a bright future can be ours macroeconomic policy for non eurozone western countries radical changes in macroeconomic policy could produce a brighter future the neoclassical myth that a free market economy inevitably moves to an equilibrium position determined solely by supply side factors must be rejected and replaced by the insight that the position of an economy in the longer run is path dependent fiscal policy in recessions should be biased towards increasing physical and human capital which will improve the productivity of an economy raising living standards and hence taxable capacity thus enabling future public debt to be reduced if this is desirable monetary policy should play a very minor role in aggregate demand policy with interest rate settings largely used to help achieve long term income distribution goals all this is fundamental to geoff harcourt s vision of macroeconomic policy and this paper spells out how this vision can be implemented in 2012 in western countries not hamstrung by euro zone rules and regulations

cooperative and noncooperative r d in duopoly with spillovers contrary to the usual assumption made in most oligopoly models relations among firms are seldom of a wholly cooperative or noncooperative type in many situations they compete in some fields while they cooperate in others an important example is the case of cooperative research efforts bringing fierce competitors together two types of agreement are observed first r d cooperation can take place at the so called precompetitive stage companies share basic information and efforts in the r d stage but remain rivals in the market place 1 a second type of agreement involves an extended collusion between partners creating common policies at the product level the usual justifications of this extension are the difficulties of protecting intellectual property the idea is then to allow partners who have achieved inventions together to also control together the processes and products which embody the results of their collaboration in order to recuperate jointly their r d investments 2 what could be expected from these types of agreement is a reduction in r d expenditures because of less wasteful duplication and a reduction of total production because of more reprinted from the american economic review 78 5 1133 1137 1988 center for operations research econometrics 1348 louvain la neuve belgium we are grateful to jean

wage stagnation rising inequality and the financial crisis of 2008 the most widely embraced explanations of the financial crisis of 2008 have centered upon inadequate regulation stemming from laissez faire ideology combined with low interest rates although these widely acknowledged causal factors are true beneath them lie deeper determining forces that have received less notice wage stagnation and a dramatic increase in inequality in the u s over the preceding 35 years wage stagnation and heightened inequality generated three dynamics that made the economy vulnerable to systemic dysfunction the first is that they constrained consumption reducing profitable investment potential in the real economy and thereby encouraging an every wealthier elite to flood financial markets with credit helping keep interest rates low encouraging the creation of new credit instruments and greater indebtedness and fueling speculation the second dynamic is that consumption externalities were generated forcing individuals to struggle harder to find ways to maintain the welfare of their families and maintain their relative social status the consequence was that over the preceding three decades household saving rates plummeted households took on ever greater debt and worked longer hours the third dynamic is that as the rich took larger shares of income and wealth they gained more command over ideology and hence politics reducing the size of government cutting taxes on the rich and reducing welfare for the poor deregulating the economy and failing to regulate newly evolving credit instruments flowed out of this ideology

when less is more optimal patent breadth under the threat of patent validity challenges this article determines the optimal breadth of patent protection for a drastic process innovation when the innovator faces the likelihood of a direct patent validity challenge by a third party and potential entry and infringement by a competitor who provides a technologically equivalent process the effect of the innovator s patent breadth decision on the entrant s incentive to generate a competing process and on the entrant s ability to enter the market is also examined analytical results show that the greater the patent breadth the smaller the entrant s incentive to develop a non infringing process and the optimal flow of research and development spending however when patent breadth can be used to deter entry the incumbent always prefers to deter entry by choosing the smallest patent breadth possible that could achieve entry deterrence in addition when entry cannot be deterred it is never optimal for the incumbent to claim the maximum patent breadth possible

northern ireland s property market crisis insights from minsky s financial instability hypothesis the financial crisis of 2007 has shown that standard mainstream macroeconomic models underpinned by general equilibrium theory fail to anticipate explain and provide guidance on how to respond to such events stiglitz 2011 evidence in the northern ireland context has further suggested that applying these models to property markets may be inappropriate given the underlying statistical properties of these time series gallagher et al 2015 these issues combined suggest that there may be merit in examining cases of financial crises through alternative theoretical frameworks and in adopting a more pluralist approach with this in mind this paper investigates whether minsky s 1975 1986 1992 financial instability hypothesis can assist in understanding the recent property market crisis in northern ireland which was severe by both national and international standards using qualitative evidence to analyse the behaviours of borrowers represented by property developers and lenders represented by banks over the course of the business cycle this paper assesses the relevance of minsky s arguments the findings show that minsky s financial instability hypothesis explains the incidents observed in ni s property market in recent years

too big to manage us megabanks competition by innovation and the microfoundations of financialization disagreements over the systemic implications the future of financialization can be traced in part to the absence of sustained attention to the role of banking firms in driving this secular shift forward that is the financialization literature lacks an adequate microfoundation accounting for the drivers of financialization processes solely at the macro level overlooks the problems of how these processes came about and whether they are sustainable this paper addresses this explanatory gap arguing that a key independent microeconomic driver of increasing financialization did exist the incessant efforts by money centre banks in the usa to break out of depression era restrictions on their size activities and markets these banks growth strategies in turbulent times led to an institutional meso shift the rise of a megabank centred shadow banking system that now shapes global financial architecture even while operating in ways that are unsustainable in short too big to manage megabanks are at the heart of the fragility and instability of the economy today

