In recent years, the U.S. has seemed to achieve the best of all possible worlds: robust economic growth, very low unemployment, and low inflation. Many would attribute this performance to fewer supply side constraints, as the U.S. has moved away from stifling regulations and other impediments to...

The first part of this paper is an overview of projections of Social Security's future and an explanation of why the projections have led many to believe there is a looming financial crisis. We argue that any problems to be faced are far down the road and not severe enough to justify the use of...

In the debate on monetary policy strategies on both sides of the Atlantic, it is now almost a commonplace to contrast the Fed and the ECB by pointing out the former’s flexibility and capacity to adjust rigidity, and the latter’s extreme caution, and obsession with low inflation. In looking...

Paul Davidson is one of the best known and most influential Post Keynesian economists. He has insisted throughout his career that economists should focus on real world problems and that the purpose of economic policy is to help society become more humane and civilized. He is also known for his...

This paper extends earlier work (Wray 1991; see also Wray 1992b) that argued that liquidity preference theory should be interpreted as a theory of value. Here I will argue that two theories of value are needed for analysis of a monetary production economy: the labor theory of value and the liquidity...

This paper argues that economists require a particular concept of time in order to facilitate the development of theory that has greater explanatory power in describing and analyzing the sort of economy in which we are primarily interested—the monetary economy usually termed capitalism. And...

Since, WWII, it has been the stated policy of the U.S. government to simultaneously pursue high employment and stable prices. Paradoxically, neither accepted economic theory nor practical experience appears to indicate that high or full employment is even possible with stable prices. In this...

This paper poses that the one commonality between institutionalist thought and Keynesianism (as presented in his General Theory) was money. Tracing the origins and uses of money, the myth of the development of money as a medium of exchange is dispelled and replaced with money used as evidence of...

Wray asserts that rigorous analyses of the role played by innovation in economic development must acknowledge the contribution of Joseph Schumpeter. However, the author suggests that the current stagnation confronting most developed, capitalist economies "cannot be understood without...

In this paper, the authors discuss Minsky's analysis of the evolution of one variety of capitalism-financial capitalism-which developed at the end of the nineteenth century and was the dominant form of capitalism in the developed countries after World War II. Minsky's approach, like those of...