of the natural rate that Keynes at least tried to get rid of has become central for policy analysis. And here is the Achilles’ heel of the NMC model.

Note that if the natural rate is not fixed, and in particular if it presents hysteresis or path dependence, and moves with the actual level of unemployment, then the basis of the NMC model falls apart. In other words, expanding demand might reduce the natural rate of unemployment and would not trigger inflation, and as a result would not require the central bank to hike the rate of interest to lean against the wind. That was, in a sense, the rationale for not hiking the rate of interest when unemployment fell below 6%, which many identified as the natural rate, during the Clinton boom. Greenspan suggested that productivity was going up (note that he didn’t necessarily say that productivity went up, and the natural rate down, as a result of the expansion of demand).

There are good logical reasons for not believing the natural rate story, as we know, associated to the limitations of the marginalist theory (see here). However, there are also reasonably well-established empirical problems with the natural rate hypothesis. The Real Business Cycles authors, in particular Nelson and Plosser in their classic paper (here), have long ago shown that output follows a random walk. In other words, changes in output are permanent, and there is no tendency for output to revert to its former trend following a shock, contradicting the natural rate hypothesis, or suggesting if one prefers that the natural rate moves with supply-side shocks and that the business cycle is the result of agents adjusting their behavior to the change in the natural rate.

As I noted before (here), the actual measure of productivity (Total Factor Productivity, TFP) used by RBC authors does NOT measure productivity, and most of their conclusions are irrelevant really. Also, as suggested above, it would be impossible to pin down the real shock that caused the Great Depression or the Great Recession, that have structural causes that are profound (in the patterns of consumption, private indebtedness and inequality) and that were triggered by financial shocks. However, the notion that the natural rate is not fixed, and that it changes significantly is actually quite important, since as we indicated, it suggests that policies that try to lean against the wind hiking the rate of interest when the economy is below the natural rate of unemployment are without foundation.

Heterodox authors would add to the RBC empirical observation about the fact that output is not mean reverting, that the supply or capacity limit of the economy is endogenously determined by autonomous spending (the supermultiplier that extends Keynes’ effective demand to explain potential output; for more go here). This does NOT mean that one can expand the economy without limits, since if the expansion of demand is faster than the movement of the capacity limit, eventually full employment would be reached and inflation (demand-pull inflation) might follow. Note, however, than since the 1930s in the US unemployment was below 4% (to say a relatively low number) only for four short periods, during the mid-40s, early 50s, late 60s and late 90s, with inflation occurring in the first three periods. Also, it suggests that the main barrier to the use of demand policies to achieve full employment, at least in developed countries with no balance of payments problems, is political. As Kalecki noted long ago, sound finance would be the political instrument to keep workers’ demands for higher wages in line. The NMC model is the modern incarnation of what Kalecki’s referred to as sound finance. So who is really surprised with the dominance of austerity policies?

Tom Palley on New Keynesianism as a Club

Tom Palley discusses the fact that New Keynesian have 'rediscovered' several of the ideas that other Keynesians, in particular the more heterodox sort (but not only, he includes James Tobin too), without properly acknowledging them. In his words:

"For almost thirty years, New Keynesians have dismissed other Keynesians and not bothered to stay acquainted with their research. But now that the economic crisis has forced awareness, the right thing is to acknowledge and incorporate that research."

Read rest here. By the way, Tobin, in his little book Asset Accumulation and Economic Activity, discusses why even with price flexibility the system does not have a tendency to full employment, being the closest to the alternative Keynesian ideas, or arguably to Keynes' own views. For Minsky's review of that book, in which he also criticizes Tobin for dismissing the research of post-Keynesians, go here.

A debate on Endogenous Money and Effective Demand: Keen, Fiebiger, Lavoie and Palley

The last issue of the Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE) has a debate between Steve Keen with Brett Fiebiger, Marc Lavoie and Tom Palley. Two papers are available for download (Keen and Lavoie's). Tom's paper is available as a working paper here.

The basis for Steve's defense of endogenous money is based on the works of Schumpeter, as developed by the latter's student Hyman Minsky. In his words:

"The proposition that effective demand exceeds income is not a new one: it can be found in both Schumpeter and Minsky (and arguably in Keynes's writings after The General Theory, though not in as definitive a form – see Keynes 1937*, p. 247). A difference between income and expenditure, with the gap filled by the endogenous creation of money, was a foundation of Schumpeter's vision of the entrepreneurial role in capitalism. Minsky's attempt to reconcile endogenous money and sectoral balances is the closest antecedent to the argument I make, but I will start in chronological order with Schumpeter's analysis."

