This working paper presents a debate, which begins with Bret Fiebiger arguing that the approach to monetary and financial macroeconomics which terms itself "modern monetary theory” does not have sound analytic foundations and is of little relevance empirically. Scott Fullwiler, Stephanie...

This paper incorporates costly migration into the empirical literature on the incidence on wages of states and local taxes. The responsiveness of pre-tax wages to changes in state and local taxes (including income, sales and property taxes) is shown to vary by age and education. Using repeated...

The 2008-09 Great Recession has created an ongoing severe fiscal crisis for state and local governments throughout the United States. Republican leaders are now advancing an agenda to radically downsize state and local governments by cutting taxes, slashing wages and benefits for public workers,...

Three important features of the U.S. economy during the neoliberal era since the mid-1970s have been: (a) growing financialization, (b) increasing household debt, and (c) stagnant real wages for production and non-supervisory workers. This paper develops a discrete-time Marxian circuit of...

This paper discusses the contradictory role and place of finance within the post-1980 U.S. economy. A central argument advanced is that the relationship between the real and financial sides of the economy has become increasingly more complicated and contradictory. Therefore, the distinction made...

Keynesian economists have generally supported quantitative easing (QE) on grounds it increases aggregate demand and anything that increases demand at this time of demand shortage is welcome. This paper argues that response may be misplaced. QE may back fire with respect to demand stimulus,...

As default on the Greek debt looms on the horizon, and the repercussions are likely to resonate throughout Europe and into worldwide financial markets. But the potential national bankruptcy did not rise out of a vacuum, and analysts who have been observing Greek financial policy for decades are...

In this chapter from the forthcoming book, The Political Economy of Financial Crises, edited by Gerald Epstein and Martin H. Wolfson, (Oxford University Press, 2012) Engelbert Stockhammer discusses ‘financialization’, i.e. changes in the role of the financial sector. This will highlight (1)...

Epstein and Carrick-Hagenbarth analyze the conflict of interest that exists when academic financial economists, acting in their roles as presumed objective experts in the media and academia on topics, such as financial regulation, fail to report their private financial affiliations. The authors...

The radical deregulation of financial markets after the 1970s was a precondition for the explosion in size, complexity, volatility and degree of global integration of financial markets in the past three decades. It therefore contributed to the severity and breadth of the recent global financial...