While recognising that most pre-capitalist formations exhibited elements of commodity exchange, Marx argued that capitalism differentiates itself as a genuine commodity system by virtue of two interdependent processes having reached a critical stage of development: a `stretching` of commodity...

Although the federal funds rate started rising from mid-2004 US long term rates continued to fall. A likely contributory factor to this conundrum was the contemporaneous increase in US bond demand. Using ARDL-based models, which accommodate structural breaks, this paper estimates the impact of...

The crisis that broke out in mid-2007 was caused by the fact that the CDO market had grown to a size sufficient to wreak general havoc when it suddenly collapsed. Several authors have argued that economic inequality was important to the growth of this market. This paper attempts to strengthen...

This paper suggests an explanation for the heavy trading volume observed on the US capital markets, the world's largest. Heterodox economic theory puts much of this volume down to speculation. Mainstream theory tends to support this thesis, either directly or indirectly, by giving space to the...