I have noted before that the idea of endogenous money is NOT central for heterodox approaches, since Wicksell and the whole modern New Keynesian consensus adopts it. And perfectly conventional authors like Irving Fisher had introduced debt in their models too. I also noted that Schumpeter is essentially a Real Business Cycle (innovations are nothing but exogenous productivity shocks) author, which thought that both short-run output and employment and long-run growth were determined by supply-side factors. So in general I'm not a great fan of having Schumpeter as a staring point, or the notion that to introduce debt and endogenous money is per se a critique of the mainstream.

In that respect, I tend to agree with Tom's point that it is the way in which endogenous money and debt are introduced in the model that matters. Keen's use of a variation of Fisher's equation of exchange, as pointed out by Tom, is troublesome. In Tom's words:

"The Fisher equation constitutes the monetarist framework for macroeconomics. Income-expenditure accounting constitutes the Keynesian framework and it offers an alternative approach to understanding the AD, credit, endogenous money nexus."

In fact, in the equation of exchange framework the presumption is that demand would adjust (in Steve's approach with endogenous money) up to the point that it meets supply at the optimal level (also something that would be perfectly in line with  Schumpeter). The whole point of the income-expenditure framework is that it puts demand in charge of the level of activity.

At any rate, a good debate that it's worth checking out. Enjoy!

* J.M. Keynes (1937), "Alternative Theories of the Rate of Interest," 47, Economic Journal, pp. 241-252. Available here (subscription required).

Tom Palley on Milton Friedman’s economics and political economy

By Thomas Palley

Milton Friedman’s influence on the economics profession has been enormous. In part, his success was due to political forces that have made neoliberalism the dominant global ideology, but Friedman also rode those forces and contributed to them. Friedman’s professional triumph is testament to the weak intellectual foundations of the economics profession which accepted ideas that are conceptually and empirically flawed. His success has taken economics back in a pre-Keynesian direction and squeezed Keynesianism out of the academy. Friedman’s thinking also frames so-called new Keynesian economics which is simply new classical macroeconomics with the addition of imperfect competition and nominal rigidities. By enabling the claim that macroeconomics is fully characterized by a divide between new Keynesian and new classical macroeconomics, new Keynesianism closes the pincer that excludes old Keynesianism. As long as that pincer holds, economics will remain under Friedman’s shadow.

Read paper here.

More on flimflam and lack of understanding of the capital debates

Paul Krugman has responded to Tom's article and here is his reply. Let me just add my two cents. Krugman says that:

New Keynesians assert — as Keynes did, although I don’t think it matters for this debate what he said — that both liquidity preference and loanable funds are true. There are conditions under which one or the other is the main one to focus on — at full employment, loanable funds are crucial, in a liquidity trap, liquidity preference.

Oh Lord. Paul can you send us the quote were Keynes says that Loanable Funds is correct? And again this is NOT about irrelevant exegesis. If you do have that Investment and Savings are equilibrated by a natural rate of interest, then that means that you must, with interest rate flexibility, reach a point at which investment would equate the full employment level of savings. Krugman and other New Keynesians argue then for a version of what they call a Liquidity Trap (actually a zero lower bound problem), in which the monetary rate of interest (of the Liquidity Preference Theory) is not capable of equating the natural rate (of the Loanable Funds Theory).

Note that here Keynes has a problem. Although Keynes clearly rejected the concept of a natural rate of interest (Keynes, 1936, pp. 242-4), and said very clearly that savings are equated to investment by changes in the level of activity (Effective Demand), his acceptance of the notion of the marginal efficiency of capital implies that there is a sufficiently low interest rate that would be associated with an investment that would produce the full employment level of savings, very much like Krugman. Excluding imperfectionist arguments related to the downward rigidity of the interest rate, or the possibility that a negative interest rate would be required to increase investment to its full employment savings level, it would seem that the acceptance of the marginal efficiency of capital is in contradiction with the notion of a “highly conventional” rate of interest (ibid., p. 203).*

So as noted here you do need to abandon the notion of a natural rate of interest and the marginalist theory of distribution (besides the evidence is that investment does not react to cost of capital, but it does to expected sales, that is expected demand). Here Krugman's comments are disingenous at best. He says:

I think, is a fairly desperate attempt to claim that the Great Recession and its aftermath somehow prove that Joan Robinson and Nicholas Kaldor were right in the Cambridge controversies of the 1960s.