a contribution to the theory of financial fragility and crisis the paper outlines formally three interrelated facets of a financial crisis of domestic origin i a debt financed consumption boom supported by rising asset prices that ends in debt deflation ii a related process of financial evolution of economic agents towards ponzi finance iii resulting systemic illiquidity afflicting the financial sector as a prelude to crisis being placed in relation to theories of exogenous and endogenous money the models indicate how the co evolution of the real and the financial sector results in financial fragility of different types the paper explores formally the specific features of the fragility of various episode of crisis which share a common pattern of gradual build up followed by a sudden collapse of financial confidence through the interaction between the real and the financial sector and concludes with implications for policy copyright the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

a minsky crisis a model is developed to illustrate hyman minsky s financial crisis theories a key assumption is that the level of wealth in the economy is determined mac roeconomically with the value of firms assets responding to the state of confidence as reflected by discounted quasi rents on capital the second assumption is that there is high substitutability between liabilities of firms and money in the public s portfolio a downward shift in anticipated profits leads wealth to contract and the public to shift portfolio preferences toward money interest rates rise leading to further dampening of expected profits and a debt deflation crisis can occur

regional tax differentials a kaleckian approach laramie a j and mair d 2005 regional tax differentials a kaleckian approach regional studies 39 345 355 the paper presents a kaleckian approach to the analysis of the incidence and macroeconomic effects of national and local taxes the micro and macro economic foundations of the model are developed these are then used to identify the effects on the uk scottish and rest of the uk economies if the scottish parliament were to exercise its income tax varying powers under the scotland act the paper concludes that because scotland is a small open economy the scottish parliament would be advised not to increase government spending in scotland funded by an increase in the standard rate of income tax in scotland

cognition market sentiment and financial instability the purpose of this paper is to explore the role for psychology within an open system structural theory of financial instability and to consider the implications for policy while behavioural finance has drawn on ideas from psychology in order to explain evidence of behaviour that deviates from the rationality axioms it is argued that the way in which psychology is framed by this approach is unduly limiting minsky s structural theory of financial instability with its keynesian and ultimately humean roots incorporates psychology into the theoretical foundations in particular cognition and sentiment are shown to be interconnected rather than separable it is concluded that the policy implications for addressing the current crisis while apparently similar between these different approaches are in fact very different the underlying theory involves different methodology and indeed different framing from behavioural finance the way in which the crisis is understood is therefore important for policy copyright the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

financial globalisation and crisis institutional transformation and equity this paper comprises the long introduction to the symposium of five papers on financial globalisation published in the cambridge journal of economics volume 34 no 2 the paper discusses the impact of financial globalisation in a variety of spheres and shows how the five papers link together to provide a coherent view of the current economic and financial crisis in this paper we also examine the globalisation of finance more broadly both in historical terms as well as in relation to the current widespread failure in the financial markets we take up the policy question of how the interests of the poor in particular and developing countries in general could be safeguarded from the vagaries of financial globalisation questioning how much choice communities and countries have and what can the international community do to extend these choices

how responsive is business capital formation to its user cost an exploration with micro data abstract the response of business capital formation to its user cost is critical to evaluating tax reform deficit reduction and monetary policy evidence for a substantial user cost elasticity however is sparse most evidence has been based on aggregate data although several recent studies with firm level data report substantial effects with a particularly rich micro dataset containing over 26 000 observations this paper explores what can be learned about the user cost elasticity while the results depend to some extent on the specification and econometric technique various diagnostics lead us to prefer a precisely estimated but small elasticity of approximately 0 25 this paper is dedicated to the memory of robert eisner who labored early and ably on uncovering the determinants of investment spending and highlighting the importance of the question found in the title of this paper

the financial instability hypothesis a stochastic microfoundation framework this paper examines the dynamics of financial distress and in particular the mechanism of transmission of shocks from the financial sector to the real economy the analysis is performed by representing the linkages between microeconomic financial variables and the aggregate performance of the economy by means of a microfounded model with firms that have heterogeneous capital structures the model is solved both numerically and analytically by means of a stochastic approximation that is able to replicate quite well the numerical solution these methodologies by overcoming the restrictions imposed by the traditional microfounded approach enable us to provide some insights into the stabilization policies which may be effective in a financially fragile system

