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Since the early 1980s, financialization has become an increasingly important trend in developed capitalist countries, with different timing, speed, and intensities in different countries. Rising inequality has been a major feature of this trend. Shares of wages in national income have declined and personal income inequality has increased. Against this background unsustainable demand and growth regimes have developed that dominated the major economies before the crisis: the 'debt-led private demand boom' and the 'export-led mercantilist' regime. The article applies this post-Keynesian approach to the macroeconomics of finance-dominated capitalism of three Baltic Sea countries, Denmark, Estonia, and Latvia, both for the pre-crisis and the post-crisis period. First, the macroeconomics of finance-dominated capitalism are briefly reiterated. Second, the financialization-distribution nexus is examined for the three countries. Third, macroeconomic demand and growth regimes are analyzed, both before and after the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on a two-country Kaleckian model of a currency union, we examine the consequences of balance-of-payments adjustment policies, focusing on the interdependence between the long-run growth paths of member countries. The model separates the short-run from the long-run dynamic, comparing price and wage dynamics in each country in the light of Thirlwall's balance-of-payments-constrained growth model. We show that by shifting the burden of adjustment to the less competitive country, austerity and wage moderation policies lead to long-term recessionary effects. Only expansionary policies in the more competitive country can achieve the two goals of reducing external imbalances and increasing the long-run growth rate in both member countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the Kaleckian model of growth and distribution that sets a budget deficit ratio as an indicator of fiscal policy and examines the short- and long-run effects of an increase in budget deficits and a rise in income tax rates on the economy. The key short-run outcomes are as follows. First, expanded budget deficits have a positive effect on the rate of capacity utilization. Second, the tax rate for wage income does not affect the rate of capacity utilization, whereas the tax rate for capital income has a favorable impact on it. This result implies that raising the tax rate for capital income can be an important policy instrument for stimulating the economy. Third, we find that the economy exhibits a wage-led aggregate demand in the short run. The main long-run results are as follows. First, the effect of expanded budget deficits on the growth rate is ambiguous, since a higher debt burden negatively influences the rate of capacity utilization and hence economic growth, despite the increase in demand caused by government borrowing. A higher budget deficit ratio thus raises the growth rate only if a certain condition is satisfied. Second, the tax rate for capital income has a positive impact on the growth rate. Third, the economy shows a wage-led growth in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effects of the regional distribution of the banking system on investment rates in Brazil. The investigation relies on a perspective whereby the role of external funds in inducing firms’ investment is determined by the disparate regional distribution of the banking system. Empirical results from a panel-data multilevel model indicate that the regional concentration and centralization of the banking system are relevant for firms’ investment choices. More importantly, the fitness of the multilevel model indicates the need to consider that investment rates vary according to a regional hierarchical banking structure (centre versus periphery). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is linked to some recent attempts at including a noncapacity creating autonomous expenditure category as the driver and determinant of growth into Kaleckian distribution and growth models. Whereas previous contributions have focussed on taming Harrodian instability, generated by the deviation of the goods market equilibrium rate of capacity utilization from a normal or target rate, we rather focus on the so-far neglected issues of deficit, debt, and distribution dynamics in such models. For this purpose, we treat the growth of government expenditures on goods and services, financed by credit creation, as the exogenous growth rate driving the system. We examine the long-run convergence of the system toward such a growth rate, analyze the related debt dynamics, and deal with stability and income distribution issues. Finally, we touch upon the economic and, in particular, fiscal policy implications of our model results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we analyze the effects of financialization on income distribution, before and after the Great Financial Crisis and the Great Recession, for the two liberal Anglo-Saxon economies, the United States and the United Kingdom, and for a typical Nordic welfare state economy, Sweden. We apply a Kaleckian perspective in which the focus will be on functional income distribution and thus on the relationship between financialization and the wage share or the gross profit share. According to this approach, financialization may affect aggregate wage or gross profit shares of the economy as a whole through three channels: first, the sectoral composition of the economy; second, the financial overhead costs and profit claims of the rentiers; and third, the bargaining power of workers and trade unions. We examine empirical indicators for each of these channels, both before and after the crisis. We find that the types of countries investigated here have shown broad similarities regarding redistribution before the crisis, however, with major differences in the underlying determinants. These differences have carried through to the period after the crisis and have led to different results regarding the development of distribution since then. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article uses a post Kaleckian model to analyze how currency devaluations affect aggregate demand and capital accumulation in an economy with foreign currency liabilities in the short-run. In benchmark post Kaleckian open economy models, currency devaluations have two effects. First, they change international price competitiveness and thus affect net exports. Second, devaluations change income distribution and thereby affect consumption and investment demand. The overall effect on aggregate demand and investment is ambiguous and depends on parameter values. Existing models, however, disregard balance sheet effects that arise from foreign currency-denominated external debt. The article develops a novel post Kaleckian open economy model that introduces foreign currency-denominated external debt and balance sheet effects to examine the demand-effects of devaluations. Furthermore, the article models the dynamics of external and domestic corporate debt. It discusses how an economy may end up in a vicious cycle of foreign-currency indebtedness and derives the conditions under which indebtedness becomes stable or unstable. It shows that the existence of foreign currency-denominated debt means that contractionary devaluations are more likely, and that foreign interest rate hikes, and high illiquidity and risk premia compromise debt sustainability. Devaluations only stabilize debt ratios if they succeed in boosting domestic capital accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past twenty years, there has been considerable debate on the "coherence" of post Keynesian economics, in view of post Keynesian economists' ambitions to develop a paradigmatic alternative to neoclassical economics. Given the growing importance of methodological aspects in this discussion, this article addresses the differences of approach to economic theory between the fathers of the two most important strands in post Keynesian economics. We thus focus on Keynes's criticism of Kalecki's theory of the business cycle and the tensions between Keynes's logical approach and Kaleki's formal modeling. We show that in criticizing Kalecki's theory, Keynes made use of the same methodological criticism (based on detecting logical fallacies in reasoning) he had employed to attack both the classical theory and contemporary "pseudomathematical" models. After illustrating these fundamental differences between Keynes and Kalecki about the proper way of doing economics, we draw some conclusions on the possible future evolution of post Keynesian economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study combines a neo-Kaleckian growth and distribution model with a sort of Sraffian supermultiplier mechanism in which autonomous demand is driven by foreign exports. Short-, medium- and long-run equilibria are considered. In the long-run case, the expectations of sales growth governing investment change adaptively, and this, combined with the autonomous growth rate of exports, produces convergence of the actual rate of capacity utilization to its normal rate. It is demonstrated that some aspects of the main Kaleckian results can be preserved not only in the short or medium run but also in the long run, in the sense that both (1) a decrease in the propensity to save, and (2) a change in income distribution favoring labor, bring about higher average rates of production growth and capital accumulation. However, the impact of a change in the profit share is shown to be subjected to the condition that the responsiveness of the real exchange rate with respect to the profit share has to be bounded from above, confirming that the scope for wage-led demand or wage-led growth can be limited by open-economy considerations, even within the supermultiplier context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of neo-Kaleckian literature has debated the distributional determinants of demand and growth. One general conclusion has been that open economy considerations weaken the potential for a wage-led growth regime. However, this literature has largely ignored asset portfolio considerations and the stock and flow interactions that result from the feedback from savings to wealth and from wealth to the current account. This study develops a theoretical framework that specifies a fuller system of (instantaneous) flow equilibria embedded in a medium-run framework with stable steady-state stocks of real and financial assets. The balance-of-payments constraint that results ensures that simply raising the wage does not yield a higher stock of real capital. A lower markup may increase the steady-state stock of capital but only through the relative price channel. These results are much stronger than those derived in the existing literature, and more important, emergeregardlessof whether the demand regime is wage-led or profit-led in the absence of international trade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we build a generalized two-sector Kaleckian growth model and explore the dynamics towards long-run positions. The model incorporates conflicting claims of labour and firms over income distribution and endogenous labour-saving technical progress. Adopting a stock-flow consistent framework, our simulation experiments yield the following results. First, the ‘paradox of thrift’ and the ‘paradox of costs’ hold, meaning that lower saving rates generate higher growth rates while higher real wages generate higher profit rates, but the magnitude of the impact depends on the initial status of income distribution and monetary policy. Second, changes in autonomous labour-saving innovations might explain the phenomenon of the ‘New Economy’ of the second half of the 1990s within an alternative framework. Our simulations with a two-sector model retrieve the analytical results achieved with a one-sector Kaleckian model, with the addition of path dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the emergence of hyperinflation in a small open economy with a fixed exchange rate from a post Keynesian perspective. Three variables play key roles: distributive conflict, external debt, and expectations about the exchange rate. First, we propose a short-run Kaleckian macro model. Then, we study the