As I noted it is logically required to get rid of the idea of the natural rate, and there is no need to argue that in the 1960s capital debates Robinson and Kaldor (Sraffa really, dude) were right, since Samuelson (1966; subscription required) already did.

* The capital debates show that there is no correspondence between the intensity of the use of capital and its remuneration. No natural rate of interest that would lead to more intensive use (full utilization) of capital. And that's what Samuelson admited. To understand the capital debates go here, and to get its relation to Keynes' theory go here.

PS: Krugman also gets a bit testy suggesting that: "as for wage and price inflexibility as the cause of unemployment — grrr. I’ve written again and again on this subject, pointing out that in a liquidity trap price flexibility probably makes things worse, not better." Yes, grr. Dude, first it's not a liquidity trap that you're talking about, but a lower limit to nominal rates of interest. And debt-deflation and negative effects of income distribution discussed in chapter 19 of the GT occur even if you are not at the lower bound (or the real liquidity trap). And Keynes said that the liquidity trap was irrelevant to explain the Great Depression, it's worth noticing, since really it seems you never read the GT (even though you wrote a preface to one edition). So price flexibility in a world with extensive debt contracts and where income distribution affects spending is always kind of bad. That's Keynes' message. Tom is correct on that one too.

More on Wren-Lewis flimflam according to Palley

Simon Wren-Lewis replied to Tom's previous post on the flimflam defense of mainstream economics and says he cannot find it (the flimflam). Tom provides in a new post some hints on where to look. Note that Tom raises two points, among others, always emphasized in this blog. Namely:

Marginal productivity theory remains at the core of mainstream distribution and production theory. However, marginal productivity can be adjusted for imperfect competition to yield, what might be called, adjusted marginal products. Thereafter, things remain analytically very similar and those adjusted marginal products then determine the stock demand for capital and drive long-run capital accumulation. 

The imperfect competition model of so-called New Keynesians continues to assert price and nominal wage flexibility would restore full employment. In a financialized economy with massive inside debts, that strikes me as an implausible proposition.

Both require to be solved and provide a real alternative that the notion of the natural rate is abandoned. Note that this would strengthen Wren-Lewis and other New Keynesian arguments.

The use of history for political purposes: on the New Deal and the last recession

It is increasingly common to hear stories of how government intervention led the economy astray during the Great Depression, and how FDR’s New Deal actually delayed a recovery that was on its way, e.g. the popular book my Amity Shlaes The Forgotten Man. This view is at odds with the conventional notion in the accepted historiography of the period and with old Keynesian views as exposed by Galbraith (1954), but not with the mainstream of the economic profession. It is important to note that not only old Monetarists like Friedman and Schwartz (1963) or Meltzer (2003), but also New Keynesians like Romer (1992) suggest that the recovery was essentially caused by monetary policy and that the fiscal policies associated with the New Deal were essentially of secondary importance for the recovery.

Read the post here.

Palley on why Krugman and other New Keynesians are NOT Keynesians

Yes, while it is true that New Keynesians do agree with Post Keynesians (or classical-Keynesians, in the sense of the Old Classical Political Economy School revived by Sraffa) in many policy propositions, like the need for more stimulus, Tom is absolutely right that they do occupy a position in the policy debates which precludes real Keynesian ideas to become more generally accepted.

For the full video go here.

Solow on Greenspan's new book and the misrepresentation of the mainstream

Solow's review was published in the New Republic here (h/t Robert Vienneau). Solow has lost nothing of his ironic and acerbic style of criticism. As noted by Vienneau there is a great line at the end about Greenspan's mentor Ayn Rand:

"It is sometimes claimed that Alan Greenspan is a closet follower of Ayn Rand; he certainly had an early association with her circle. I got through maybe half of one of those fat paperbacks when I was young, the one about the architect. Since then I have found it impossible to take Ayn Rand seriously as a novelist or a thinker. In the past I have gone on the assumption that Greenspan’s ideas about economic life are his own, just what is contained in his writings, and the Ayn Rand question does not arise. But now there is this book, with its particular misinterpretation of mainstream economics, which might be thought to reopen the question if anyone is interested."

So basically he says Greenspan might be a crank after all. Yet, Solow has actually a couple of nice things to say about the old 'maestro.' For him, the injection of liquidity after the 1987 crash, and allowing the unemployment rate to fall below 6% or so (what most considered the natural rate) suggest that "it is only fair to say that he was a very good chairman of the Fed."