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

michal kalecki on capitalism the appearance of a definitive english language collection of kalecki s works edited by jerzy osiatynski is an event to be warmly welcomed the collection makes available articles previously published in obscure places as well as important articles which have been translated from the polish and italian they thus make many of kalecki s major contributions available to a general audience for the first time these first two volumes of a projected seven volume set deal with topics which throw light on capitalist dynamics they begin with pre world war ii papers stemming from kalecki s reaction to the great depression and close with his articles in the economic journal of 1962 and 1968 on growth processes of the modern capitalist economy as well as the posthumously published kyklos paper about the nature of class struggle and the first english publication of a joint paper on the possibility of reform in capitalism observations on the crucial reform 1

understanding the shift from micro to macro prudential thinking a discursive network analysis macro prudential thinking and its emphasis on endogenously created systemic risks marginal in the banking regulation discourse until the mid 2000s has become central post crisis this paper analyzes this intellectual shift by using discourse and citation network analysis of the most cited scholarly works on banking regulation and systemic risk from 1985 to 2014 and six in depth interviews with central scholars it demonstrates that the predominance of formalism particularly partial equilibrium analysis in studies on banking regulation pre crisis impeded economists engagement with the endogenous sources of systemic risks discussed in the systemic risk sample these studies excluded observed phenomena that could not be accommodated in mathematical models largely ignoring contributions based on historical and practitioners styles of reasoning post crisis while informal analyses gain prominence in studies on banking regulation attempts to conceptualize systemic risk as a negative externality indicate the persistence of formalism and equilibrium thinking and its concomitant epistemological limitations that stymie theoretical progress

patent protection with a cooperative r d option patent protection may decrease r d incentives due to the tournament effect in this paper we show that patent protection in the presence of a cooperative r d option always increases the r d incentive in addition this option dominates imitation to increase the r d incentive under patent protection and may also dominate royalty licensing depending on the r d cost

limited liability and the modern corporation in theory and in practice the catastrophic consequences of a lack of public control over the operations of large private corporations have been thrown into sharp relief by two major events in the recent past the global financial crisis and the deepwater horizon oil spill in the gulf of mexico while these events obviously differ in scope and nature they nevertheless turn the spotlight on a fundamental problem of contemporary capitalism an economic system that facilitates the privatisation of gains in the hands of ever smaller elites while also socialising risk losses in an anarchic manner to the detriment of the many is not politically viable in the long run this is the case in particular if a core element of this system s legitimacy is its claim to promote democracy at home and around the world based on principles of transparency and accountability both the global financial crisis and the deepwater horizon oil spill have already attained the status of watershed events mainly because the social economic and environmental risks inflicted by private actors on very large groups of people were extraordinary and the causes of failure to manage these risks were systemic rather than accidental at the heart of the systemic nature of these watershed failures lies the gradual evolution of the modern corporation into organisations with the power to re shape in their favour a changing and varied history of precarious balancing acts between public and private interests in advanced capitalist economies from its beginnings capitalism has been defined by the primacy of economic over political organisation most famously encapsulated in adam smith s metaphor of the invisible hand much later albert hirschman s insightful account of how the interests gradually came to outweigh the passions hirschman 1977 provides a detailed analysis of such early legitimisation patterns according to which the pursuit of individual freedom and economic selforganisation would be the driving force of political pacification and collective civilisation yet from the beginning such high expectations were curbed by warnings of potential conflicts between private and public interests if the former became too powerful thus adam smith himself pointed out that t o widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers to widen the market may frequently be agreeable to the interest of the public but to narrow the competition must always be against it and can serve only to enable the dealers by raising their profits above what they naturally would be to levy for their own benefit an absurd tax on the rest

a keynes goodwin model of the business cycle abstract the paper puts forward a dynamic is lm model in four state variables representing real balances inflation income distribution and a so called state of confidence local in stability is characterized by high low interest elasticities of money demand also a hopf bifurcation can be shown to exist freezing inflation and distribution makes a mathematical analysis of the main stability mechanisms in the outer regions possible the global dynamics of the full system is studied by means of numerical simulations it gives rise to unique and stable limit cycles lastly a sensitivity analysis inquires into the impact of parameter changes on the main cycle features

introduction the global financial crisis there cannot now be a shadow of a doubt that the flaw in his ideology admitted by alan greenspan in response to a question by henry a waxman chairman of the us house of representatives committee on oversight and government reform whether he felt that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made is both significant and permanent the current financial and economic crisis that has forced the likes of greenspan to question the coherence of dominant conceptual frameworks is unprecedented in global reach and systemic gravity some basic figures speak for themselves according to mckinsey s mapping global financial markets october 2008 global financial assets rose from us 12 trillion in 1980 to us 196 trillion in 2007 the international monetary fund s global financial stability report imf 2009a estimate for the latter figure is considerably higher at us 241 trillion global cross border capital flows more than doubled between 2002 and 2007 with foreign investors holding one in four debt securities and one in five equities while in 2000 only 11 countries had financial assets of more than 350 of gross domestic product gdp 25 countries had deepened their financial markets to the same extent by 2007 as early as 1990 money managers had increased their control of us corporate equities from 8 in 1950 to 60 porter 1992 p 6 whalen 2002 p 402 similarly pension funds had extended their share of total business equities from less than 1 to just short of 39 and their fraction of corporate debt from 13 to 50 ghilarducci 1992 p 117 whalen 2002 p 402 in the period from 1986 to 2006 the us financial sector as a whole increased its share of corporate profits from 10 to 30 while its outstanding debts grew from 20 of gdp in 1980 to 116 in 2007 fed 2009 according to gillian tett from the financial times outstanding credit defaults swaps cds today amount to no less than us 60 trillion with the risk embodied after discounting mutually off setting contracts still as high as us 14 trillion tett 2009 p 264 as we know the curtains have now come down on this dance of the trillions palma 2009 the immediate hang over in the form of a pile of toxic debt is surreal not only in its

