P. Flaschel, Sigrid Luchtenberg, H. Krämer, Christian R. Proaño, M. Setterfield
{"title":"Contemporary Macroeconomic Outcomes: A Tragedy in Three Acts","authors":"P. Flaschel, Sigrid Luchtenberg, H. Krämer, Christian R. Proaño, M. Setterfield","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3800437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3800437","url":null,"abstract":"The thesis developed in this paper is that contrary to the claims of its proponents, the main supply-side consequence of neoliberalism was to zap labour, institutionalize worker insecurity, and install an `incomes policy based on fear' in the US economy. Like any successful incomes policy, this diminished confliict over shares of real income and so reduced inflationary pressures - but at the cost of decoupling real wage growth from productivity growth. This last outcome fueled rising income inequality and hollowed out the wage-funded, consumption-led core of the demand-generating process. The demand-side weakness of the neoliberal economy was initially concealed by household borrowing that debt-financed increases in autonomous consumption spending. But it has asserted itself in the wake of the Great Recession, following the exhaustion of the household debt accumulation process. The result was a depressed upswing 2009- 2019 that addressed none of the fundamental structural weaknesses evident in the US economy prior to the Great Recession. The institutionally entrenched but exhausted neoliberal paradigm left the US unprepared for the onset of recession in 2020, and for the larger social and economic travails of the COVID-19 pandemic with which the initial onset of the 2020 recession was associated.","PeriodicalId":127579,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian (Topic)","volume":"219 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129114908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Optimized Monetary Policy ZLB Mandate in NK Behavioural and RE Models Compared","authors":"T. Pham","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3764479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3764479","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we extend the basic ‘workhorse’ New Keynesian model by relaxing the rationality assumption in favor of bounded rationality. We broadly follow (Gabaix, 2020) whereby agents are unable to anticipate macroeconomic developments perfectly and assumed to be both partially myopic and inattentive. In my set-up, we assume that agents form beliefs over the future infinite time horizon of aggregate states and prices which are exogenous to their decisions. we then directly apply agents’ inattentiveness on these exogenous market factors into their infinite-time-horizon decision rules. This approach produces identical decision rules as the “sparse agent” approach of Gabaix. Most importantly, with my method we can derive a fully non-linear form of my model, which is necessary to provide a correct welfare rankings in my mandate study. Results by the standard linear Bayesian estimation technique in this paper show that the boundedly rational expectation (BR) model outperforms the fully rational expectation model (RE). In the BR model, introducing the zero-lower-bound (ZLB) episode results in a higher welfare cost compared to the RE model. As a result, the optimal steady state inflation level of the BR model is higher given a probability of the nominal interest hitting the ZLB. Optimized interest rate rules for the RE and BR models closely mimics a price-level targeting rule. However, under the RE model, the nominal interest rate reacts more aggressively to the price inflation.","PeriodicalId":127579,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian (Topic)","volume":"110 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134638864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Note Concerning Government Bond Yields","authors":"Tanweer Akram","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3732314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3732314","url":null,"abstract":"This paper relates Keynes’s discussions of money, the state theory of money, financial markets, investors’ expectations, uncertainty, and liquidity preference to the dynamics of government bond yields for countries with monetary sovereignty. Keynes argued that the central bank can influence the long-term interest rate on government bonds and the shape of the yield curve mainly through the short-term interest rate. Investors’ psychology, herding behavior in financial markets, and uncertainty about the future reinforce the effects of the short-term interest rate and the central bank’s monetary policy actions on the long-term interest rate. Several recent empirical studies that examine the dynamics of government bond yields substantiate the Keynesian perspective that the long-term interest rate responds markedly to the short-term interest rate. These empirical studies not only vindicate the Keynesian perspective but also have relevance for macroeconomic theory and policy.","PeriodicalId":127579,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian (Topic)","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126694931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Monetary Policy and the Wage Inflation-Unemployment Tradeoff","authors":"Ricardo Duque Gabriel","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3689791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3689791","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last years, many have been questioning the importance of the Phillips curve arguing that it has flatten out of favour. Thus, a lot of attention has been given to understand why its slope is flatter and how can central bankers