{"title":"Wage Moderation, Regional Imbalances in Europe and the Recovery and Resilience Plan","authors":"Giorgio Colacchio, Guglielmo Forges Davanzati","doi":"10.1080/08911916.2022.2145675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2022.2145675","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The RRP (Italian National Plan for Recovery and Resilience) is the plan for Italian economic policy in the context of the European Next Generation EU (NGEU) and is structured in the form of investments designed to achieve the goals of growth and resilience. The aim of this article is to provide an analysis of this Plan, for the purpose of studying its adequacy in reducing imbalances both among European countries and within Italy, as well as in reducing unemployment.","PeriodicalId":44784,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49330177","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":"Financialization, Structural Power, and the Global Financial Crisis for Europe’s Core and Periphery","authors":"Nina Eichacker","doi":"10.1080/08911916.2022.2145676","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2022.2145676","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), European governments intervened to support domestic financial systems; several years later, peripheral European economies were at greater risk of having domestic financial crises transform into fiscal crises. While mainstream economic thinking predicts financial markets will punish risky bank behavior with higher interest rates and punitive resolution measures, in fact, banks in core European economies, which engaged in riskier activity in the subprime mortgage market, faced preferential treatment in the aftermath of the GFC. This article argues that financialization, the increased structural economic power of financial institutions, increased the structural power of core members of the Eurozone to direct supranational policies after the GFC. It supports these claims with financial data from balance sheets for a sample of EU economies, as well as institutional analysis of the financial aspects of European integration, and the financial, monetary, and fiscal responses that followed the onset of the GFC. While banks in the Eurozone core were more likely to have engaged in risky behavior, they were more likely to receive liquidity assistance from monetary authorities like the Federal Reserve due to their activity in the US. As Eurozone governments consider how to respond to crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic going forward, policies that more equitably support governments rescuing domestic financial actors should be considered in tandem with broader financial regulations of structurally important economic institutions.","PeriodicalId":44784,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44908054","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":"In memory of Lance Taylor","authors":"Ozlem Omer","doi":"10.1080/08911916.2022.2158643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2022.2158643","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44784,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41559619","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":"Colonial Roots of Modern Development Discourse","authors":"Mohammad Muaz Jalil","doi":"10.1080/08911916.2022.2072313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2022.2072313","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper is structured around a thesis that the historical and colonial roots of modern development shape contemporary development themes and discourses, and that these in turn influence the metrics and indicators used to measure development. The article looks into how colonial relations shape contemporary development themes; the historical evolution of the key themes and measurements of development; finally, how various important “developers,” particularly multilateral and bilateral development agencies, use their epistemic privilege to influence the metrics or indicators that we use to measure development, with particular emphasis on the measures of poverty and inequality. The paper uses a historically grounded narrative structure in demonstrating how colonial legacies have continued to influence development discourse and the related metrics and indicators used in development theory and practice. Finally, the author identifies future avenues of research, particularly how metrics or measures might correspondingly shape emerging development themes and discourses.","PeriodicalId":44784,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41414801","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 History of the Relationship Between Interest Rate and Profit Rate in Heterodox Approaches","authors":"Riccardo Zolea","doi":"10.1080/08911916.2022.2072386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2022.2072386","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article seeks to understand, compare, discuss and systematize the theories on the causal relationship between the rate of interest and the rate of profit, as proposed by various authors, while highlighting their similarities and differences. One group of authors asserts that the rate of interest determines the rate of profit, and thus the distribution of income, while a second argues that once the distribution is determined, it is the rate of profit that governs the rate of interest. This attempt to analyze and systematize the main approaches forms a significant first step in understanding contemporary finance.","PeriodicalId":44784,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48335878","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":"Financialisation and Macroeconomic Regimes in Emerging Capitalist Countries Before and After the Great Recession","authors":"Ümit Akçay, Eckhard Hein, Benjamin Jungmann","doi":"10.1080/08911916.2022.2078009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2022.2078009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In recent years, diverging demand and growth regimes received greater scholarly attention. Particularly, the