financialisation and tendencies towards stagnation the role of macroeconomic regime changes in the course of and after the financial and economic crisis 2007 09

finance inflation and employment a post keynesian kaleckian analysis the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the post keynesian kaleckian macroeconomic literature we develop a macroeconomic model that explicitly integrates the role of borrowing and cash payment commitments on outstanding debt interest plus principal repayment into the consumption and investment expenditures as well as into the inflation generating process we explore the way that finance influences the distribution effects of inflation in the demand side of a money credit using economy we suggest a new phillips curve that encapsulates the impact of financial commitments on wage and profit claims we argue that high debt and cash payment commitments are likely to be associated with a positive demand side effect of inflation on the rate of employment and that they might be conducive to a negative supply side effect of employment on the inflation rate the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved

the economics of short term performance obsession in theory discounted cash flows dcfs set prices in well functioning capital markets in practice investment managers attach substantial weight in stock selection to short term performance particularly earnings and tracking error corporate executives blame this behavior for their own obsession with short term earnings are stock prices likely to allocate financial resources efficiently when short term earnings dominate investment decisions can investment managers who identify stocks as mispriced on a dcf basis earn excess returns this article explains why maximizing long term cash flow is the most effective way to create value for shareholders and charts a course for alleviating the obsession with short term performance

the effects of income distribution and fiscal policy on aggregate demand investment and the budget balance the case of europe this paper develops a multi country post kaleckian model that incorporates the role of the government one key novelty of the model is that it integrates cross country effects of both changes in income distribution and fiscal policy the model is used to estimate econometrically the effects of income distribution and fiscal policy on the components of aggregate demand and the budget balance in eu15 countries the results show that a simultaneous increase in the wage share in all eu15 countries would increase demand and the primary budget balance in all countries a simultaneous increase in government spending turns out to boost economic activity in all the eu15 countries indicating the positive economic effects of expansionary fiscal policy moreover a progressive tax policy that would be implemented simultaneously at the eu level would lead to an increase in output in all countries

new issues in corporate finance flow of funds data are used to compare methods of finance in 5 countries over the period 1970 to 1985 many of the problems associated with previous studies are avoided by estimating net instead of gross financing proportions the degree of consolidation of accounts reciprocal arrangements between borrowers and lenders and compensating deposit requirements on borrowers no longer distort financing patterns corrections for inflation are provided by employing flow rather than stock figures and using own aggregation procedures to derive stock measures significant variations in financing emerge these are not readily explained by traditional descriptions of corporate finance in particular taxation as an alternative the paper suggests that relationships between borrowers and lenders establish forms of commitment that are conducive to the provision of long term finance the separation between investment and finance which has been the starting point of corporate finance theory is untenable in a multiperiod context in which terms of finance define future allocation of control

search frictions real wage rigidities and the optimal design of unemployment insurance abstract in this paper we study the optimal unemployment benefits financing scheme when the economy is subject to labor market imperfections characterized by real wage rigidities and search frictions the us unemployment insurance financing is such that firms are taxed proportionately to their layoffs to finance unemployment benefits using dsge methodology we investigate how policy instruments should interact with labor market imperfections it is shown that wage rigidities in a search and matching environment cause welfare costs especially in the absence of an incentive based unemployment insurance this cost is mainly due to the distorting effect of wage rigidities which generate inefficient separations we show that the optimal unemployment benefits financing scheme corresponding to the ramsey policy offsets labor market imperfections and allows implementation of the pareto allocation the second best allocation brings the economy close to the ramsey allocation the implementation of the optimal policies clearly highlights the role of labor market institutions for short run stabilization

heterodox theories of economic growth and income distribution a partial survey heterodox theories of economic growth and income distribution are surveyed focusing on major theories and recent contributions first a general framework for examining growth and distribution is discussed in terms of which classical marxian and post keynesian kaleckian and other theories are presented since this framework examines how variables are determined in equilibrium second dynamics behind equilibria are examined focusing on goods market and labor market changes third the framework is extended in a variety of ways to examine additional models addressing productivity growth and technical change money and inflation finance and debt additional distributional considerations multisector issues open economy questions and the environment it is concluded that the literature on heterodox theories of growth and distribution is vibrant large and growing and addresses many issues that are ignored or neglected in orthodox theories including power unemployment and aggregate demand

unemployment and the real wage the economic basis for contesting political ideologies using the keynesian theory of effective demand this paper demonstrates how particular models such as that of cooperative capitalism enunciated by the left keynesian social democrats the marxian model of profit squeeze emphasizing distributive conflict and even the conservative model relying on supply side stimulus fit in as particular variants of a more general theoretical scheme through a reconstruction of the familiar is schedule the argument is weaved around the theme of the relations between unemployment and real wage in the context of both a closed and an open economy to explain the common macroeconomic basis of contesting ideologies copyright 1990 by oxford university press

financialisation and the slowdown of accumulation over the past decades financial investment of non financial businesses has been rising and accumulation of capital goods has been declining the first part of the paper offers a novel theory to explain this phenomenon financialization the shareholder revolution and the development of a market for corporate control have shifted power to shareholders and thus changed management priorities leading to a reduction in the desired growth rate in the second part the link between accumulation and financialization is tested econometrically by means of a time series analysis of aggregate business investment for usa uk france and germany extensive test of robustness are performed for the first three countries evidence that confirms the negative effect of financialization on accumulation is found author s abstract