financialisation oil and the great recession abstract this article addresses the role of world oil price hike of 2007 08 in serving to transform the financial and banking crisis into what is commonly referred to the great recession existing literature on the global crisis of 2007 09 tends to view it as a financial or banking phenomenon with analyses focusing mainly on state policies governance mechanisms and market dynamics in transforming the banking crisis of 2007 08 into the economic recession of 2008 12 13 although often attributing the global meltdown to wider phenomenon of financialisation rarely do existing perspectives delve into the role of the commodity sector in the global credit crunch in this paper we aim to fill this gap by inquiring into the role played by oil as a financial asset class in the political economy of the global crisis

cash flow investment and keynes minsky cycles this paper analyzes a dynamic model with 1 an investment function that emphasizes cash flow 2 a keynesian macroeconomic framework that determines cash flow endogenously 3 a dynamic labor market model that drives wage and price adjustments and 4 boundedly rational expectations simulations from the calibrated model generate endogenous cycles with characteristics described in hyman minsky s research the cycle arises from the link between investment interest rates debt service and cash flow the amplitude and frequency of the cycle are related to the importance of cash flow for investment the dynamics of inflation and the distribution of income

financialisation and capital accumulation in the non financial corporate sector a theoretical and empirical investigation on the us economy 1973 2003 recent research has explored the growing financialization process in the u s and other advanced economies the term is a catch all phrase used to denote important changes in the structure of non financial corporations balance sheets including the growth of income from financial subsidiaries and investment as well as growth in the transfer of earnings to financial markets in the forms of interest payments dividend payments and stock buybacks this paper seeks to empirically explore the relationship between financialization in the u s economy and real investment at the firm level using data from a sample of non financial corporations from 1973 to 2003 i find a negative relationship between real investment and financialization first increased financial investment and increased financial profit opportunities may have crowded out real investment by changing the incentives of firm managers and directing funds away from real investment second increased payments to the financial markets may have impeded real investment by decreasing available internal funds shortening the planning horizons of the firm management and increasing uncertainty these two channels can help explain the negative relationship i find between investment and financialization

firms leverage ratio and the financial instability hypothesis an empirical investigation for the us economy 1970 2014 there are many minskian interpretations of how financial fragility builds up reflecting the unsolved tensions regarding the transition from micro to macro results in minsky s financial instability hypothesis fih using firm level and macroeconomic data to comply with the variety of fih s interpretations we empirically assess the relations between leverage and financial fragility in the us economy 1970 2014 to evaluate firms financial fragility we deploy minsky s scale from the financially sounder to the more fragile firms hedge speculative and ponzi the main findings are the following i the evolution of the aggregate leverage ratio does not account for the systemic financial fragility measured by the frequency of speculative and ponzi firms and ii within the biggest firms the leverage has increased along with the incidence of hedge financing and for the smallest firms group the opposite has happened we conclude that a positive relation between leverage and financial fragility cannot be deemed to be a general outcome

debt cycles instability and fiscal rules a godley minsky synthesis wynne godley and hyman minsky were two macroeconomists who saw the crisis coming this paper develops a simple macrodynamic model that synthesises some key perspectives of their analytical frameworks the model incorporates godley s financial balances approach and postulates that private sector s propensity to spend is driven by a stock flow norm the target net private debt to income ratio that changes endogenously via a minsky mechanism it also includes two fiscal rules a maastricht type fiscal rule according to which the fiscal authorities adjust the government expenditures based on a target net government debt ratio and a godley minsky fiscal rule which links government expenditures with private indebtedness following a counter cyclical logic the analysis shows that i the interaction between the propensity to spend and net private indebtedness can generate cycles and instability ii instability is more likely when the propensity to spend responds strongly to deviations from the stock flow norm and when the expectations that determine the stock flow norm are highly sensitive to the economic cycle iii the maastricht type fiscal rule is destabilising while the godley minsky fiscal rule is stabilising iv the paradox of debt can apply both to the private sector and the government sector

liquidity profit rate cycles in a capitalist economy abstract a monetary economy consisting of independent capitalist firms in which workers spend wages instantly and labor is not scarce is studied the firms create demand for each other s output through their capital outlays and create the backing for money through borrowing when all firms are identical in behavior and initial conditions and the rate of growth of money is constant the economy may be unstable around the equilibrium steady state growth path due to strong accelerator effects and follow a limit cycle trajectory

