Conventional wisdom suggests that the Great Moderation was caused by either good policy, good luck (favourable shocks), more efficient private sector behaviour (such as better inventory management), or more effective financial innovations. We show that it may, instead, have originated from the...

Both sides in the U.S. Civil War financed military spending by issuing new fiat currencies. The Union “greenback” underwent moderate inflation (by wartime standards), but the Confederate “grayback” suffered hyperinflation. Existing explanations for these price movements typically treat...

This article aims to contribute to the ongoing discussions on the nature of money by introducing systematic analysis to relate power to money. It proposes an Ideal Type to explain the critical role of power relations for the genesis and operation of money and monetary order. It is based on the...

The present paper examines attribute substitution in terms of both heuristics and attribution theory in social psychology. Alternative “old” approaches in psychology were special because they considered choice in terms that were similar to attributional inference in social psychology and...

In the November/December 2021 issue of Intereconomics, Françoise Drumetz and Christian Pfister examine Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and approach it from the policy consequences that would follow. This paper is a reply to Drumetz and Pfister. It restates the core of MMT and offers some...

The article discusses commitment to full employment in light of institutional theory and offers a renewed examination of Keynes’s "socialization of investment" concept. The discussion builds on Veblen's theory of human development, predation, and capitalism. It highlights contemporary...

Modern money theory (MMT) synthesizes several traditions from heterodox economics. Its focus is on describing monetary and fiscal operations in nations that issue a sovereign currency. As such, it applies Georg Friedrich Knapp's state money approach (chartalism), also adopted by John Maynard...

The paper analyzes the historic origin of Central Banks, from three basic processes: the evolution and convergence of the free banking system to a hierarchical and centralized system in the Central Bank; the transformation of Clearing Houses in Central Banks, and finally, the processes by which...

In this paper, we aim at the introduction of an additional macroeconomic sector defined as a broad accounting category in the stock-flow consistent framework developed by Lavoie and Godley. Starting from the idea that many financial services supplied by commercial banks today do not fit into the...

Modern Money Theory (MMT) has generated considerable scrutiny and discussions over the past decade. While it has gained some acceptance in the financial sector and among some politicians, it has come under strong criticisms from all sides of the academic spectrum and from conservative political...