Policy-Constrained Growth: Government spending and economic recovery in Brazil during Lula's third term

By Ricardo Summa, Guilherme Haluska and Franklin Serrano

Despite headwinds from higher interest rates in the US and at home, the Brazilian economy is nevertheless emerging from a period of prolonged stagnation. After growing an average of 0.2 percent a year between 2015 and 2022, national growth averaged 3.3 percent annually during 2023–2024, the first two years of President Lula’s third term. Though quite modest in comparison to the massive social needs of a developing country, this is still better than expected.1 Part of Brazil’s recent positive performance has been due to growing exports, to be sure. But the bulk of Brazil’s current economic growth stems from a cause the government itself has been reluctant to recognize: expansionary fiscal policy, which has generated sufficient demand to counteract these forces of contraction.

Read rest here. 

Argentina, Economic Science and this year's "Nobel"

Trump wanted the Peace one, Milei the one in Economics

A few random thoughts about some recent news. Today, Javier Milei met with Donald Trump at the White House. Trump reportedly warned that the United States “will not be kind” to Argentina if Milei does not win the upcoming elections. That statement seems to suggest that the much-discussed “rescue” of the Argentine peso may be tied to domestic electoral results — something that Treasury Secretary Bessent had already hinted at when he announced the possibility of a US Treasury rescue package for Argentina.

No surprise there. But the situation brings back memories of earlier crises — particularly the 2001–2002 collapse, when Argentina defaulted after a long neoliberal experiment of liberalization, deregulation and privatization under the Menem administration. The current crisis, which began with the 2018 IMF program, is in many ways a continuation of that same process.

Back in 2002, the crisis caught one economist in particular by surprise: Rudi Dornbusch. Writing in the Financial Times, Dornbusch argued that Argentina could not be trusted to govern itself and proposed that its fiscal and monetary policy should be overseen by a foreign board of central bankers — a shockingly neocolonial suggestion, even for that time ["I'm shocked, shocked I tell you"]. I wrote a short letter to the Financial Times in response, which you can find here, mocking this absurd idea.

Two decades later, we are still dealing with the same problems. The “cleanup” of the 2002 mess took place under the so-called populist governments of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, through two major debt renegotiations in 2005 and 2010. During that period, Argentina’s debt-to-export ratio — a measure of repayment capacity — improved significantly [see my piece on Challenge on that and the Vulture Fund negotiations that Macri ended up finishing in a favorable way to the Vultures; you know on what side he is]. Yet the Macri administration (2015–2019) more than doubled the foreign debt once again, setting the stage for the current crisis [on the doubling of debt see this piece with Matias De Lucchi; whole issue, scroll down].

In short, the same set of economic elites have crashed the economy multiple times. Domingo Cavallo, Menem’s finance minister and architect of the 1990s convertibility plan, reappeared at the end of the De la Rúa government in 2001. Federico Sturzenegger, who was at the central bank during Macri’s failed experiment in 2018, is now serving as Milei’s Minister of Deregulation. This revolving door of orthodox technocrats has brought Argentina back to the IMF, and now possibly to a US Treasury rescue, for the third time in a generation.

What’s frustrating is how the narrative never changes. The mainstream explanation — repeated recently by a well-known economist from the Di Tella University — is that Argentina’s problems are caused by irresponsible “populists.” In his version, written in academic jargon about sunspots and expectations, the blame somehow always falls on Peronists, whether they are in power or not. If the economy collapses, it’s because investors fear a Peronist comeback; if it booms, it’s despite them. Don't worry, it won't.

This kind of argument says a lot about the state of the economics profession, perhaps more than about Argentina’s actual economy. Instead of looking at straightforward indicators — who increased the foreign debt, how exports performed, whether external repayment capacity was sustained — many economists hide behind highly subjective assumptions disconnected from reality.

This is part of a broader problem in Latin American economics: what my colleague Franklin Serrano calls “brain damage” — not “brain drain.” The issue isn’t that talented economists leave the country, but that many return from US PhD programs armed with orthodox models that have repeatedly failed our economies. They bring back the intellectual framework that justifies the very policies that keep generating crises.