why the subprime crisis is different a minskyian approach minsky s financial instability model suggests that financial crises can be resolved efficiently with lender of last resort and big government interventions the crisis that began in 2007 hereafter the 2007 crisis has been different it has been more profound and resistant to policy interventions this paper examines why our approach is to expand minsky s balance sheet approach in several ways first we incorporate two factors minsky missed because he built his model in the 1970s the impact of racial exclusion and u s cross border imbalances on u s financial dynamics in addition we draw out the analytical implications of the systematic differences between banks and non banks balance sheets minsky didn t do this but because of the transformation of banking after 1980 these differences have become deeply significant one key effect of so doing is to see that asset liability balances as well as cash flows are crucial in financial dynamics this paper concludes that the 2007 crisis has been so profound and unresponsive to policy intervention for several reasons banks no longer bear as well as originate credit risk banks made exploitative loans to minority borrowers and then generalized these loans as housing prices rose and subprime homeowners and structured investment vehicles became more leveraged than banks copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

income distribution credit and fiscal policies in an agent based keynesian model this work studies the interactions between income distribution and monetary and fiscal policies in terms of ensuing dynamics of macro variables gdp growth unemployment etc on the grounds of an agent based keynesian model the direct ancestor of this work is the keynes meeting schumpeter formalism presented in dosi et al 2010 to that model we add a banking sector and a monetary authority setting interest rates and credit lending conditions the model combines keynesian mechanisms of demand generation a schumpeterian innovation fueled process of growth and minskian credit dynamics the robustness of the model is checked against its capability to jointly account for a large set of empirical regularities both at the micro level and at the macro one the model is able to catch salient features underlying the current as well as previous recessions the impact of financial factors and the role in them of income distribution we find that different income distribution regimes heavily affect macroeconomic performance more unequal economies are exposed to more severe business cycles fluctuations higher unemployment rates and higher probability of crises on the policy side fiscal policies do not only dampen business cycles reduce unemployment and the likelihood of experiencing a huge crisis in some circumstances they also affect positively long term growth further the more income distribution is skewed toward profits the greater the effects of fiscal policies about monetary policy we find a strong non linearity in the way interest rates affect macroeconomic dynamics in one regime with low rates changes in interest rates are ineffective up to a threshold beyond which increasing the interest rate implies smaller output growth rates and larger output volatility unemployment and likelihood of crises

the real plan stabilization and destabilization abstract the paper analyzes brazil s real plan an exchange rate based stabilization program implemented in 1994 which mixed a spectacular price stabilization with some serious macroeconomic destabilization the paper focuses on two of these imbalances the consumption boom and the financial destabilization showing that the former represented nothing but the reverse side of a collapsed investment boom which in turn led to the financial banking crisis we hold that these instabilities were produced by a policy arrangement in which monetary and fiscal policies alone had to compensate for a largely appreciated almost fixed exchange rate anchor

macroeconomic implications of financialisation a growing literature suggests that financialisation may weaken the performance of non financial corporations and constrain the growth of aggregate demand this paper uses two alternative approaches one derived from skott and one from lavoie and godley and two different settings a labour constrained setting and a dual economy setting to evaluate some of the claims that have been made our analysis which pays explicit attention to financial stock flow relations suggests that the qualitative effects of financialisation are insensitive to the precise specification of household saving behaviour but depend critically on the labour market assumptions labour constrained versus dual and the specification of the investment function harrodian versus kaleckian

investment confidence corporate debt and income fluctuations in this paper we present a macroeconomic model with new keynesian features which endogenously generates dynamic paths of income and the stock of corporate debt of a cyclic and chaotic nature from the market clearing condition on goods and money markets we derive the dynamic paths of income and corporate debt whose stability properties depend upon the propensity to invest out of the flow of internally generated funds which in turn is a positive function of income if it is relatively low the dynamic paths on income and corporate debt converge to their steady state long run values when the propensity to invest is neither too low nor too high the system can exhibit either bounded cycles or chaotic dynamics finally if it exceeds a critical upper value an explosive growth of debt occurs and a financial crisis is likely to ensue

building faith in a common currency can the eurozone get beyond the common market logic building faith in a common future which is at the core of the making of a common currency has been declining since the turn of the 1980s the economic neoliberalism that diffused worldwide after the collapse of the gold exchange standard and the economic crisis of the mid 1970s challenged the european project could a specific european model of social market economy help to forge the solidarity and discipline required to meet this challenge it turned out that members had different understandings of the european model especially regarding the role of central government meanwhile in all forced adjustments of the european union eu to a more open and competitive world be it enlargements new treaties or new institutions the german conception of social market economy prevailed mainly because germany was in a better position than its partners in most cases a rising discontent progressively eroded the faith in the eu project even in germany where a difficult reunification became a major national source of worries by the end of the 1990s when the euro was finally created the eu project had lost its momentum the relative success of the euro in the early 2000s was much linked with the weakness of the dollar answers to the 2008 financial then economic crisis that rest on harsh austerity plans can only worsen the situation a reconstruction of the eu project clearly needs a new pact of solidarity measures integration of the youths in all member countries stands as a good rallying common objective copyright the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

solvency rule and capital centralisation in a monetary union brancaccio and fontana 2013 have suggested that the central bank influences the solvency conditions of firms and households in the economic system this solvency rule is examined here within a stylised model of a monetary union characterised by different rates of accumulation and inflation across its two member countries the rule highlights the existence of a relationship between the interest rate set by the central monetary authority and the allocation of ownership of existing physical capital among the member countries of the monetary union i e the rates of capital centralisation the paper also shows the nexus between solvency and government debt sustainability and examines the implications of deflationary or currency devaluation policies for the solvency conditions

