The Brazilian Economy after Lula: What to Expect?

Wirtschaftspolitik; Wirtschaftslage; Einkommensverteilung; Öffentliche Verwaltung; Brasilien

Monetary Policies for an MDG-Related Scaling up of ODA to Combat HIV/AIDS:Avoiding Dutch Disease Versus Supporting Fiscal Expansion

This Conference Paper by Matias Vernengo was presented at the ?Global Conference on Gearing Macroeconomic Policies to Reverse the HIV/AIDS Epidemic?, jointly organized by UNDP?s HIV/AIDS Group and IPC and held in Brasilia, November 2006. It is part of an IPC-supported Research Programme on ?Macroeconomic Policies to Combat HIV/AIDS?. The paper maintains that the monetary policies best suited to manage the macroeconomic effects of an MDG-related scaling up of HIV/AIDS financing are those that support the needed expansion of public spending - namely, monetary policies that maintain low rates of interest, increase overall liquidity in the economy and try to achieve a relatively depreciated currency.Poverty, MDG, HIV/AIDS, Monetary Policies

"What Ended the Great Depression? Reevaluating the Role of Fiscal Policy"

Conventional wisdom contends that fiscal policy was of secondary importance to the economic recovery in the 1930s. The recovery is then connected to monetary policy that allowed non-sterilized gold inflows to increase the money supply. Often, this is shown by measuring the fiscal multipliers, and demonstrating that they were relatively small. This paper shows that problems with the conventional measures of fiscal multipliers in the 1930s may have created an incorrect consensus on the irrelevance of fiscal policy. The rehabilitation of fiscal policy is seen as a necessary step in the reinterpretation of the positive role of New Deal policies for the recovery.Fiscal Policy; Great Depression

"Hegemonic Currencies during the Crisis: The Dollar versus the Euro in a Cartalist Perspective"

This paper suggests that the dollar is not threatened as the hegemonic international currency, and that most analysts are incapable of understanding the resilience of the dollar, not only because they ignore the theories of monetary hegemonic stability or what, more recently, has been termed the geography of money; but also as a result of an incomplete understanding of what a monetary hegemon does. The hegemon is not required to maintain credible macroeconomic policies (i.e., fiscally contractionary policies to maintain the value of the currency), but rather to provide an asset free of the risk of default. It is argued that the current crisis in Europe illustrates why the euro is not a real contender for hegemony in the near future.Dollar; Euro; International Currency

Despite assertions to the contrary, the New Deal’s fiscal policies were key to ending the Great Depression

In the years following the financial crisis of 2008, many policymakers have turned to the recovery that led the West out of the Great Depression in the 1930s for inspiration of how to address current problems. While many have re-interpreted the policy actions of that period to emphasize the role of monetary over fiscal policy in the recovery, Matías Vernengo urges caution. He argues that while much analysis asserts that expansionary monetary policy led to increased private consumption and investment, low rates from the Fed also made increased public spending more sustainable, thus leading to positive effects on GDP and employment

Conversation or monologue? On advising heterodox economists

This paper suggests that heterodox economists should not think of themselves as economists first, and only secondarily as heterodox, and must emphasize methodological issues, in particular the different assumptions (or axioms) implicit in their theories vis-àvis the mainstream. The paper argues that the notion of a cutting edge of the mainstream, which is breaking up with orthodoxy, is misleading. The role of the cutting edge is to allow the mainstream to sound reasonable when talking about reality, while orthodoxy provides authority to the cutting edge. The cutting edge is essential for the mainstream and remains firmly based on orthodox grounds

"The Euro Imbalances and Financial Deregulation: A Post-Keynesian Interpretation of the European Debt Crisis"

Conventional wisdom suggests that the European debt crisis, which has thus far led to severe adjustment programs crafted by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in both Greece and Ireland, was caused by fiscal profligacy on the part of peripheral, or noncore, countries in combination with a welfare state model, and that the role of the common currency-the euro-was at best minimal. This paper aims to show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the crisis in Europe is the result of an imbalance between core and noncore countries that is inherent in the euro economic model. Underpinned by a process of monetary unification and financial deregulation, core eurozone countries pursued export-led growth policies-or, more specifically, "beggar thy neighbor" policies-at the expense of mounting disequilibria and debt accumulation in the periphery. This imbalance became unsustainable, and this unsustainability was a causal factor in the global financial crisis of 2007-08. The paper also maintains that the eurozone could avoid cumulative imbalances by adopting John Maynard Keynes's notion of the generalized banking principle (a fundamental principle of his clearing union proposal) as a central element of its monetary integration arrangement.European Union; Current Account Adjustment; Financial Aspects of Economic Integration

The return of vulgar economics: A rejoinder to Colander, Holt and Rosser

This paper provides a rejoinder to Colander, Holt and Rosser (2010) strategy to win friends and influence mainstream economics. It is suggested that their strategy is counter-productive, and while it might gain them friends, it will not lead to increased influence of heterodox ideas within what they term the cutting edge of the profession. It is argued that their failure to understand the nature of heterodoxy, and the reason for the eclecticism of the mainstream, associated to the rise of vulgar economics, undermines their arguments

Puzzles, paradoxes and regularities: Cyclical and structural productivity in the US (1950 - 2005)

Changes in labor productivity have been a source of puzzlement and paradoxical results for economists. We suggest that puzzles and paradoxes vanish once two simple regularities are properly acknowledged. Okun and Verdoorn's Laws explain 87 percent of all the variations in labor productivity. Also, our estimation method and our results suggest that conventional measures of Okun's Law have overestimated the value of the Okun coefficient, and accepted a greater degree of variability than is actually guaranteed by the empirical evidence. Okun's Law has been relatively stable through time, and there is no significant decrease in the value of the parameter since the 1960s