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The Great Recession 2.0 is unfolding before our very eyes. It is still in its early phase. But dynamics have been set in motion that are not easily stopped, or even slowed. If the virus effect were resolved by early summer—as some politicians wishfully believe—the economic dynamics set in motion would still continue. The US and global economies have been seriously ‘wounded’ and will not recover easily or soon. Those who believe it will be a ‘V-shape’ recovery are deluding themselves. Economists among them should know better but are among the most confused. They only need to look at historical parallels to convince themselves otherwise.
Origins & Emergence of the 2020 Great Recession in the US Economy
During his life, Keynes was credited with, amongst other things, with helping to save capitalism from the Great Depression, funding the war against the Nazis and building post-war decades of growth and rising prosperity. And when the global crisis struck in 2008, it was his ideas that the world's leaders turned to help avoid another depression.
Masters Of Money | John Maynard Keynes
This paper presents an overview of different models which explain financial crises, with the aim of understanding economic developments during and possibly after the Great Recession. In the first part approaches based on efficient markets and rational expectations hypotheses are analyzed, which however do not give any explanation for the occurrence of financial crises and thus cannot suggest any remedies for the present situation. A broad range of theoretical approaches analyzing financial crises from a medium term perspective is then discussed. Within this group we focused on the insights of Marx, Schumpeter, Wicksell, Hayek, Fisher, Keynes, Minsky, and Kindleberger. Subsequently the contributions of the Regulation School, the approach of Social Structures of Accumulation and Post-Keynesian approach, which focus on long-term developments and regime shifts in capitalist development, are presented. International approaches to finance and financial crises are integrated into the analyses. We address the issue of relevance of all these theories for the present crisis and draw some policy implications. The paper has the aim to find out to which extent the different approaches are able to explain the Great Recession, what visions they develop about future development of capitalism and to which extent these different approaches can be synthesized.
Theories of finance and financial crisis: Lessons for the Great Recession
The current Great Recession, the worst crisis that capitalism has faced since the Great Depression, has failed, at least so far, to generate a change in the teaching and practice of Macroeconomics. This seems bizarre as if nothing has happened and the economists are just going about doing business as usual. In light of this, the current paper attempts to address how Macroeconomics ought to be taught to students at the advanced intermediate level, which gives them an overall perspective on the subject.
Plurality in Teaching Macroeconomics
A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are measured.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the "great transformation" of the Industrial Revolution.
The Great Transformation
In the interview, Robert Skidelsky discusses the emergence of political influence of a certain school of economic thought and how the success of an economic theory depends on the power relations in the society. He introduces the historical example of Keynesian economics and its replacement by liberal economic theory and policy in the aftermath of the Great Depression, and transfers this historical case to the dominant paradigm of austerity policies in the Europe as response to rising public debts caused by the Financial Crisis. He contrasts austerity policies with a Keynesian approach. Furthermore, he relates the targets of policy to the underlying power structures, for example when not the reduction of unemployment but the protection of financial capital is politically addressed.
Economics and Political Power during the Crisis
Crises are a key part of the history of the global economy. This lesson by Economy Studies introduces students to the crisis management theories of John Maynard Keyens by presenting them in the historical context of the Great Depression, the Post-War increase in the state in managing the economy, and the Energy Crisis of the 1970s.
How to get away with a crisis? - Economy Studies
Post-Keynesian and heterodox economics challenge the mainstream economics theories that dominate the teaching at universities and government economic policies. And it was these latter theories that helped to cause the great depression the United States and the rest of the world is in.
In Defense of Post-Keynesian and Heterodox Economics
Exploring Economics Dossier on the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and the structural crisis of globalization. COVID-19 encounters a structural crisis of globalization and the economic system that drives it, with an uncertain outcome. We asked economists worldwide to share with us their analysis of current events, long-term perspectives and political responses. The dossier will be continuously expanded.
The Next Great Recession? Exploring Economics Dossier
What is James Tobin's main contribution? What is Arrow's impossibility theorem? Which economists have made the most significant contribution to rational expectations? These and countless other questions are resolved in this eloquently written unique book by Mark Blaug, one of the most prominent historians of economic thought.
Great Economists Since Keynes
How was money actually invented? Where does it come from? In this first episode of a video lecture, Dirk Bezemer from the University of Groningen presents the origins of money and how it's related to debt. It's a basic historical review and you can get an idea of how money is created and how banks work. The following episodes aim at giving an overview of the last debt crisis.
DEBT episode 1: Debt, a great invention
The documentary recounts the history of the first World War and gives a biography of Lenin. The concept of imperialism is briefly explored and it is concluded that by the end of world war one the old certainties and old ruling alliances between aristocracy and traditional capitalists were broken up.
The Age of Uncertainty Episode 5 Lenin and The Great Ungluing
Andrew McAfee about the history of human progress and the modern uncoupling of our prosperity from resource consumption. They discuss the pitfalls and hidden virtues of capitalism, technological progress, environmental policy, the future of the developing world, and other topics.
The Great Uncoupling A Conversation with Andrew McAfee
Gerald Friedman UMassEconomics University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Great Recession Lectures
Understanding the American stock market boom and bust of the 1920s is vital for formulating policies to combat the potentially deleterious effects of busts on the economy.