macrodynamics of debt regimes financial instability and growth this paper develops a post keynesian dynamic model of capacity utilisation and growth in which the supply of credit money is endogenous and firms debt position and thus the financial fragility of the economy a la hyman minsky is explicitly modelled the interest rate is set by banks as a markup over a base rate exogenously determined by the monetary authority the banking markup varies with changes in capacity utilisation while the debt ratio varies with changes in the rates of interest capital accumulation and growth regarding dynamics it is shown the possibility of relating the stability properties of a system with the interest rate and the debt ratio as state variables to the prevailing minskyan regime hedge speculative or ponzi

a stagnationist model of economic growth in an economy subject to persistent excess capacity demand related factors will play a key role in determining patterns of secular change this thesis has a long history in econ omics sometimes in the underworld and occasionally at the height of fashion as recounted by rowthorn 1982 recent manifestations in the first world are the theories of monopoly capitalism of baran and sweezy 1966 and steindl 1952 who in turn follow kalecki 1971 hobson 1902 luxemburg 1951 and the marx of realisation crises and reproduction schemes in volume ii of capital other radicals such as boddy and crotty 1975 add a profit squeeze explanation of the cycle which underlays the dynamics of the growth model specified here in developing countries difficulties in both realisation and sectoral proportions are emphasised as obstacles to growth witness lustig s 1980 review of latin american structuralist theory and dutt s 1984 model which formalises an ongoing controversy in india about how income redistribution might affect prospects for industrialisation all these authors are stagnationist in assuming that both the growth rate and the level of capacity utilisation can be different under different conditions of income distribution and or macroeconomic policy their preferred policies will presumably lead to greater equality increase utilisation or step up growth they typically ask two analytical ques tions how does output respond in the short run to shifts in the income distribution how do output adjustments feed back into distributional dynamics especially under conditions when price and wage inflation rates may be influenced by employment levels productivity changes and conflicting income claims in what follows we set out a simple model to address these questions and explore the implications for macroeconomic policy of the answers that arise since the approach is not familiar to economists with a standard training a verbal description of the growth model is given first those who wish to jump directly into a formal presentation can proceed to section 1 output x is assumed to meet demand in an instantaneous short run we measure activity as the ratio of firms net cash inflow to the value of capital stock i e the rate of profit r during the short run the price level p is fixed by a mark up rule p 1 x wb where r is the mark up rate w the money wage and b the labor output ratio with this rule the share of profits or mark up income in the value of output is r l t let u stand for the output capital ratio or capacity utilization xik by simple identity

the innovation rate and kalecki s theory of trend unemployment and the business cycle this paper reconsiders the post 1943 versions of kalecki s theory of the cycle and the trend of a capitalist economy which is free of any government involvement and in which labour supply is expanding kalecki s proposition on the central role of innovations in preventing the trend rate of unemployment from increasing is shown to apply only to the case when investors react slowly to changes in profitability capitalists are cautious and when in addition innovation induced investments are low either because innovations are rare capitalism is sluggish or because firms that do not innovate can still survive captialism is poorly competitive the reason for kalecki s too general a proposition is shown to be his incorrect analysis of the stability of the trend growth rate of output this paper offers new stability analysis as well as some extensions of kalecki s theory the reported results make his models richer and place them closer to the mainstream of macroeconomic theory kalecki s early work on unemployment and the business cycle established him as a co founder of the modern macroeconomic theory as in keynes general theory 1936 so too in kalecki s model 1933 1935 it is the aggregate investment demand rather than the flexibility of prices or wages that plays a key role in determining the aggregate level of output and employment however kalecki s classical model in contrast to keynes was dynamic with the crucial equation that for investment demand having the mixed difference differential form

demand driven inequality endogenous saving rate and macroeconomic instability this article examines consumption dynamics in a cambridge model of growth and distribution the model endogenises the workers saving rate and incorporates out of equilibrium dynamics explicitly the analysis identifies a new mechanism of macroeconomic instability that emerges from the interaction between the kaldorian process of demand driven inequality and the workers saving behaviour the mechanism can generate perpetual cycles where the upwards phase is characterised by a prolonged period of falling saving rate and increasing income inequality the article discusses the empirical relevance of the formal analysis the article discusses the empirical relevance of the analytic results

optimal patent policy research joint ventures and growth abstract the patent and growth studies have found that there may be welfare loss without optimizing both patent breadth and the division of profit in competitive research joint ventures njs this paper examines the effects of patent policy on an r d based growth model where innovations are produced by cooperative research joint ventures cjs we show that cjs always generate a higher equilibrium growth rate than njs and the social optimum can be achieved with cjs in equilibrium when only patent breadth is chosen optimally