long-run behavior of the model by endogenizing the price level and foreign indebtedness. We conclude that the existence of expectations about the nominal exchange rate is crucial to explaining the emergence of hyperinflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the concept of the Keynesian multiplier from a new perspective. Several recent studies have shown that the fiscal multiplier is endogenous to the level of economic activity, increasing during recessions and decreasing during the boom. Here, we provide some evidence, explaining this variability over the business cycle, based on the overreaction of aggregate imports. Then, we apply the concept of endogenous propensity to import, varying with capacity utilization, to a neo- Kaleckian model of growth and distribution. We perform some simple simulations showing that the Keynesian multiplier increases during a recession, which logically does not advocate a reduction in public spending when the economy is in crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over seventy years ago, Michal Kalecki noted that budget deficits would “permit profits to increase above the level determined by private investment and capitalists’ consumption.” Kalecki’s insight into the generation of “free cash” (cash in excess of new investment) was formulated at a time when consumer deficit spending and other private deficit spending was minuscule. But it can be shown that his insight can be extended not just to an expansion of public deficits but to private deficits as well. Over the past forty years, the rise of “free cash” and expanded deficits have allowed corporations to cut back on investment growth, funneling the excess cash into mergers, stock buybacks, and expanded dividends to the wealthy. In recent years, this outpouring of cash has accounted for well over fifty percent of corporate fixed investment. I run a simple “what if” exercise on U.S. corporate tax flows utilizing past U.S. tax rates to calculate the possible absorption of free cash and reduction of federal debt that would have been associated with such an exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-orthodox economists generally share the Keynesian Hypothesis of the independence of investment from capacity savings, in the long run no less than in the short run. This hypothesis marks an essential point of difference from neoclassical theory. Keynes showed that within the limits of the existing capacity utilisation, investment determines savings rather than the other way around. How best to extend this conclusion to the long run is the object of the current paper. The paper assesses the controversy on demand-led growth that has taken place since the mid-1980s between neo-Kaleckian and Sraffian authors. The Sraffian front may be divided into a first and a second Sraffian position, the latter being the Sraffian supermultiplier approach. I shall argue that this second approach is the most promising framework for analysing economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this work we construct a Kaleckian model for analyzing the impacts of remittances upon economies of receiving countries. The arrival of remittances has two harmful effects: contraction of income, and the so-called Dutch Disease (DD). We use our model to formulate an economic policy with two objective variables and two instrumental variables, to solve or attenuate these problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western economies have undergone a significant transformation over the last half a century as they have moved away from a commitment to full employment, going from activist fiscal policy to its abandonment with the adoption of budgetary austerity. This is not because of any technical or physical incapacity to achieve full employment. Analyzing the broad macroeconomic experience of Canada and the United States in the post-WWII era, the article finds that this growing unemployment has essentially resulted from a deliberate policy choice not to stimulate sufficiently demand via fiscal measures. Learning from the experience of the Great Depression, Michal Kalecki had offered an explanation for this type of policy response in favor of rising long-term unemployment. This article recognizes the relevance and appropriateness of Kalecki's analysis and seeks to determine whether the Minskian institutional proposal for achieving effective full employment (via government as the employer of last resort) would withstand an original Kaleckian critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to make a contribution to modeling monetary rules in open developing economies, in a context in which international capital flows are a force that has a decisive influence on the sustainable combination of the real exchange rate (RER) and the inflation rate. The intended contributions of the paper are twofold: it extends the Kaleckian model for an open economy to incorporate the effects of capital flows on the RER and interest rate, and it acknowledges the possibility of having different macroeconomic regimes that reflect different preferences for inflation and employment by the government. A monetary rule that considers its effects on both inflation and employment may be more conducive to stability than a regime that solely focuses on inflation. On the other hand, a regime that solely focuses on employment will be unstable if adaptive expectations prevail in the process of wage bargaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a one-sector Kaleckian model of an import dependent indebted small open economy; where the mark-up rate is sensitive to both changes in the interest rate and the exchange rate and foreigners provide part of the long-term finance. The short-run consequences of an inflation targeting policy in the form of high interest rates and strong domestic currency are explored. Among the possible short-run scenarios, the one most relevant for developing countries involves a decline in the profit rate, the capacity utilization rate and the rate of accumulation as well as the employment rate and the real wage. Leverage ratio of the firms and the extent of external indebtedness play an important role in