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Book part
Publication date: 7 May 2019

Tim Barker

This chapter is a contribution to the intellectual history of the anxiety that full employment in the modern United States depended somehow on military spending. This discourse…

Abstract

This chapter is a contribution to the intellectual history of the anxiety that full employment in the modern United States depended somehow on military spending. This discourse (conveniently abbreviated as “military Keynesianism”) is vaguely familiar, but its contours and transit still await a full study. The chapter shows the origins of the idea in the left-Keynesian milieu centered around Harvard’s Alvin Hansen in the late 1930s, with a particular focus on the diverse group that cowrote the 1938 stagnationist manifesto An Economic Program for American Democracy. After a discussion of how these young economists participated in the World War II mobilization, the chapter considers how questions of stagnation and military stimulus were marginalized during the years of the high Cold War, only to be revived by younger radicals. At the same time, it demonstrates the existence of a community of discourse that directly links the Old Left of the 1930s and 1940s with the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s, and cuts across the division between left-wing social critique and liberal statecraft.

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Including A Symposium on 50 Years of the Union for Radical Political Economics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-849-9

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Book part
Publication date: 30 October 2020

Massimo Di Matteo

The author examines the argument elaborated by Pigou in his Employment and Equilibrium. A Theoretical Discussion which was the first comprehensive answer Pigou gave to the…

Abstract

The author examines the argument elaborated by Pigou in his Employment and Equilibrium. A Theoretical Discussion which was the first comprehensive answer Pigou gave to the analysis put forward by Keynes in his General Theory. The chapter consists of seven sections. In the first, the motivation of the chapter is outlined. In the second, third, and fourth sections, the author will concentrate on how Pigou elucidates the conditions necessary for an economic system to attain a short period flow equilibrium. In this context, the author elaborates an “open” macro model which can be “closed” in two different ways. The chapter will also present a diagrammatic analysis of Pigou’s theory in the two cases elucidating the structure and the working of the model. Differences with the author’s previous book (TU) related to (real/monetary) wage inflexibility and the importance of monetary factors are also described and discussed. Pigou however does not limit himself to deal with the short period but engages in an interesting discussion of the long period centered on the notion of stationary state that is the object of section five. In this way, he admits that Keynes’s theory is not limited, to the short run. In arguing along these lines, he comes close to describe what will be recognized later as the Pigou effect. A short comparison with the renewed stagnationist theory is sketched. The sixth section includes a brief discussion of the comparative statics and dynamic analyzes elaborated by Pigou. A final section including a few conclusions completes the chapter.

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Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including a Symposium on Sir James Steuart: The Political Economy of Money and Trade
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-707-7

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Book part
Publication date: 8 November 2017

Stewart Lansley

Until the 2008 Crash, the prevailing economic orthodoxy, accepted across the broad political spectrum, was that inequality was a necessary condition for economic health. The…

Abstract

Until the 2008 Crash, the prevailing economic orthodoxy, accepted across the broad political spectrum, was that inequality was a necessary condition for economic health. The evidence of the last four decades is that this trade-off theory – that you can have more equal or more efficient economies but not both – is incorrect. Not only do excessive concentrations of income and wealth bring social dislocation and breed public discontent with democratic institutions, but a number of studies have shown that inequality on today’s scale brings slower growth and greater economic turbulence. Although there is now a broad acceptance amongst global leaders that inequality poses significant risks for social cohesion and economic stability, there has been little or no action to match the high level verbal war against inequality. As a result, inequality has carried on rising within nations since 2008. In the United Kingdom, the gap between the top and bottom has continued to widen, in part because post-2010 governments have weakened the pro-equality role of the state. Tackling inequality is now one of the most pressing issues of the day – an economic as well as a social imperative – while reversing this four decade long trend will require a major restructuring of the pro-market economic models in place across most of the rich world.

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Inequalities in the UK
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-479-8

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The Emerald Handbook of Modern Information Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-525-2

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Book part
Publication date: 8 August 2017

Hao Qi

This paper builds homogenous series of the rate of surplus value (RSV) for the Chinese economy over the extended period 1956–2014 with a Marxian approach. It finds that the high…

Abstract

This paper builds homogenous series of the rate of surplus value (RSV) for the Chinese economy over the extended period 1956–2014 with a Marxian approach. It finds that the high profitability that stimulated capital accumulation in the decade before the 2008 crisis had relied on the continuous growth in the RSV. Given that the global crisis and changes in the domestic economy undermine all the conditions maintaining the accumulation model (an expanding external market, a relatively large reserve army of labor, and a low debt-income ratio), the RSV has failed to increase and profitability declined since 2008. Thus, this paper interprets the so-called new normal of the Chinese economy as a stage of declining profitability that results mainly from the stagnant RSV and the rising value composition of capital.

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Return of Marxian Macro-Dynamics in East Asia
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-477-4

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Book part
Publication date: 15 October 2019

Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay and Marianne Johnson

Alvin Hansen and John Williams’ Fiscal Policy Seminar at Harvard University is widely regarded as a key mechanism for the spread of Keynesianism in the United States. An original…

Abstract

Alvin Hansen and John Williams’ Fiscal Policy Seminar at Harvard University is widely regarded as a key mechanism for the spread of Keynesianism in the United States. An original and regular participant, Richard A. Musgrave was invited to prepare remarks for the fiftieth anniversary of the seminar in 1988. These were never published, though a copy was filed with Musgrave’s papers at Princeton University. Their reproduction here is important for several reasons. First, it is one of the last reminiscences of the original participants. Second, the remarks make an important contribution to our understanding of the Harvard School of macro-fiscal policy. Third, the remarks provide interesting insights into Musgrave’s views on national economic policymaking as well as the intersection between theory and practice. The reminiscence demonstrates the importance of the seminar in shifting Musgrave’s research focus and moving him to a more pragmatic approach to public finance.

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Including a Symposium on Robert Heilbroner at 100
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-869-7

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Histories of Economic Thought
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76230-997-9

Book part
Publication date: 7 May 2019

Mauro Boianovsky

This article provides a detailed investigation of how Lewis revisited classical and Marxian concepts such as productive/unproductive labor, economic surplus, subsistence wages…

Abstract

This article provides a detailed investigation of how Lewis revisited classical and Marxian concepts such as productive/unproductive labor, economic surplus, subsistence wages, reserve army, and capital accumulation in his investigation of economic development. The Lewis 1954 development model is compared to other models advanced at the time by Harrod, Domar, Swan, Kaldor, Solow, von Neumann, Nurkse, Rosenstein-Rodan, Myint, and others. Lewis applied the notion of economic duality to open and closed economies.

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Including A Symposium on 50 Years of the Union for Radical Political Economics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-849-9

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The Current Global Recession
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-157-9

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Including A Symposium on 50 Years of the Union for Radical Political Economics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-849-9

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