Reconstructing Macroeconomics

Reconstructing Macroeconomics
Author: Lance TAYLOR
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 455
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674044231

Macroeconomics is in disarray. No one approach is dominant, and an increasing divide between theory and empirics is evident. This book presents both a critique of mainstream macroeconomics from a structuralist perspective and an exposition of modern structuralist approaches. The fundamental assumption of structuralism is that it is impossible to understand a macroeconomy without understanding its major institutions and distributive relationships across productive sectors and social groups. Lance Taylor focuses his critique on mainstream monetarist, new classical, new Keynesian, and growth models. He examines them from a historical perspective, tracing monetarism from its eighteenth-century roots and comparing current monetarist and new classical models with those of the post-Wicksellian, pre-Keynesian generation of macroeconomists. He contrasts the new Keynesian vision with Keynes's General Theory, and analyzes contemporary growth theories against long traditions of thought about economic development and structural change. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Social Accounts and Social Relations 1. A Simple Social Accounting Matrix 2. Implications of the Accounts 3. Disaggregating Effective Demand 4. A More Realistic SAM 5. Stock-Flow Relationships 6. A SAM and Asset Accounts for the United States 7. Further Thoughts 2. Prices and Distribution 1. Classical Macroeconomics 2. Classical Theories of Price and Distribution 3. Neoclassical Cost-Based Prices 4. Hat Calculus, Measuring Productivity Growth, and Full Employment Equilibrium 5. Mark-up Pricing in the Product Market 6. Efficiency Wages for Labor 7. New Keynesian Crosses and Methodological Reservations 8. First Looks at Inflation 3. Money, Interest, and Inflation 1. Money and Credit 2. Diverse Interest Theories 3. Interest Rate Cost-Push 4. Real Interest Rate Theory 5. The Ramsey Model 6. Dynamics on a Flying Trapeze 7. The Overlapping Generations Growth Model 8. Wicksell's Cumulative Process Inflation Model 9. More on Inflation Taxes 4. Effective Demand and Its Real and Financial Implications 1. The Commodity Market 2. Macro Adjustment via Forced Saving and Real Balance Effects 3. Real Balances, Input Substitution, and Money Wage Cuts 4. Liquidity Preference and Marginal Efficiency of Capital 5. Liquidity Preference, Fisher Arbitrage, and the Liquidity Trap 6. The System as a Whole 7. The IS/LM Model 8. Keynes and Friends on Financial Markets 9. Financial Markets and Investment 10. Consumption and Saving 11 "Disequilibrium" Macroeconomics 12. A Structuralist Synopsis 5. Short-Term Model Closure and Long-Term Growth 1. Model "Closures" in the Short Run 2. Graphical Representations and Supply-Driven Growth 3. Harrod, Robinson, and Related Stories 4. More Stable Demand-Determined Growth 6. Chicago Monetarism, New Classical Macroeconomics, and Mainstream Finance 1. Methodological Caveats 2. A Chicago Monetarist Model 3. A Cleaner Version of Monetarism 4. New Classical Spins 5. Dynamics of Government Debt 6. Ricardian Equivalence 7. The Business Cycle Conundrum 8. Cycles from the Supply Side 9. Optimal Behavior under Risk 10. Random Walk, Equity Premium, and the Modigliani-Miller Theorem 11. More on Modigliani-Miller 12. The Calculation Debate and Super-Rational Economics 7. Effective Demand and the Distributive Curve 1. Initial Observations 2. Inflation, Productivity Growth, and Distribution 3. Absorbing Productivity Growth 4. Effects of Expansionary Policy 5. Financial Extensions 6. Dynamics of the System 7. Comparative Dynamics 8. Open Economy Complications 8. Structuralist Finance and Money 1. Banking History and Institutions 2. Endogenous Finance 3. Endogenous Money via Bank Lending 4. Money Market Funds and the Level of Interest Rates 5. Business Debt and Growth in a Post-Keynesian World 6. New Keynesian Approaches to Financial Markets 9. A Genus of Cycles 1. Goodwin's Model 2. A Structuralist Goodwin Model 3. Evidence for the United States 4. A Contractionary Devaluation Cycle 5. An Inflation Expectations Cycle 6. Confidence and Multiplier 7. Minsky on Financial Cycles 8. Excess Capacity, Corporate Debt Burden, and a Cold Douche 9. Final Thoughts 10. Exchange Rate Complications 1. Accounting Conundrums 2. Determining Exchange Rates 3. Asset Prices, Expectations, and Exchange Rates 4. Commodity Arbitrage and Purchasing Power Parity 5. Portfolio Balance 6. Mundell-Fleming 7. IS/LM Comparative Statics 8. UIP and Dynamics 9. Open Economy Monetarism 10. Dornbusch 11. Other Theories of the Exchange Rate 12. A Developing Country Debt Cycle 13. Fencing in the Beast 11. Growth and Development Theories 1. New Growth Theories and Say's Law 2. Distribution and Growth 3. Models with Binding Resource or Sectoral Supply Constraints 4. Accounting for Growth 5. Other Perspectives 6. The Mainstream Policy Response 7. Where Theory Might Sensibly Go References Index Reconstructing Macroeconomics is a stunning intellectual achievement. It surveys an astonishing range of macroeconomic problems and approaches in a compact, coherent critical framework with unfailing depth, wit, and subtlety. Lance Taylor's pathbreaking work in structural macroeconomics and econometrics sets challenging standards of rigor, realism, and insight for the field. Taylor shows why the structuralist and Keynesian insistence on putting accounting consistency, income distribution, and aggregate demand at the center of macroeconomic analysis is indispensable to understanding real-world macroeconomic events in both developing and developed economies. The book is full of new results, modeling techniques, and shrewd suggestions for further research. Taylor's scrupulous and balanced appraisal of the whole range of macroeconomic schools of thought will be a source of new perspectives to macroeconomists of every persuasion. --Duncan K. Foley, New School University Lance Taylor has produced a masterful and comprehensive critical survey of existing macro models, both mainstream and structuralist, which breaks considerable new ground. The pace is brisk, the level is high, and the writing is entertaining. The author's sense of humor and literary references enliven the discussion of otherwise arcane and technical, but extremely important, issues in macro theory. This book is sure to become a standard reference that future generations of macroeconomists will refer to for decades to come. --Robert Blecker, American University While there are other books dealing with heterodox macroeconomics, this book surpasses them all in the quality of its presentation and in the careful treatment and criticism of orthodox macroeconomics including its recent contributions. The book is unique in the way it systematically covers heterodox growth theory and its relations to other aspects of heterodox macroeconomics using a common organizing framework in terms of accounting relations, and in the way it compares the theories with mainstream contributions. Another positive and novel feature of the book is that it takes a long view of the development of economic ideas, which leads to a more accurate appreciation of the real contributions by recent theoretical developments than is possible in a presentation that ignores the history of macroeconomics. --Amitava Dutt, University of Notre Dame

