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The global financial crisis and ensuing weak growth have increased interest in macroeconomic issues within comparative political economy (CPE). CPE, particularly the dominant Varieties of Capitalism approach, has based its analyses on mainstream economics, which limits analysis of the relation between distribution and growth and neglects the role finance plays in modern economies. It overstates the stability of the capitalist growth process and understates the potential effectiveness of government interventions. Baccaro and Pontusson have suggested a post-Keynesian (PK) theory of distribution and growth as an alternative. This article generalizes their point. PK theory highlights the instability of the growth process and lends itself to an analysis of income distribution and power relations. The article identifies the analysis of financialization and financial cycles, the understanding of neoliberal growth models, and the political economy of central banks as areas where PK economics provides specific insights for CPE. It also highlights that these arguments have important implications for government policy in an era of secular stagnation with ongoing social, distributional, and economic crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rent seeking has once again become an important topic in economics. However, rent seeking poses challenges that standard economic theory is not well equipped to handle. This paper develops a working definition of rent seeking that can be applied to post-Keynesian growth models. The main finding is that, in a post-Keynesian framework, rent seeking will have an effect on income distribution and average productivity. In addition, increases in rent seeking can have undesirable effects on the distribution of talent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a seminal paper on Marxian business cycle theory, Goodwin (1967) presented a model which assumed that a higher wage share leads to lower investment and thus a general economic slowdown. In contrast Kalecki (1971) was arguing that a higher wage share would have an expansionary effect because the consumption propensity out of wage income is higher than that out of profit income. Based on a general model that allows for wage-led as well as profit-led demand regimes, this paper estimates the effects of a change in the wage share on aggregate private domestic demand with quarterly data for 12 OECD countries.JEL classification: E11, E12, E20, E22, E25 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]