Monetary Policy 101

This course will introduce key concepts, theories and methods from socioeconomics. The first part of the course, will deal with the main economic actors and how their interactions are governed. Markets are seen as sets of social institutions. Institutions shape how consumers, firms and other economic actors behave. While it is difficult to understand how novelty emerges, we can study the conditions that are conducive to innovation. We will review how economic performance, social progress and human wellbeing are measured and what progress has been made. In the second part of the course, we will study a specific macroeconomic model that accounts for biophysical boundaries and inequality.

Banking 101 is a series of 6 short videos that ask the following questions: How do banks work and how is money created? Is reveals common misunderstandings of money creation and the role of banks. Furthermore, the videos show how models taught in many introductory classes to economics (Econ 101) do not reflect those processes: Part 1) “Misconceptions around Banking” questions common comprehensions of how banks work (savings = investments). Part 2) “What's wrong with the money multiplier” states that the model of the money multiplies is inaccurate. Part 3) “How is money really made by banks” explains the process of money creation, loans and inter-bank settlement. Part 4) “How much money banks create?” asks what limits the money creation by banks and presents the difference between reserve ratio, liquidity ration, equity and refers to the inter-bank market. Part 5) Explores the question if banks create money or just credit and especially refers to credit risks. Part 6) Explains how money gets destroyed when loans are paid back. Note: The videos refer to the UK monetary and banking system, some explanations don't apply to other banking systems, e.g. the reserve ratio.

After completing the module, participants should have gained a basic understanding of the economic school of thought referred to as "Modern Monetary Theory" and should be able to analyze the monetary processes at play in the economy and evaluate fiscal and monetary policy decisions from an MMT-perspective.

Cet entretien donne la parole à J.-F. Ponsot et V. Monvoisin, deux des coordinateurs de l'ouvrage "L'économie post-keynésienne. Histoire, théories et politiques" (Seuil, 2018), premier ouvrage de référence sur le post-keynésianisme paru en français. Les interviewés reviennent sur les fondements théoriques du courant du post-keynésianisme et ses apports principaux. Ils proposent ensuite une lecture sous l'angle post-keynésien de la politique monétaire non-conventionnelle de la Banque Centrale Européenne, du concept de revenu universel, de la monnaie européenne, et des politiques économiques françaises et européennes en général. Enfin, ils analysent la difficulté du pluralisme économique dans le champ de la recherche française et reviennent sur les récentes évolutions de l'économie standard, notamment le succès de l'économie expérimentale. Des liens vers des recensions de l'ouvrage sont disponibles sur le site de Médiapart : https://blogs.mediapart.fr/jean-marc-b/blog/010119/l-economie-post-keynesienne-histoire-theories-et-politiques ainsi que sur le site des Economistes Atterrés : http://www.atterres.org/livre/l%C3%A9conomie-post-keyn%C3%A9sienne .

Most mainstream neoclassical economists completely failed to anticipate the crisis which broke in 2007 and 2008. There is however a long tradition of economic analysis which emphasises how growth in a capitalist economy leads to an accumulation of tensions and results in periodic crises. This paper first reviews the work of Karl Marx who was one of the first writers to incorporate an analysis of periodic crisis in his analysis of capitalist accumulation. The paper then considers the approach of various subsequent Marxian writers, most of whom locate periodic cyclical crises within the framework of longer-term phases of capitalist development, the most recent of which is generally seen as having begun in the 1980s. The paper also looks at the analyses of Thorstein Veblen and Wesley Claire Mitchell, two US institutionalist economists who stressed the role of finance and its contribution to generating periodic crises, and the Italian Circuitist writers who stress the problematic challenge of ensuring that bank advances to productive enterprises can successfully be repaid.

Steve Keen analyses how mainstream economics fails when confronted with the covid-19-pandemic. Mainstream economics has propagated the dismantling of the state and the globalization of production - both of which make the crisis now so devastating. More fundamentally, mainstream economics deals with market systems, when what is needed to limit the virus’s spread is a command system.