still explore it. Building on this current debate, I estimate historical wage Phillips curves by using newly assembled data on wages and unemployment rates for a set of 17 advanced economies starting in 1870. I show that the wage Phillips curve has always been alive and well but, similarly to recent times, it was flatter during the Gold Standard. The collected data suggest that a low price inflation environment promotes this disconnect, which is aligned with the New Keynesian model predictions. In such an environment, wages and prices are adjusted by firms less often and thus, the relationship between unemployment and wage inflation becomes weaker.","PeriodicalId":127579,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian (Topic)","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132002252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Quadratic-Cubic Approximation of Optimal Policy","authors":"Isaac Gross","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3692451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3692451","url":null,"abstract":"We derive a 2nd-order approximation of optimal policy in a broad class of nonlinear DSGE models. Using a cubic expansion of welfare and a quadratic expansion of the economyís equilibrium conditions, the Quadratic-Cubic (QC) approximation relaxes symmetry in the objective function and certainty equivalence in the solution, as required by a Linear-Quadratic (LQ) approximation. Comparing QC with LQ in a New Keynesian economy with costly price and wage adjustment, the micro-founded objective is asymmetric and shock variances have important quantitative effects on optimal monetary policy. US households would be willing to pay almost one third (one eighteenth) of 1% of their annual consumption to avoid a Taylor rule under QC (LQ).","PeriodicalId":127579,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian (Topic)","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133618636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"E-stability vis-a-vis Determinacy in Regime-Switching Models","authors":"Nigel McClung","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3393007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3393007","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines E-stability, determinacy, and indeterminacy in a general class of regime-switching models with lagged endogenous variables. Using determinacy conditions from Cho (2016, 2020), our first result extends McCallum (2007) to models with time-varying parameters: the unique mean-square stable equilibrium is E-stable if agents have current information and one-period-ahead decision rules. Further, we address the existence of E-stable non-fundamental equilibria, and find that Iteratively E-stable equilibria of indeterminate switching models can exist. Finally, we show that indeterminate New Keynesian models with persistent, recurring interest rate peg regimes admit Iteratively E-stable equilibria. In special cases, the Iterative E-stability condition coincides with the Long Run Taylor Principle.","PeriodicalId":127579,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian (Topic)","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130550873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Fundamental Error of Rational Expectations Proponents Is Their Claim that They Have Discovered True Statistical Models: Given that No Model Can Be True, Talk of Having a 'True Model' Is An Anti-Scientific Oxymoron Given Keynesian Uncertainty","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3672010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3672010","url":null,"abstract":"No model can ever be true. By definition, models are only, at best, approximations to reality. Some models are better approximations than others, so one can talk about one model being better than another model. However, to talk about a model yielding true predictions means that the speaker does not understand what a model is and what it is used for. This is especially true in the area of probability and statistics. George Box said it well when he stated that ‘all models are wrong, but some are useful.’<br><br>Rational expectations advocates violate basic scientific approaches to theory construction and model use when they claim that there is a true model of how the economy operates that consumers and producers can learn from experience. There can never be any scientific support for that claim or any of the following claims, given that all models are only approximations, which can never be true:<br><br>• There is a true(correct, right ,valid) probability<br>• There is a true(correct, right, valid) expectation<br>• There is a true(correct, right, valid) model<br>• There is a true(correct, right, valid) expected value<br>• Consumers and producers can learn the true(correct,right,valid) model<br>• There is a true(correct, right, valid), objective probability or probability distribution<br>• There are true(correct,right,valid) model consistent expectations<br>","PeriodicalId":127579,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian (Topic)","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121790261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Study of the Many, Many Conflicting ‘Tower of Babel’-Like Interpretations of Part I of Keynes’s a Treatise on Probability Made by Heterodox Economists: None of These ‘Interpretations’ Deal With Parts II-V of Keynes’s a Treatise on Probability","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3636653","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3636653","url":null,"abstract":"The failure of all heterodox economists to read Parts II-V of the A Treatise on Probability, especially Part II, since Part III depends on Part