This brings me to another bit of recent news: the so-called Nobel Prize in Economics (technically, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel). This year’s award went to Philippe Aghion Peter Howitt, and Joel Mokyr for their contributions to what’s broadly called “Schumpeterian growth theory” — work that connects innovation and technological change to economic growth. Surprising and soul crushing news to Milei, who wanted the prize for stabilizing the economy (a miracle according to Niall Ferguson).

Aghion and Howitt's models attempt to explain long-term growth by endogenizing productivity — the famous Solow residual. They borrow Schumpeter’s language of innovation and creative destruction, though often in a far more formal framework. In that sense, the connection to Schumpeter is more symbolic than substantive. Still, compared to some recent laureates, this year’s selection is a relatively defensible choice. Their models are certainly more in line with Schumpeter that some of the heterodox neo-Schumpeterian models.

Joel Mokyr, a historian, has written extensively on the cultural roots of the Industrial Revolution. His work offers a deeply Eurocentric — also, and more importantly, culturalist and supply-side — interpretation of why growth took off in Europe. While I disagree with much of that perspective, it’s undeniable that the Industrial Revolution did begin in Europe, and any serious account must explain that historical specificity. The problem is less Eurocentrism per se than the exclusive focus on supply factors, ignoring the demand and institutional dimensions that Keynesian and structuralist economists once emphasized. In that sense, I welcome the recognition of a historian among the laureates. But I also lament the profession’s retreat from the richer, more historically grounded analyses of scholars like David Landes, whose The Unbound Prometheus offered a more balanced view of the Industrial Revolution — one attentive to the demand aspects of economic growth.

Perhaps the real lesson — both from Argentina’s crises and from this year’s “Nobel” — is that economics still struggles to learn from its own history.

Demand-led Growth In Rio

The Review of of Keynesian Economics is co-sponsoring the Fifth Conference on Demand-led Growth in Rio, next July 11 and 12.

2024 marks the 45th anniversary of Thirlwall’s classic 1979 paper that introduced Thirlwall’s law as well as the 75th anniversary of Prebisch’s manifesto on the main development problems of Latin America. These seminal works were key, for post-Keynesian and structuralist literatures, to put the balance of payments constraint at the center and as one of the main problems of long run growth and development. Furthermore, it was an important critique and alternative to the mainstream view that highlights factors of production scarcity as the only explanation to long run growth.

As a result, many demand-led growth theories often emphasize the balance of payments as the main constraint that an economy faces in the long-run. Among the various subjects that balance of payments constraint literature treat, we can name: The role of financial flows in the long run; External indebtedness; Solvency and liquidity problems; Currency hierarchy; The role of the exchange rate; The relation between balance of payments constraint and economic policy, and many others.

All these themes are related with the research lines of the Group in Political Economy at the Institute of Economics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, which follows the Sraffian framework proposed by Garegnani to make the Keynesian-Kaleckian principle of effective demand compatible with the classical surplus approach. For our Group, growth is demand-led and policy (often balance of payments) constrained. In succession, inflation is a cost-push political economy phenomenon dependent upon conflicting claims over income distribution. Within this framework, macroeconomic policies are fundamental to growth, inflation, and income distribution. In capitalist economies, these policies arise from institutional arrangements as well as political power relations. The Research Group in Political Economy considers that constructing policy-relevant analysis and theoretical and applied models to better understand advanced and developing countries’ actual performance demonstrates this theoretical approach’s soundness.

Given the approach taken by the Group and in the context of the intensification of dialogue and convergence among some Post-Keynesians, Kaleckians, Kaldorians, practitioners of Modern Monetary Theory, and Sraffians, the goal of the 2024 Edition of the Workshop is to strengthen this promising trend by promoting a constructive and policy-relevant debate among these strands of critical thought. Other heterodox approaches to economics are also welcome and encouraged in fostering new contributions concerning demand-led growth analyses, models, their multiplicity of relations with monetary and financial elements and external constraints to growth.

More info here.

Book Presentation “India from Latin America. Peripherisation, Statebuilding, and Demand-Led Growth” by Manuel Gonzalo

A demand-led growth perspective of Indian development. Book available here. Comments by Alex Thomas.

