Sellers’ Inflation, Profits and Conflict: Why can Large Firms Hike Prices in an Emergency?

Central banking is anything but clear-cut. As this webinar with Benjamin Braun demonstrates, the standard view of central banks as independent public entities that govern financial markets and "print" money is at least partially misleading.

In this overview paper, Laura Porak reviews the history of industrial policy in the European Union before the background of a Cultural Political Economy approach.

The principle of effective demand, and the claim of its validity for a monetary production economy in the short and in the long run, is the core of heterodox macroeconomics, as currently found in all the different strands of post-Keynesian economics (Fundamentalists, Kaleckians, Sraffians, Kaldorians, Institutionalists) and also in some strands of neo-Marxian economics, particularly in the monopoly capitalism and underconsumptionist school In this contribution, we will therefore outline the foundations of the principle of effective demand and its relationship with the respective notion of a capitalist or a monetary production economy in the works of Marx, Kalecki and Keynes. Then we will deal with heterodox short-run macroeconomics and it will provide a simple short-run model which is built on the principle of effective demand, as well as on distribution conflict between different social groups (or classes): rentiers, managers and workers. Finally, we will move to the long run and we will review the integration of the principle of effective demand into heterodox/post-Keynesian approaches towards distribution and growth.

For some days, global financial markets are in turmoil. Central banks and governments are dealing with the unfolding crisis on a daily basis with seemingly u...