How Economics Undermines Our Relationships With Each Other and With the Planet

Economic

Inconvenient glow: Cliometrics and the "golden age" of capitalism

This paper aims to criticize the recent cliometrics literature on the so-called "golden age" of capitalism. The works of Nicholas Crafts, Gianni Toniolo, and Barry Eichengreen are reconstructed in order to reveal the main characteristics of this research program. Its narrow quantitative focus, its reliance on theoretical propositions borrowed from neoclassical economics, and its auspicious interpretation of the postwar reconstruction are the main focus of the criticism presented. Finally, the cliometricians' attempt to historicize the "golden age" and de-historicize the following decades is related to the ideological understanding of the recent decades as a period of "great moderation."

Why Is So Little Left of the Left?

Economic

What Should a Sustainable Economy Sustain? The case for a just economy

Stephen Marglin and Tariq Banuri argue that the debate between neoclassical and ecological economists over the limits to growth cannot be resolved by appealing to their empirical analyses, but by using the framework of environmental justice.Economic

Unpacking the Multiplier: Making Sense of Recent Assessments of Fiscal Stimulus Policy

Governmen

Did the States Pocket the Obama Stimulus Money: Lessons from Cross-Section Regression and Interviews with State Officials

This paper deploys cross-section regressions and open-ended interviews to assess the impact of grants to the states under the Obama stimulus (ARRA) of 2009-2011. Contrary to John Taylor and John Cogan (Taylor 2011a, b; Cogan and Taylor 2012), who conclude that the states saved rather than spent the grants, we estimate that approximately two-thirds of every ARRA dollar was spent by the states and one-third saved.Governmen

Poetic Economics and Experiential Knowledge, or How the Economist K. William Kapp Was Inspired by the Poet Ernst Wiechert

© 2015 Journal of Economics Issues/Association for Evolutionary Economics. In the first part of this article, I analyze the phenomenon of the "double truth" in economics, which suppresses experiential knowledge and leads to the destruction of the natural environment, community, and human civility. Subsequently, I explore the positive effects of opening economics to the creative, esthetic, and ethical potential of experiential knowledge, including works of art. In the second part of the article, I showcase the way the economist K. William Kapp was inspired by the renowned German novelist, poet, educator, intellectual, and concentration-camp survivor Ernst Wiechert. Wiechert was Kapps teacher in high school, the Hufgymnasium in Königsberg, during the Weimar Republic. I investigate the unpublished and unexplored Kapp-Wiechert correspondence, as well as analyze some (published and unpublished) foreign language essays written by Kapp and his wife Lore Kapp. This analysis reveals how Kapps economics drew lasting inspiration from Wiecherts art philosophy, pedagogy, novels, and poetry. This is a case study of a poetic economics that is open to experiential knowledge, which makes it more humane, edifying, serene, and sensitive to the natural and social environment