Structuralism, Classical Political Economy and Demand-led Growth

 

Roundtable with Esteban, and Carlos Bastos Pinkusfeld on Structuralism, Classical Political Economy and Demand-led Growth at the Instituto de Economia, at my alma matter earlier this summer.

Demand Drives Growth all the Way

New paper by Lance Taylor, Duncan Foley and Armon Rezai. From the abstract:

"A demand-driven alternative to the conventional Solow-Swan growth model is analyzed. Its medium run is built around Marx-Goodwin cycles of demand and distribution. Long-run income and wealth distributions follow rules of accumulation stated by Pasinetti in combination with a technical progress function for labor productivity growth incorporating a Kaldor effect and induced innovation. An explicit steady state solution is presented along with analysis of dynamics. When wage income of capitalist households is introduced, the Samuelson-Modigliani steady state “dual” to Pasinetti’s cannot be stable. Numerical simulation loosely based on US data suggests that the long-run growth rate is around two percent per year and that the capitalist share of wealth may rise from about forty to seventy percent due to positive medium-term feedback of higher wealth inequality into its own growth."

Read full paper here.

Robert Blecker on Thirlwall's Balance of Payments Constrained Growth

New paper available here. From the abstract:

Several recent critiques have questioned the theoretical logic of standard models of balance-of-payments-constrained growth (BPCG) and the empirical support for ‘Thirlwall’s Law’. On the empirical side, critics charge that most econometric estimates of this model have effectively only tested whether exports and imports grow at similar rates in the long-run. On the theoretical side, the criticisms have focused on the role of foreign income growth, capital accumulation, relative prices and country size in BPCG models. This article reviews the current state of the debate over these critiques and also offers a brief discussion and evaluation of three alternative models. The alternative models all highlight a significant role for the level of relative prices (or the real exchange rate) in determining long-run growth, which is consistent with recent empirical studies.

My paper cited there can be downloaded here (in Spanish). Thirlwall's reflections on his classic paper can be found here.

Joan Robinson's Accumulation of Capital after 60 years

My favorite is still Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth

Back from a summer road trip. Should start to blog more consistently soon. Here a new paper from John King in the last issue of ROKE. From the abstract:

Joan Robinson's magnum opus, The Accumulation of Capital, was published 60 years ago, in 1956. I begin this diamond jubilee assessment by explaining the intellectual background to the book, placing Robinson's attempt to ‘generalise the General Theory’ in the context of the contemporary work of Harrod, Kaldor and Kalecki. I then provide a brief summary of the eight parts of the book before focusing on the analytical core, the analysis of ‘accumulation in the long run’ that is provided in Book II. Next I outline the critical reception of the book in the late 1950s and Robinson's reaction to it, both then and later in her career. I conclude by documenting the rather limited influence of The Accumulation of Capital in the longer term, even among heterodox economists, and conclude that the book was a noble failure.

Read full paper here.

Tom Palley on Inequality and Growth

New paper published by PERI. From the abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between inequality and growth in the neo-Kaleckian and Cambridge growth models. The paper explores the channels whereby functional and personal income distribution impact growth. The growth – inequality relationship can be negative or positive, depending on the economy’s characteristics. Contrary to widespread claims, inequality per se does not impact growth through macroeconomic channels. Instead, both growth and inequality are impacted by changes in the underlying forms and pattern of income payments. However, inequality is critical at the microeconomic level as it explains differences in household propensities to consume which are at the foundation of neo-Kaleckian and Cambridge growth theory.

Read full paper here.

