This paper argues that John Maynard Keynes had a targeted (as contrasted with aggregate) demand approach to full employment. Modern policies, which aim to close the demand gap, are inconsistent with the Keynesian approach on both theoretical and methodological grounds. Aggregate demand tends to...

This working paper examines the legacy of Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the publication of Keynes's masterpiece and the 60th anniversary of his death. The paper incorporates some of the latest research by prominent...

With the global crisis, the policy stance around the world has been shaken by massive government and central bank efforts to prevent the meltdown of markets, banks, and the economy. Fiscal packages, in varied sizes, have been adopted throughout the world after years of proclaimed fiscal...

Different frameworks of analysis lead to different conceptions of financial instability and financial fragility. On one side, the static approach conceptualizes financial instability as an unfortunate by-product of capitalism that results from unpredictable random forces that no one can do...

The recycling problem is general, and is not confined to a multicurrency setting: whenever there are surplus and deficit units — that is, everywhere — adjustment in real terms can be either upward or downward. The question is, Which? An attempt is made to formulate the problem in terms of...

This paper compares central banking in the era of Bagehot's Rule (1873) and the current era of quantitative easing (QE) and zero (or near-zero) interest rate policy (ZIRP) to suggest that our analytical frameworks need updating. It also proposes some rules for emerging-market central banks to...

We present strong empirical evidence favoring the role of effective demand in the US economy, in the spirit of Keynes and Kalecki. Our inference comes from a statistically well-specified VAR model constructed on a quarterly basis from 1980 to 2008. US output is our variable of interest, and it...

This paper investigates the relationship between asset markets and business cycles with regard to the U.S. economy. We consider the Goldman Sachs approach (2003) developed to study the dynamics of financial balances. By means of a small econometric model we find that asset market dynamics are...

The main purpose of this study is to explore the potential expansionary effect stemming from the monetization of debt. We develop a simple macroeconomic model with Keynesian features and four sectors: creditor households, debtor households, businesses, and the public sector. We show that such...

This paper augments the basic Post-Keynesian markup model to examine the effects of different fiscal policies on prices and income distribution. This is an approach à la Hyman P. Minsky, who argued that in the modern era, government is both “a blessing and a curse,” since it stabilizes...