Keynes had many plausible things to say about unemployment and its causes. His "mercurial mind", though, relied on intuition, which means that he could not strictly prove his hypotheses. This explains why Keynes's ideas immediately invited bastardizations. One of them, the Phillips curve...

Unemployment is usually explained with reference to the equilibrium of supply and demand in the labour market. This approach rests on specific behavioral assumptions that are formally expressed as axioms. The standard set of axioms is replaced in the present paper by a set of structural axioms....

Unemployment is usually explained with reference to the equilibrium of supply and demand in the labour market. This approach rests on specific behavioral assumptions that are formally expressed as axioms. The standard set of axioms is replaced in the present paper by a set of structural axioms....

Between Keynes’s verbalized theory and its formal basis persists a lacuna. The conceptual groundwork is too small and not general. The quest for a comprehensive formal basis is guided by the question: what is the minimum set of foundational propositions for a consistent reconstruction of the...

Between Keynes’s verbalized theory and its formal basis persists a lacuna. The conceptual groundwork is too small and not general. The quest for a comprehensive formal basis is guided by the question: what is the minimum set of foundational propositions for a consistent reconstruction of the...

The monetarist counterrevolution and the stagflation period of the 1970s were among the theoretical and practical developments that led to the rejection of fiscal policy as a useful tool for macroeconomic stabilization and full employment determination. Recent mainstream contributions, however,...

It is now a few years since the introduction of the common currency, and Europe is still experiencing high unemployment. The conventional logic attributes this problem to strong trade unions and other flaws in the labour market. This article takes a different approach. Using a game theoretic...

Wenige Jahre nach der Etablierung der EWU zeigt sich ein gespaltenes Bild. Trotz unbestreitbarer Erfolge bei der Sicherung von Preisstabilität scheint die Beschäftigungs-Performance des Euroraums getrübt. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird die These vertreten, dass dies auch an einer mangelhaften...

Using two types of overlapping generations (OLG) model, we show that involuntary unemployment is in a Nash equilibrium of a game with a firm and consumers, and we can achieve full-employment by fiscal policy financed by seignorage not tax. Once we achieve it, it is maintained without government...

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,ʺ are inconsistent with the Keynesian approach on both theoretical and methodological grounds. Aggregate demand tends...