Mark Blyth and Eric Lonergan on Why Central Banks Should Give Money Directly to the People

By Mark Blyth and Eric Lonergan

In theory, governments can boost spending in two ways: through fiscal policies (such as lowering taxes or increasing government spending) or through monetary policies (such as reducing interest rates or increasing the money supply). But over the past few decades, policymakers in many countries have come to rely almost exclusively on the latter. The shift has occurred for a number of reasons. Particularly in the United States, partisan divides over fiscal policy have grown too wide to bridge, as the left and the right have waged bitter fights over whether to increase government spending or cut tax rates. More generally, tax rebates and stimulus packages tend to face greater political hurdles than monetary policy shifts. Presidents and prime ministers need approval from their legislatures to pass a budget; that takes time, and the resulting tax breaks and government investments often benefit powerful constituencies rather than the economy as a whole. Many central banks, by contrast, are politically independent and can cut interest rates with a single conference call. Moreover, there is simply no real consensus about how to use taxes or spending to efficiently stimulate the economy.

Read rest here.

Institutions, what institutions?

There are many explanations for why some nations are rich while others are poor. The dominant view, in mainstream (neoclassical) economic circles is that institutions are the central cause of the divide between developed (center) and underdeveloped (periphery). I discussed before (here and here) the role of institutions vis-à-vis geography and culture. I have also noted how the New Institutionalist argument concentrates on the institutions (fundamentally property rights) that act on the supply side of the economy. That is growth arises because property rights provide incentives for productive investment. I also noted (here) that the historical evidence for patents, copyright and other forms of property protection for explaining growth is limited at best. Note that mainstream authors and heterodox authors, at least the majority, tend to agree that institutions rather than geography or culture are central for development.

Also, the table above suggests that cultural and geographical explanations tend to put an emphasis on the supply side, but that is not necessarily the case, and it would be difficult to speculate about what Jared Diamond, for example, thinks about the relative role of supply and demand. Also, it’s worth noticing that while in his early work economic historian David Landes favored a demand-led view (which I tentatively put in the institutional box) he clearly moved to a cultural supply-side interpretation in his later work.

So if you believe most heterodox economists institutions are relevant, but not primarily those associated to the supply side; the ones linked to the demand side, in Keynesian fashion are more important than the mainstream admits. Poor countries that arrive late to the process of capitalist development cannot expand demand without limits since the imports of intermediary and capital goods cause recurrent balance of payments crises. The institutions that allow for the expansion of demand, including those that allow for higher wages to expand consumption and to avoid the external constraints, are and have been central to growth and development. The role of the State in creating and promoting the expansion of domestic markets, in the funding of research and development, and in reducing the barriers to balance of payments constraints, both by guarantying access to external markets (sometimes militarily, like in the Opium Wars) and reducing foreign access to domestic ones was crucial in the process of capitalist development.

In this view, for example, what China did not have that England did, was not lack of secure property rights and the rule of law, but a rising bourgeoisie (capitalists) that had to compete to provide for a growing domestic market that had acquired a new taste (and hence explained expanding demand) for a set of new goods, like cotton goods from India, or china (porcelain) from… well China, as emphasized by economic historian Maxine Berg among others (for the role of consumption in the Industrial Revolution go here). Or simply put, China did not have a capitalist mode of production (for the concept of mode of production and capitalism go here). Again, I argued that Robert Allen’s view according to which high wages and cheap energy forced British producers to innovate to save labor, leading to technological innovation and growth, and the absence of those conditions in China led to stagnation is limited since it presupposes that firms adopt more productive technologies even without growing demand.

The same is true of Latin American economies, which several authors like Engerman Sokoloff suggest fell behind as a result of absence of secure property rights. Latin American economies entered the world economy to produce silver (mining-economy/Amerindian population), sugar (plantation-economy/African-American population) and other commodities, for external markets. They were exploitation colonies, less reliant on the development of domestic markets, typical of settlement colonies in the Northeast United States or of the central countries in Western Europe.

The economies that depend on the production of commodities for world markets and import everything else are more vulnerable to the fluctuations of the price of commodities. Booms in commodity prices lead to growth, albeit very concentrated in the hands of the owners of capital, but they leave very little in terms of infrastructure for future growth. Further, since the economy must import everything to satisfy domestic demand, the economy is dependent on external sources of production, and when the export of commodities does not allow for enough imports, then either demand must be curtailed or the economy must become indebted to be able to continue to consume. A thriving domestic market is central for economic development, and the ability to diversify production to provide for the market is the key to catching up.