a synthetic stock flow consistent macroeconomic model of financialisation this article is centred around the notions of shareholder value orientation and financialisation shareholder value orientation is reflected by a high dividend payout ratio applied by firms and the reluctance of firms to finance physical investment via new equity issues financialisation is the more general development towards an increased importance of the financial sector of the economy relative to the non financial sector in this article a synthetic stock flow consistent model is developed that attempts to encompass some important recent works on the effects of financialisation this includes contributions from the fields of mainstream information economics and post keynesian economics we conduct simulations reflecting increased shareholder value orientation and show that the results are consistent with important stylised facts copyright the author 2008 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

the double bubble at the turn of the century technological roots and structural implications this paper argues that the two boom and bust episodes of the turn of the century the internet mania and crash of the 1990s and the easy liquidity boom and bust of the 2000s are two distinct components of a single structural phenomenon they are essentially the equivalent of 1929 developed in two stages one centred on technological innovation the other on financial innovation hence the frequent references to that crash to the 1930s and to bretton woods are not simple journalistic metaphors for interpreting the credit crunch and its solution but rather the intuitive recognition of a fundamental similarity between those events and the current ones the paper holds that such major boom and bust episodes are endogenous to the way in which the market economy evolves and assimilates successive technological revolutions it will discuss why it occurred in two bubbles on this occasion it examines the differences and continuities between the two episodes and presents an interpretation of their nature and consequences

the assessment household saving issues in theory and policy in this assessment we discuss the issues raised by the papers in this issue of the oxford review of economic policy in the context of economic models of household consumption and saving we also provide a discussion of what we consider to be some important areas in the current debate surrounding theories and evidence regarding saving behaviour we highlight the differences that arise from considering partial as opposed to general equilibrium models and in looking at developed as opposed to developing countries we also discuss current policy issues relating both to the adequacy of household saving and to the distribution of saving across households or across asset types as well as the need for more microdata on saving and asset holding

income inequality in the united states 1913 1998 this paper presents new homogeneous series on top shares of income and wages from 1913 to 1998 in the united states using individual tax returns data top income and wages shares display a u shaped pattern over the century our series suggest that the large shocks that capital owners experienced during the great depression and world war ii have had a permanent effect on top capital incomes we argue that steep progressive income and estate taxation may have prevented large fortunes from fully recovering from these shocks top wage shares were flat before world war ii dropped precipitously during the war and did not start to recover before the late 1960s but are now higher than before world war ii as a result the working rich have replaced the rentiers at the top of the income distribution

tobin s q and financial policy abstract recent research in macroeconomics has emphasized the importance of linking the financial and real sectors and working with optimizing models tobin s q model of investment would appear to provide a framework satisfying these two criteria in contrast to the original presentation of the q model the formal development has not recognized that the firm actively participates in a number of financial markets in this broader context q may be an uninformative and possibly misleading signal for investment expenditures we then endeavor to turn this negative theoretical result to positive advantage in resolving a number of empirical problems with q models

why market valuation indifferent indexing works using market values for indexing gives more portfolio weight to the stocks with positive price errors and less portfolio weight to the stocks with negative price errors market valuation indifferent indexing such as equal weighting or weighting by number of employees number of customers or sales relies on averaging over hundreds of stocks to give equal weight to the two groups

the demands of finance and the glass ceiling of profit without investment in post keynesian recent works the profit without investment case has made its appearance as a particular accumulation regime one claiming along with two others the contractive and the expansive case that it can account for the different conceivable dynamic patterns at work in financialised capitalism actually profit without investment or rather profit beyond investment is in the very nature of capitalism it is not a special case the dividend channel is an essential component of profit formation we show that its enabling condition and what at the same time limits its width is firms resort to debt beyond a certain point the divorce between dividends and investment is such that firms policies leave their viable domain a domain bounded by their wishes to be self financing past that point any increase in profits runs into a glass ceiling in terms of outlets for those profits it is when the demands of finance i e of shareholders reach this limit that the three regimes identified in the literature make their appearance including the one called profit without investment seen in this light these regimes are therefore all cases of profit without investment ones that take on some reality and some plausibility when finance tries to drag profit without accumulation outside of its viable domain

stock market wealth and consumption this paper explores the link between changes in the aggregate value of corporate stock and changes in consumer spending it presents data on the distribution of corporate stock ownership based on the 1998 survey of consumer finances it also uses time series evidence on the comovement of stock market wealth and various categories of consumer spending to calibrate the wealth effect it concludes that in the year after a change in stock market values consumer spending is likely to rise by between one and two cents for each dollar increase in the value of corporate stock

post keynesian stock flow consistent modelling a survey the aim of the paper is to provide an overview of the current stock ow consistent sfc literature indeed we feel the sfc approach has recently led to a blossoming literature requiring a new summary after the work of dos santos and above all after the publication of the main reference work on the methodology godley and lavoie s monetary economics an integrated approach to credit money income production and wealth the paper is developed along the following lines first a brief historical analysis investigates the roots of this class of models that can be traced as far back as 1949 and the work of copeland second the competing points of view regarding some of its main controversial aspects are underlined and used to classify the different methodological approaches followed in using these models namely we discuss i how the models are solved ii the treatment of time and its implication and ii the need or not for microfoundations these results are then used in the third section of the paper to develop a bifocal perspective which allows us to divide the literature reviewed according to both its subject and the methodology we explore various topics such as financialisation exchange rate modelling policy implication the need for a common framework within the post keynesian literature and the empirical use of sfc models finally the conclusions present some hypotheses and wishes for the possible lines of development of sfc models