bringing about this result. Long-run analysis reveals that this scenario is associated with instability in the long run and that, also in the long run, the extent of foreign indebtedness and the responsiveness of capital inflows to the return on existing portfolios are important in determining the direction of the effects of inflation targeting on the equilibrium debt–capital ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents the current "state of the art" of Post Keynesian modeling, as well as the most important issues raised by it. We first present a new formal statement of Keynes's model. We then analyze the three most important classes of Post Keynesian contemporary models: the Kaleckian models of growth, the Minskian models showing the destabilizing effects of financial variables on the economy, and the path-dependent models insisting on the nature of time in economics, and on the absence of any "natural" anchor. We argue that, whereas the current Post Keynesian models have a lot in common with Keynes's model, none of them encompass all its rich and realistic properties, and a synthetic dynamic Post Keynesian model is desirable, and has still to be framed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a set of simple Post Keynesian models of growth and distribution to provide a systematic analysis of how growth affects income distribution through a number of alternative channels, thereby making possible a more complete analysis of the interaction between growth and distribution than is possible in simpler models that concentrate on the effect of distributional changes on growth. It draws on Kalecki's discussion of the determinants of changes in the degree of monopoly analyzing, in turn, the influences of capacity utilization, industry characteristics, the importance of overhead costs, and the power of trade unions. It shows that a rich variety of dynamic outcomes can follow from the analysis of growth-distribution interactions and points to the importance of distinguishing between short-term and more long-term dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the long-run effects of "financialization" and increasing shareholder power in a simple post-Kaleckian endogenous growth model, this paper examines the effects of increasing shareholder power on the demand regime, on the productivity regime, and on the overall regime of the model. Under special conditions, increasing shareholder power may have positive effects on capital accumulation and productivity growth and hence on potential growth of the economy. However, such a regime not only requires directly positive-or under certain conditions only weakly negative-effects of increasing shareholder power on the productivity regime but it also requires expansive-or under special circumstances only weakly contractive-effects of increasing shareholder power on capital accumulation via the demand regime of the economy. Both conditions have recently been questioned on empirical grounds, so that an overall long-run "contractive" regime seems to be the most likely outcome of "financialization," rising shareholder power, and pronounced shareholder value orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implications of wealth distribution for neo-Kaleckian growth theory. Incorporating wealth distribution as an endogenous variable provides a theoretical framework that unifies Cambridge, neo-Ricardian, and neo-Kaleckian growth theory. The model expands on Dutt (1990) by introducing a richer description of capital accumulation and a consumption wealth effect. This introduces concerns regarding wage- and profit-led economies that change the comparative static properties. In addition, the paper introduces managerial pay, multiple asset classes, and multiple classes of wealth holders. Introducing managerial pay undoes Pasinetti's (1962) theorem regarding the irrelevance of worker saving behavior for income distribution and growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post Keynesians advocate two distinct approaches to monetary and interest rate policy. The activist approach sees interest rates moved countercyclically to ensure strong growth and low employment. The parking-it approach, however, favors setting real or nominal rates at specific levels and changing them only sparingly. In this paper, the authors evaluate the impact on macroeconomic performance of three variants of this latter approach-the Smithin rule, the Kansas City rule, and the Pasinetti rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the effects of interest rate variations on the rates of capacity utilisation, capital accumulation and profit in a simple post-Kaleckian distribution and growth model. This model gives rise to different potential accumulation regimes depending on the values of the parameters in the investment, saving and distribution function. Estimating these core behavioural equations for the US and Germany in the period 1960–2007, we find significant and robust effects of interest payments with the expected sign in each of the equations. Our estimation results imply, both for the US and for Germany, that the effects of changes in the real long-term rate of interest on the equilibrium rates of capacity utilisation, capital accumulation and profits, are characterised by the ‘normal regime’: rising long-term real rates of interest cause falling rates of capacity utilisation, capital accumulation and profits, as well as redistribution at the expense of labour income and hence an increasing profit share in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a Kaleckian growth model in which (i) the rate of capacity utilization, the profit share, and the rate of employment are adjusted in the medium run, and (ii) the normal rate of capacity utilization and the expected rate of capital accumulation are adjusted in the long run. The long-run equilibrium is a continuum of equilibria and is characterized by hysteresis in that the long-run position of the economy depends on where it starts. An increase in the bargaining power of workers lowers the rate of unemployment in both the medium-run and the long-run equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]