The Reformation in Economics

The Reformation in Economics
Author: Philip Pilkington
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2016-12-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319407570

This book carves the beginnings of a new path in the arguably weary discipline of economics. It combines a variety of perspectives – from the history of ideas to epistemology – in order to try to understand what has gone so wrong with economics and articulate a coherent way forward. This is undertaken through a dual path of deconstruction and reconstruction. Mainstream economics is broken down into many of its key component parts and the history of each of these parts is scrutinized closely. When the flaws are thoroughly understood the author then begins the task of reconstruction. What emerges is not a ‘Grand Unified Theory of Everything’, but rather a provisional map outlining a new terrain for economists to explore. The Reformation in Economics is written in a lively and engaging style that aims less at the formalization of dogma and more at the exploration of ideas. This truly groundbreaking work invites readers to rethink their current understanding of economics as a discipline and is particularly relevant for those interested in economic pluralism and alternative economics.

Raising Keynes

Raising Keynes
Author: Stephen A. Marglin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 921
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674971027

Back to the future: a heterodox economist rewrites Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money to serve as the basis for a macroeconomics for the twenty-first century. John Maynard Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money was the most influential economic idea of the twentieth century. But, argues Stephen Marglin, its radical implications were obscured by Keynes's lack of the mathematical tools necessary to argue convincingly that the problem was the market itself, as distinct from myriad sources of friction around its margins. Marglin fills in the theoretical gaps, revealing the deeper meaning of the General Theory. Drawing on eight decades of discussion and debate since the General Theory was published, as well as on his own research, Marglin substantiates Keynes's intuition that there is no mechanism within a capitalist economy that ensures full employment. Even if deregulating the economy could make it more like the textbook ideal of perfect competition, this would not address the problem that Keynes identified: the potential inadequacy of aggregate demand. Ordinary citizens have paid a steep price for the distortion of Keynes's message. Fiscal policy has been relegated to emergencies like the Great Recession. Monetary policy has focused unduly on inflation. In both cases the underlying rationale is the false premise that in the long run at least the economy is self-regulating so that fiscal policy is unnecessary and inflation beyond a modest 2 percent serves no useful purpose. Fleshing out Keynes's intuition that the problem is not the warts on the body of capitalism but capitalism itself, Raising Keynes provides the foundation for a twenty-first-century macroeconomics that can both respond to crises and guide long-run policy.