government policies and financial crises mitigation postponement or prevention in the aftermath of the great recession governments have implemented several policy measures to counteract the collapse of the financial sector and the downswing of the real sector within a framework of minsky veblen cycles where relative consumption concerns a debt led growth regime and financial sector confidence constitute the main causes of economic fluctuations we use computer simulations to assess the effectiveness of such measures we find that the considered policy measures help mitigate the impact of financial crises though they do so at the cost of shortening the time between financial crises this result is due to a relatively fast recovery of solvency and confidence induced by the policy measures under study which contribute to an increase in private credit and thereby effective demand our results suggest that without the strengthening of financial regulation any policy intervention remains incomplete

minsky models a structured survey minsky s ideas have recently gained prominence in the mainstream as well as in the heterodox literature however there exists no agreement upon the formal presentation of minsky s insights the aim of this paper is to survey the literature and identify differences and similarities in the ways through which minskyan ideas have been formalised we distinguish between the models that focus on the dynamics of debt or interest with no or a secondary role for asset prices and the models in which asset prices play a key role in the dynamic behaviour of the economy within the first category of models we make a classification between i the kalecki minsky models ii the kaldor minsky models iii the goodwin minsky models iv the credit rationing minsky models v the endogenous target debt ratio models and vi the minsky veblen models within the second category of models we distinguish between i the equity price minsky models and ii the real estate price minsky models key limitations of the models and directions for future research are outlined

capital market imperfections and financialization of real sectors in emerging markets private investment and cash flow relationship revisited summary the paper analyzes the impacts of cash flow from multiple investments in real and financial sectors on the new fixed investment spending of real sector firms the empirical results based on the euler equation approach and semi annual firm level data from two major emerging markets mexico and turkey suggest that profits and rates of returns from fixed and financial assets have differential effects on fixed investment spending of real sector firms accordingly increasing availability and accessibility of alternative investment opportunities in financial markets can become instrumental in channeling real sector savings to short term financial investments instead of long term fixed capital formation and thus lead to deindustrialization

peering over the edge of the short period the keynesian roots of stock flow consistent macroeconomic models this work argues that institutionally rich stock flow consistent models i e models in which economic agents are identified with the main social categories institutional sectors of actual capitalist economies the short period behaviour of these agents is thoroughly described and the period by period balance sheet dynamics implied by the latter is consistently modelled are i perfectly compatible with keynes theoretical views ii the ideal tool for rigorous post keynesian analyses of the medium run and therefore iii crucial to the consolidation of the broad post keynesian research programme copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

the struggle to survive in the r d sector implications for innovation and growth by allowing for investment activities by research and development r d firms to prevent product obsolescence we show that if legal patent protection is too strong a higher r d subsidy rate delivers insufficient investments for survival in the r d sector depressing innovation and growth in the long run

the macroeconomic implications of financial deregulation abstract this paper explores the possible macroeconomic consequences of financial deregulation in an institutional environment where deregulation raises risks in banking the central bank is supposed to maximize an objective function in which the probability of bank failure is an argument it is then shown that the usual tradeoffs between policy objectives imply that financial deregulation will lead to more interest rate smoothing than would otherwise take place and further that because of restricted entry into banking deregulation will call for some inflation the transition toward deregulation raises special problems which are likely to require a more gradual approach toward the stationary equilibrium

comparative evaluation of post keynesian interest rate rules income distribution and firms debts for macroeconomic performance this article investigates the macroeconomic effects of firms debts and income distribution on economic growth and inflation under three different post keynesian interest rate rules the kansas city rule the smithin rule and the pasinetti rule by setting up a dynamic post keynesian model after reviewing debates on the post keynesian interest rate policies this article evaluates the relative merits of the three rules in their relationship with economic growth regimes and inflation dynamics accordingly this article explicitly shows that i a policy rule works effectively under some economic growth and inflation patterns but not necessarily under other patterns ii a policy rule contributing to high economic growth may not always be compatible with stabilisation of economic growth and iii the macroeconomic effects of debt and income distribution on economic growth and inflation are closely related to the choice of interest rate rule

how broad should the scope of patent protection be i explore the trade off between a patent s length that is its lifetime and its width that is its scope of coverage a wider patent generally reduces the distortion of consumers choices between the patented brand of the product and unpatented lower priced varieties sold by competitors but also permits higher prices which increase relative to profits the deadweight losses from consumers switching consumption out of the product class i show under what conditions infinitely lived but very narrowly focused patents are the socially efficient way to reward innovation and under what conditions very short lived but very broad patents are optimal

bank profitability leverage and financial instability a minsky harrod model this paper develops a stock flow consistent macroeconomic model where bank profitability and bank leverage play a crucial role in the determination of firms liability structure the model assumes that banks credit supply depends on bank profitability as well as firms profit interest ratio our analysis suggests that a strong expansionary effect of bank profitability on credit supply tends to destabilise the economy leading to cycles driven by the interactions between firms and banks financial behaviour the formal framework is used to discuss hyman minsky s proposal in his stabilizing an unstable economy for the control over the permissible leverage ratios and payout ratios of banks copyright oxford university press