The Great Crash of 1929
Edited by two of the foremost academics in the field, the volumes comprise insightful and original contributions from scholars across the world. The encyclopaedic breadth and scope of the original entries will make these reference books an invaluable source of knowledge for all serious students and scholars of the history of economic thought.
Handbook on the History of Economic Analysis, Volume 1: Great Economists since Petty and Boisguilbert
To prevent the coronavirus shock to demand precipitating a long-lasting depression, government needs to become short-term payer of last resort.
Introducing the Payer of Last Resort
From the mercantile monopolies of seventeenth-century empires to the modern-day authority of the WTO, IMF, and World Bank, the nations of the world have struggled to effectively harness globalization's promise. The economic narratives that underpinned these eras the gold standard, the Bretton Woods regime, the "Washington Consensus" brought great success and great failure.
The Globalization Paradox
Blending past and present, this brief history of economics is the perfect book for introducing students to the field.A Brief History of Economics illustrates how the ideas of the great economists not only influenced societies but were themselves shaped by their cultural milieu. Understanding the economists' visions ? lucidly and vividly unveiled by Canterbery ?
A Brief History of Economics
In both economics textbooks and public perceptions central banks are a fact of life. On the wall of my A-level economics classroom there was the Will Rogers quote “there have been three great inventions since the beginning of time: fire, the wheel, and central banking”, summarising how many economists view the institution. There is a widespread belief that there is something different about money which calls for a central authority to manage its operation, a view shared even by staunch free marketeers such as Milton Friedman. This belief is not without justification, since money underpins every transaction in a way that apples do not, but we should always be careful not to take existing institutions for granted and central banking is no exception. In this post I will look at the idea of private or free banking, where banks compete (and cooperate) to issue their own currency.
Whither Central Banks?
It has become a contentious term in- and outside of economic policy: austerity. Allegedly the culprit behind the shortfalls of governments' reaction to the Great Financial Crisis, the policy makes for a spirited debate.
Austerity
Does Karl Polanyi's work “The Great Transformation” serve to analyse the current multiple crisis and social movements? Nancy Fraser revises Polanyi's concept of a double movement to capture social forces in the aftermath of the economic crisis of the 1930s – on the one side marketization and on the other hand social protection. Fraser proposes to talk about a triple movement and to account for emancipatory struggles. In the lecture, she discusses interactions as well as conflicts between those three forces, in particular conflicting aims of social protection. The lecture presents the content of her paper “A TRIPLE MOVEMENT? Parsing the Politics of Crisis after Polanyi“ in the New Left Review (2013).
Crisis of Capitalism, Crisis of Governance: Re-reading Karl Polanyi in the 21st Century
Silvia Federici outlines the content of her book „Caliban and the Witch - Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation“. Departing from a critique of the Marxist blindspot on reproductive labour, Federici aims at researching the historical process by which the exploitation of women and the construction of the unproductive housewife has been established. Federici points to the transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production and explains how the gender specific prosecution (witch hunt) was linked to necessity of control over bodies and the sexuality in the great transformation. Federici also presents arguments why this research is highly relevant for the analysis of women's situation in current capitalism.
Caliban and the Witch
A pithy, stimulating debate between three great economists on the heterogeneous character of economic thought
The Future of Heterodox Economics
How exactly are persisting social inequalities and the operations of modern finance connected? Adam Tooze provides a detailed answer to a still relevant problem by focusing on the Great Financial Crisis and the role of the finance industry in the USA.
Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
From the theoretical literature, the authors provide seven reasons to be sceptical about the occurrence of sufficient decoupling in the future. In addition to the extensive summary of the recent literature, 'decoupling debunked' provides a great introduction into the decoupling hypothesis.
Decoupling debunked: Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability
This volume focuses on the importance of the history of economic thought as an intellectual discipline. It counters the arguments of some contemporary economists who describe it as studying the mistakes of the past. However, all the great economists - Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Marshall, Keynes and even Milton Friedman - have drawn on the history of economics to find an appropriate pedigree for their own theoretical innovations.
The Historiography of Economics
The U.S. economy today is confronted with the prospect of extended stagnation. This book explores why. Thomas I. Palley argues that the Great Recession and destruction of shared prosperity is due to flawed economic policy over the past thirty years.
From Financial Crisis to Stagnation
Once in a while the world astonishes itself. Anxious incredulity replaces intellectual torpor and a puzzled public strains its antennae in every possible direction, desperately seeking explanations for the causes and nature of what just hit it. 2008 was such a moment. Not only did the financial system collapse, and send the real economy into a tailspin, but it also revealed the great gulf separating economics from a very real capitalism.
Modern Political Economics
Despite some diversification modern economics still attracts a great deal of criticism. This is largely due to highly unrealistic assumptions underpinning economic theory, explanatory failure, poor policy framing, and a dubious focus on prediction. Many argue that flaws continue to owe much of their shortcomings to neoclassical economics.
What is Neoclassical Economics?
Readers of economic and political theory as well as students of economic planning will appreciate this classic, now available for the first time in English. Written eighty years ago, when Sorel became disillusioned with the official socialism of the German and French Marxist parties, this new translation presents Sorel's analysis of the rise and fall of the two great modern ideologies: socialism and liberal capitalism.
Social Foundations of Contemporary Economics
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