The Reconstruction of Economic Theory

The Reconstruction of Economic Theory
Author: Philip Mirowski
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2007-06-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0585268797

"The mandate given to the editor of the present volume was succinct and to the point: gather together some of the most recent attempts to remake economic theory at its most fundamental levels, and avoid the two debased brands of academic revolutions. Now, anyone would have realized that this would be a devilishly difficult task, more likely than not to backfire; but, in retrospect, the editor still marvels at the complacency with which he embarked on the enterprise. It was quite easy to identify the critics of conventional economics who had little more than criticism to offer; it was much more difficult to feel certain that he had actually stumbled upon a substantive divergence from the orthodoxy that appeared to promise further fruitful developments. ... Forewarned and forearmed, the prospective reader should then be equipped to judge for him- or herself whether truth in advertising has been further abused, or if something a little more interesting and entertaining is afoot."--Pages 1-2

Horizontalists and Verticalists

Horizontalists and Verticalists
Author: Basil J. Moore
Publisher:
Total Pages: 420
Release: 1988
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521350792

Challenging the validity of much of mainstream macroeconomics, Basil Moore argues that the money supply in modern economies is not under the control of central banks, but rather is determined by borrower demand for bank credit. He then explores the implications of this perception for conventional macroeconomic theory. Mainstream analysis takes the view that central banks have it in their power to initiate exogenous changes in the nominal supply of money. In contrast to this "verticalist" view, this book contends that the supply of credit money is endogenous, and responds to changes in the demand for bank credit. This new "horizontalist" view holds that cental banks have the ability to set the supply price of money through short term interest rates, but not the quantity of money. Concluding that a new macroeconomic paradigm must be developed, Moore attempts to initiate the larger task of theory reconstruction that lies ahead.

Macroeconomic Inequality from Reagan to Trump

Macroeconomic Inequality from Reagan to Trump
Author: Lance Taylor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2020-08-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108494633

An innovative approach to measuring inequality providing the first full integration of distributional and macro level data for the US.

Rethinking Macroeconomics for Sustainability

Rethinking Macroeconomics for Sustainability
Author: Alejandro Nadal
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2011-01-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1848135076

Macroeconomic policies have devastating effects on the environment. They shape the economic processes that drive deforestation, soil erosion, the exhaustion of living marine resources, greenhouse gas emissions, and the massive loss of biodiversity. Despite this, the vital connection between macroeconomic policies and the environment has thus far received little attention by the academic and the policy-making communities. Rethinking Macroeconomics for Sustainability reveals the linkages between monetary, financial and fiscal policies, and the environmental degradation that threatens the planet's biosphere. In doing so, it examines the complex lines of transmission from policy priorities all the way down to the effects at the local level, as well as analyzing the deep-seated relationship between macroeconomic policy models and their impacts on growth, peoples' livelihoods and the environment. Besides exploring the relation between macroeconomic and climate change policies, as well as efforts to 'green' the world economy, the book considers five key case studies in Latin American economies. Going beyond this, it also sets out specific policy recommendations, both at the national and international levels. All this is based on the incontrovertible premise that macroeconomic policies must to be redesigned in order to attain long-term sustainability objectives, and that monetary and fiscal policies are as important for environmental stewardship as they are for growth and prosperity.

The Genesis of Macroeconomics

The Genesis of Macroeconomics
Author: Antoin E. Murphy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2009
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199543224

This is a book about the discovery of the great macroeconomic concepts and ideas by a group of exciting people between the late 17th and early 19th century. Engaging and vividly written, the book shows readers how economic concepts evolve over time and are influenced by contemporary developments.

A History of Macroeconomics from Keynes to Lucas and Beyond

A History of Macroeconomics from Keynes to Lucas and Beyond
Author: Michel De Vroey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2016-01-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521898439

This book retraces the history of macroeconomics from Keynes's General Theory to the present. Central to it is the contrast between a Keynesian era and a Lucasian - or dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) - era, each ruled by distinct methodological standards. In the Keynesian era, the book studies the following theories: Keynesian macroeconomics, monetarism, disequilibrium macro (Patinkin, Leijongufvud, and Clower) non-Walrasian equilibrium models, and first-generation new Keynesian models. Three stages are identified in the DSGE era: new classical macro (Lucas), RBC modelling, and second-generation new Keynesian modeling. The book also examines a few selected works aimed at presenting alternatives to Lucasian macro. While not eschewing analytical content, Michel De Vroey focuses on substantive assessments, and the models studied are presented in a pedagogical and vivid yet critical way.