Finally, since the economy was based on the mono-production of commodities (and the size of the domestic markets is relatively limited) there were little if any incentives for technological innovation and higher productivity. Note also, that once a country falls behind, and almost all countries were essentially at the same level of income per capita around 1800 (or at least differences were considerably smaller than now), it is very hard to catch up, since the distance to the technological frontier is increasingly steep. It is not the same to copy a textile mill that uses a steam engine than to emulate the development of the Silicon Valley. In this sense, the institutions associated to the colonization period are central, rather than property rights, to explain underdevelopment in Latin America. Capitalism and its institutions both caused growth in the center, and stagnation in the periphery.*

* I discussed here how the industrialization of Britain meant the deindustrialization of India and China.

The middle class in macroeconomics and growth theory

Tom Palley models the role of the middle class in economic growth. From the abstract:

This paper presents a three class growth model with labor market conflict. The classes are workers, a middle management middle class, and a “top” management capitalist class. The model introduces personal income distribution that supplements conventional concerns with functional income distribution. Endogenously generated changes in personal income distribution can generate endogenous shifts from profit-led to wage-led regimes and vice-versa. A three class economy generates richer patterns of class conflict because the middle class has shared interests and conflicts with both capitalists and workers. Changes that benefit the middle class do not necessarily increase growth or employment or benefit workers.

The full paper is available here.

Prabhat Patnaik - Finance and Growth Under Capitalism

By Prabhat Patnaik

Once we reject Say’s Law and recognize that capitalism is prone to deficiency in aggregate demand, we have to accept that sustained growth in this system requires exogenous stimuli. By exogenous stimuli I mean a set of factors which raise aggregate demand but are not themselves dependent upon the fact that growth has been occurring in the system; that is, they operate irrespective of whether or not growth has been occurring in the system. Moreover, they raise aggregate demand by a magnitude that increases with the size of the economy, for instance with the size of the capital stock. They are in other words different from “erratic shocks” on the one hand, and “endogenous stimuli”, such as the multiplier‐accelerator mechanism, on the other: the latter can perpetuate or accelerate growth only if it has been occurring anyway.

Read rest here.

The deep causes of the Great Divergence: or why China fell behind

In the last post, I suggested that Kenneth Chase's explanation of why China invented, but did not pursue the development of gunpowder and guns to its ultimate consequences, could be seen as the very deep cause of the so-called Big Divergence, i.e. of the rise to dominance by Western Europe. Chase explains the lack of interest in the development of firearms in China as the result of geographical conditions and how they affected warfare. He argues that two types of warfare developed after the invention of firearms.

"Where there were technologically advanced agrarianate societies that were not threatened by steppe or desert nomads, we find the combination of firearms and pikemen, with an emphasis upon infantry (western Europe, Japan). Where there were technologically advanced agrarianate societies that were threatened by steppe or desert nomads, we find the combination of firearms and wagons, with an emphasis upon cavalry (eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, north China)."

From a geographical point of view Chase divides Eurasia in three regions. The Arid Zone, which includes those areas that supported pastoral nomads, the Inner Zone including the areas that were directly threatened by pastoral nomads, principally eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, and China, and the Outer Zone that was not directly threatened by pastoral nomads, principally Western Europe and Japan, as shown in his map below.

In a sense, this is a more sophisticated geographical argument than the one put forward by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel, since it is capable of explaining why Western Europe and not China (or India, or the Ottomans) dominated the world, while Diamond (in a book that uses old political economy arguments, in particular the notion of surplus, something typical of many historians as argued here before) can only explain why Europeans conquered the people outside Eurasia (that had less luck in the choice of animals and plants to domesticate, and less chance to spread them in an East-West axis with similar climate) really. Note that Cipolla long ago had noted that the main advantage of Westerners when they arrived in the East (Vasco da Gama in 1498) was basically military.

The only thing missing in most of these non-economists discussions of the causes of Western European dominance is the role of demand expansion in technological progress and economic growth in general. But many historians do have an implicit demand-led growth or Keynesian story too, I should add. By the way, on the Keynesian view of many historians it might be worthwhile reading the last section of Garegnani and Palumbo's entry on the Elgar Companion to Classical Economics available here.