the agent based approach to post keynesian macro modeling the paper presents a survey of post keynesian pk agent based ab models and ab models with pk features it is argued that ab modeling is fully consistent with the pk approach and that the cross fertilization can benefit both areas of research the survey focuses on how the various models have faced the issues implied by adopting a bottom up approach in a traditionally aggregative structure and highlights the additional insights coming from this modeling strategy particular attention is devoted to stock flow consistent ab models for theivvr potential in defining a new benchmark for this type of research

stock flow consistent macroeconomic models a survey the stock flow consistent sfc modelling approach grounded in the pioneering work of wynne godley and james tobin in the 1970s has been adopted by a growing number of researchers in macroeconomics especially after the publication of monetary economics by godley and lavoie which provided a general framework for the analysis of whole economic systems and the recognition that macroeconomic models integrating real markets with flow of funds analysis had been particularly successful in predicting the great recession of 2007 2009 we introduce the general features of the sfc approach for a closed economy showing how the core model has been extended to address issues such as financialization and income distribution we next discuss the implications of the approach for models of open economies and compare the methodologies adopted in developing sfc empirical models for whole countries we review the contributions where the sfc approach is being adopted as the macroeconomic closure of microeconomic agent based models and how the sfc approach is at the core of new research in ecological macroeconomics finally we discuss the appropriateness of the name sfc for the class of models we survey

the dynamics of leverage in a demand driven model with heterogeneous firms abstract this paper introduces heterogeneous microeconomic behavior into a demand driven macroeconomic model in order to study the joint dynamics of leverage and capital accumulation by identifying the links between firm level variables and aggregate quantities the paper contributes toward a reformulation of the minskyan formal analysis that explicitly considers the role of microeconomic factors in generating macroeconomic instability the aggregation of heterogeneous agents is not only performed numerically as in traditional agent based models but also by means of an innovative analytical methodology originally developed in statistical mechanics and recently imported into macroeconomics the distinctive feature is in that the joint analysis of the numerical and analytical solutions of the model sheds light on the effects of financial fragility at the firm level on the dynamics of the macroeconomy in particular the analysis of steady state and stability properties of the system provide additional insights on the role of behavioral and size heterogeneity of firms for the stocks of aggregate debt and capital

macroeconomic issues for latin america abstract recent macroeconomic issues in latin america are reviewed with an emphasis on theory topics covered include multiple equilibria from hysteresis or increasing returns exchange rate management and the output and asset market effects of devaluation speculation interest rate management and financial reform government behavior income distribution and growth inertial inflation and heterodox policy shocks and disequilibrium theories

long waves and short cycles in a model of endogenous financial fragility this paper presents a stock flow consistent macroeconomic model in which financial fragility in firm and household sectors evolves endogenously through the interaction between real and financial sectors changes in firms and households financial practices produce long waves the hopf bifurcation theorem is applied to clarify the conditions for the existence of limit cycles and simulations illustrate stable limit cycles the long waves are characterized by periodic economic crises following long expansions short cycles generated by the interaction between effective demand and labor market dynamics fluctuate around the long waves

the rise and fall of money manager capitalism a minskian approach we are in the midst of a global financial crisis accompanied by a deep and probably long lasting economic downturn indeed some analysts are already calling this the first depression of the post world war ii era in this article i argue that this is a systemic crisis a crisis of what hyman minsky called money manager capitalism i link this to the analyses of hilferding and veblen of an earlier period finance capitalism and argue that this is in effect the second failure of this type of capitalism the essential characteristics of early finance capitalism are relatively small government use of external finance for investment and growing concentration of economic power in the hands of trusts or what we might today call megacorporations with varied interests and diverse affiliations across industry finance and insurance unlike the first phase the second phase of finance capitalism took place in the context of a big government neoconservative model minsky s analysis helps us to understand how the new deal and big government created a paternalistic capitalism after world war ii which favoured high consumption high employment greater equality and financial stability however that stability was destabilising because it permitted the rise of managed money over time innovation and deregulation increased fragility which generated increasingly frequent and severe financial crises while previous crises were resolved quickly enough to prevent it another debt deflation from happening again this crisis appears to be sufficiently severe that the very survival of money manager capitalism is thrown into question the article examines the contributing factors to the current crisis including the real estate boom and bust the rise of risky financial instruments such as securitised debts and credit default swaps the commodities market bubble and the fiscal squeeze the article concludes with some suggestions concerning the possible outcome of the failure of this form of finance capitalism copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

minsky from the bottom up formalising the two price model of investment in a simple agent based framework abstract this paper presents a fully formalised version of hyman minsky s two price model of capital investment embedded in a macroeconomic model consisting of an agent based sector of consumption goods firms as well as three strongly simplified aggregated sectors in an innovation to the literature on minsky models the model is calibrated empirically using moments drawn from us data demonstrating that it is capable of producing plausible time series simulations show that the individual investment and financing choices made by the agent based firms lead to the emergence of business cycles at the aggregate level key aspects of the model can be closely related to central concepts from the financial accelerator literature and moreover it is demonstrated through simulation experiments that expectations and sentiment dynamics play an important role being able to amplify or dampen the cycles it is also shown that the introduction of fiscal policy monetary policy or a restriction on firm dividend payouts can contribute to a stabilisation of the model