II and Part V depends on Part III, explains the many, many different and conflicting types of probabilities that are climes to exist in the A Treatise on Probability, as well as the many, many different definitions of uncertainty concocted by ignorant heterodox economists whose work directly contradicts and conflicts with Keynes’s explicit definitions of uncertainty in the A Treatise on Probability on pp.309-315 and in the General Theory on pages 148 and 240, definitions which Keynes himself reemphasized and reinforced to H. Townshend in their correspondence in 1937 and 1938. A reading of this correspondence leads directly to the rejection of all current claims made about so called different types of probabilities (non comparable, non numerical, non measurable, incommensurable, unknown, ordinal, comparative, qualitative, rank ordered, etc.) and uncertainty (fundamental uncertainty, irreducible uncertainty, reducible uncertainty, strong uncertainty, weak uncertainty, genuine uncertainty, deep uncertainty, radical uncertainty, nonergodic, etc.) by any and all heterodox economists, whose different, differing and conflicting discussions lead to a rambling, incoherent and incomprehensible chaos of babble that makes even the possibility of rational discussion an impossibility.<br><br>What accounts for this baffling, bewildering, befuddling and puzzling situation? There are three answers. The first answer is the reliance of all heterodox economists on the many, many false claims made by Richard B. Braithwaite that were published by D. Moggridge and Elizabeth Johnson as the Introduction to CWJMK, Volume 8, edition of the A treatise on Probability. This edition has been required reading for any and all undergraduate and graduate students in the departments of economics and philosophy at Cambridge University, who express an interest in working on Keynes’s theory of probability or economics, since its appearance in 1973. The second answer is that no heterodox economist has ever read Part II of the A Treatise on Probability. The third is the queer, bizarre belief that an 18 year old teenage boy genius, Frank Ramsey, showed up at Cambridge University in 1921 and convinced Keynes to acknowledge that his logical theory of probability was riddled with error and conflicts by 1922, which Keynes formally acknowledged in 1931. All three reasons are self reinforcing.<br><br>In early January, 1981, one of my dissertation supervisors, who had actually worked with and under Keynes in 1944 and 1945, asked me to deal with Braithwaite’s introduction as a preliminary defense of my dissertation topic for him alone. I agreed and xeroxed chapters 15-17 of Keynes’s book,as well as the two Edgeworth reviews, Bertrand Russell review, CD Broad’s review and the crushing Edwin Bidwell Wilson paper, published in 1934 in JASA, acknowledging th","PeriodicalId":127579,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128971931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Notes on the Accumulation and Utilization of Capital: Some Theoretical Issues","authors":"M. Nikiforos","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3584760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3584760","url":null,"abstract":"The paper makes three contributions. First, following up on Nikiforos (2016), it provides an in-depth examination of the Federal Reserve measure of capacity utilization and shows that it is closer to a cyclical indicator than a measure of long run variations of normal utilization. Other measures, such as the average workweek of capital or the national emergency utilization rate are more appropriate for examining long-run changes in utilization. Second, and related to that, it argues that a relatively stationary measure of utilization is not consistent with any theory of the determination of utilization. Third, based on data on the lifetime of fixed assets it shows that for the issues around the \"utilization controversy\" the long run is a period after thirty years or more. This makes it a Platonic Idea for some economic problems.","PeriodicalId":127579,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian (Topic)","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129833003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
G. Kapetanios, S. Price, Menelaos Tasiou, Alexia Ventouri
{"title":"State-level wage Phillips curves","authors":"G. Kapetanios, S. Price, Menelaos Tasiou, Alexia Ventouri","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3535216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3535216","url":null,"abstract":"Two reduced-form versions of New Keynesian wage Phillips curves based on either sticky nominal wages or real-wage rigidity using monthly US state-level data for the period 1982-2016 are examined, taking account of the endogeneity of unemployment by instrumentation and the use of common correlated effects (CCE) and mean group (MG) methods. This is the first time that this methodology has been applied in this context. These are important issues, as ignoring them may lead to substantial biases. The results show that while the aggregate data do not provide estimates that are consistent with either of the theoretical models examined, the panel methods do. Moreover, use of an appropriate MG CCE estimator leads to economically significant changes in parameters (primarily a steeper Phillips curve) relative to those from inappropriate but widely used panel methods, and in the real-wage rigidity case is required to deliver results that have a theoretically admissible interpretation.","PeriodicalId":127579,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian (Topic)","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127646065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}