PS: This also suggests that on some level, particularly military and naval technology, the West was already ahead of the Oriental Empires considerably before Pomeranz and the revisionists time frame (i.e. around 1800).  However, the argument does not hinge on Eurocentric views about the superiority of culture, as in many neo-Weberian arguments (e.g. David Landes).

Demographic transitions, Malthusian traps and supply constrained growth

Gregory Clark's book The Farewell to Alms re-popularized the Malthusian model (for the relevant chapter go here). The basic idea is that population dynamics and the so-called demographic transition do have an important impact on economic growth. Robert Malthus' idea is relatively well known, even if there is an incredible amount of confusion in the way it is explained by modern neoclassical authors.

As all classical authors, Malthus assumed that real wages tended to be at subsistence levels. He emphasized more than others, eg. Smith or Marx, the physiological elements associated to subsistence, and his theory of population influenced David Ricardo (friends sometimes will push you in the wrong direction, but this should not be exaggerated; Ricardo was no Malthus). And this has nothing to do with some Iron Law of Wages (again this reflects the fact that mainstream authors like Clark have limited, to say the least, understanding of the surplus approach; for Ricardo and other classical authors on real wages see Stirati here).*

At any rate, Malthus notion was that if wages increased, population growth would ensue and bring them back to subsistence levels, hence real wages could not grow. In the mainstream story this is connected with lack of growth of income per capita. The economy would be in a Malthusian trap.** Population growth is bad in this Malthusian world, that is why the good reverend, like modern Republicans (and I would assume more than a few neoclassical economists), was for abstinence and delayed marriages.

The idea is that higher population, for a given technology, leads to more mouths to feed. Classical ideas that suggest that the extent of the market (and, hence, population) might have a positive impact on the division of labor (who said that?) are not discussed by modern neoclassical authors (also explains their dislike of Kaldor-Verdoorn Law). At any rate, the modern theory of economic growth is still dominated by supply-side explanations, in which technological progress is either exogenous (Solow) or endogenously determined by spending on education (or some variation of the topic in the endogenous growth literature).

Demographic transitions, in which the rates of mortality and fertility decline have in this view particular effects on growth. The notion is that the initial fall in fertility leads to a lower youth dependency ratio (less youngsters to feed), and is growth enhancing. Further, mainstream authors assume that workers in the labor force would have a higher savings rate (given life cycle hypothesis arguments) and that would lead to investment (yes, Say's Law). Jeff Williamson suggests (see here) that this, the so-called demographic dividend, in part explains the Economic Miracle in parts of Asia.

On the other hand, the same population dynamics leads to higher old age dependency ratio, and that should have (even if evidence is mixed on that) a negative impact on growth. Note that Eichengreen and his co-authors, suggest that slowdowns in growth are associated to falling productivity (not population dynamics), even if they measure that using Total Factor Productivity (which is not a measure of productivity, but of the changing patterns of functional income distribution; see here).

Mind you there is a more reasonable, demand-led, explanation for why population transitions might have an impact on growth. As the process of structural transformation from agricultural to industrial societies continues, more workers are incorporated in industrial jobs with higher pay, and even if income distribution might worsen, the expansion of urban population (and higher real wages) means an expansion of demand. Obviously once the transition is done, the expansion of real wages (not just from the rural workers moving into cities) must continue. In this case, the main cause for the limits to real wage expansion (demand expansion), and continued growth, come from the balance of payments, since higher wages and consumption lead to increasing imports.

There are many more limitations in the resurgence of Malthusian views in the mainstream. Including the Social Darwinist flavor of Clark's ideas, as noted by Deirdre McCloskey (here). But I'll leave those for another post.

* The main point that mainstream intepretations of classical authors miss is that there is no systematic decreasing relation between real wages and employment in Ricardo and other classical economists, something that Stirati makes clear.

** Note also that some authors suggest that this is the basis for Carlyle's epithet the 'dismal science' for Political Economy. As noted before by Vienneau (see here): "Thomas Carlyle did not coin the phrase 'The dismal science' to refer to Thomas Malthus's anti-utopian theory of population."