This in spite of his "two big mistakes." One mistake was allowing (I would say almost promoting) the housing bubble. The other, the relevant one for Solow, was his:

"deep-seated conviction that the unregulated financial system was self-stabilizing, that the self-interest of all those clever and experienced participants with a lot of their wealth at stake would keep the accumulation of risk within tolerable bounds. So he promoted deregulation and financial consolidation (as did others, of course) and, when this simple faith proved wrong, allowed disaster to strike."

If  being a monetary crank that shares responsibility for the deregulation of the financial sector and the current global crisis (let alone his role in the Bush tax cuts, or his promotion of cutting Social Security benefits) does not make him a terrible Fed chairman, I don't know what would.

Also, I think Solow is right, Greenspan does not represent well the more moderate New Keynesian mainstream. Yet, in many respects his sort of fringe radical right wing Ayn Rand version of the mainstream, like supply side and Austrian economics, is also part of the mainstream and shares several crucial elements. I would argue that the problem with Greenspan is NOT that he misrepresents the mainstream, but that his deregulation mantra is perfectly compatible with the mainstream. Lets not forget that Larry Summers (a New Keynesian that favors fiscal expansion and is concerned about the possibility of secular stagnation now) was during the Clinton era presiding over deregulation.

ISLM: a further explanation and a defense

I noted before  the traditional representation of the ISLM is problematic. Yet as I also noted the ISLM model can accommodate changes that incorporate the criticisms of classical-Keynesian, post-Keynesian and other heterodox groups. There is no need for an investment function based on the marginal productivity of capital and the principle of substitution. The accelerator can be incorporated, and the inverse relation with the rate of interest would result from the effects of interest rates on other components of demand. Also, endogenous money can be incorporated easily, and for the most part this has been done in New Keynesian models (the ISMP).

In the post (linked by David here) that prompted this sort of defense of a changed ISLM, Lars Syll correctly notes that New Keynesians are often right on policy, but incorrect on theory. And I for the most part agree with Lars intentions. Yet, he suggests that the problem lies in that:

"If macroeconomic models – no matter of what ilk – assume representative actors, rational expectations, market clearing and equilibrium, and we know that real people and markets cannot be expected to obey these assumptions, the warrants for supposing that conclusions or hypothesis of causally relevant mechanisms or regularities can be bridged, are obviously non-justifiable."

As I noted in my debate with Noah Smith, the problem with marginalism (neoclassical economics) is NOT rationality, utility maximization or supply and demand (not quite the same list raised by Lars). Here I would add that although one can certainly add heterogenous agents, assumptions that simplify and assume representative agents maximizing profits, for example, are not really problematic at all. Classical political economists and Marx did assume something like that and still did not reach the conclusion that the system was efficient in the sense of providing full utilization of resources.

Also, the idea that agents use all information per se is not necessarily bad (Tom Palley favors some sort of rational expectations, which he refers to as model consistent; see his old manual here). The problem is that the model used, by New Classical and other mainstream authors, has logical problems. Last but not least equilibrium per se is not a bad concept (on this there is the whole thing that Post Keynesians have inherited from Joan Robinson that makes things confusing for many heterodox economists). Equilibrium is actually quite essential for long-term analysis. And I would actually argue that it is relevant since it DOES have real world applications. In other words, real economies do fluctuate around long-term equilibrium positions that are sub-optimal.

The problem with mainstream theory is the notion of a natural rate, which is based on the principle of substitution which allows for 'factors of production' to be fully utilized. These are the problems that Keynes, by negating the idea of a natural rate, and Sraffa, by showing the logical problems of the principle of substitution, undermined. An ISLM without the natural rate is not only possible, but actually reasonably good as a tool for analyzing real economies.

PS: Note that Keynes wrote to Hicks on the ISLM that: "I found it very interesting and really have next to nothing to say by way of criticism." Keynes did not criticize the investment function in Hicks model, but note that this problem also was integral to the General Theory (GT). And yes Keynes was being nice, but he was nice too about Harrod's review of the GT, but did tell him that he did not mention effective demand.

Lars Syll on Krugman as An Apologetic Defender of Esoteric Mathematization

By Lars P. Syll

Paul Krugman had a post up on his blog a while ago where he argued that “Keynesian” macroeconomics more than anything else “made economics the model-oriented field it has become.” In Krugman’s eyes, Keynes was a “pretty klutzy modeler,” and it was only thanks to Samuelson’s famous 45-degree diagram and Hicks’s IS-LM that things got into place. Although admitting that economists have a tendency to use ”excessive math” and “equate hard math with quality” he still vehemently defends — and always have — the mathematization of economics.

See rest here.