intersection between variants of Comparative Political Economy and the post-Keynesian macroeconomic analysis provides a promising avenue for understanding the main dynamics of various growth regimes. Yet, the majority of these studies focused on the global North. We expand this analysis to the global South by examining eight large emerging capitalist economies (ECEs), Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, and Turkey, during the periods 2000–2008 and 2009–2019. In so doing, we not only uncover the main demand and growth regimes of ECEs for the two periods but also link them to the main trends in the demand and growth regimes of developed capitalist economies (DCEs) for both periods. One main finding of our research is that ECEs did not follow the same path as DCEs after the Great Recession. While there was a clear shift in the demand and growth regimes of DCEs toward export orientation, the main pattern in the ECEs remained as the continuation of a trend that already emerged before the 2007–09 crisis, i.e., domestic demand-led regimes associated with considerable financial deficits of domestic private and/or public sectors. Finally, we provide some observations on the puzzle of resilient domestic demand-led regimes in ECEs.","PeriodicalId":44784,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49098014","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":"Have We Adequately Accommodated the Non-linear Systemic-Risk of Bankruptcy-Remote Securitization within Shadow Banking?","authors":"Emir J. Phillips","doi":"10.1080/08911916.2022.2073663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2022.2073663","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Securitization to attain bankruptcy remoteness separates the risks of the originator bank from the income-producing asset by structuring the asset sale between the Special Purpose Vehicle and the transferor as a “true sale” as opposed to that of financing an asset transfer. Should the transferor subsequently file for bankruptcy, the transferred assets will be exempted from the transferor’s bankruptcy estate, and the investors’ secured assets in the SPV are not at risk of loss. Once commercial banks no longer bear the risk of these bankruptcy-remote securitized loans, creeping deterioration in bank lending standards occurred/are occurring via weaker screening, lower denial rates, and misreporting of credit quality. When this type of structured finance became institutionally pervasive, what may have reduced risk at the micro-level quietly engenders non-linear systemic risk. In remedy to this, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform is at best an incomplete international vision. Regulators must make-up for its inadequacies by increasing capital adequacy requirements which ensure banks operate in a prudential manner. Profit-maximization (shareholders) and capital adequacy (Society) must err on the side of capital adequacy given the public-private hybrid nature of money that is backstopped by the private-public Federal Reserve.","PeriodicalId":44784,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59453536","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 Greek Sovereign Crisis: A Post-Keynesian Synthesis","authors":"Léo Vigny","doi":"10.1080/08911916.2022.2086727","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2022.2086727","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Greek crisis shocked many by its magnitude and by the nature of the policies implemented in its aftermath. The radical nature of the so-called Memorandum of Understanding was justified by the imbalances that the Greek economy experienced before the crisis. The current account deficit had been rising, as private and external debts. In addition, the ratio of public debt to GDP exceeded 100%. The crisis has been widely explained by a lack of fiscal discipline, a loss of competitiveness, and the rise of capital inflows. In this article, we seek to refute these narratives and offer a post-Keynesian interpretation of the Greek economic trajectory. Growing private indebtedness boosted imports. The resulting current account deficits were offset by rising capital inflows. Greece’s high level of public debt goes back to the 1980s. The narrow tax base of the country and usurious interest rates are to blame. However, none of these trends was sufficient to trigger the sovereign debt crisis. We argue that the main cause of the Greek crisis lies in the political economy of the Eurozone, and more particularly in its asymmetric governance.","PeriodicalId":44784,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44079870","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":"Alternative Views on Portuguese Stagnation: From the Euro’s Inception to the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"Diogo Martins, R. Mamede","doi":"10.1080/08911916.2022.2046345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2022.2046345","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Over the past two decades, real GDP per capita in Portugal has nearly stagnated. The conventional account attributes this to the mismanagement of public finances and the lack of structural reforms in labor and product markets prior to the “adjustment program” agreed with the troika in the early 2010s. In the same vein, the neoclassical-inspired interpretation explains the subsequent recovery based on supply-side and fiscal reforms implemented during the troika years, which would account for the reduced fiscal deficits, external equilibrium and employment growth registered in the pre-COVID-19 period. In this article, we challenge this optimistic view, identifying structural weaknesses of the Portuguese economy that would have soon become apparent even if the pandemic had not happened. Addressing these weaknesses requires changes that go beyond the EU and national responses to the pandemic crisis.","PeriodicalId":44784,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41786574","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":"Ireland’s Multinationals-Dominated Economy in the Pandemic: Did Big Tech and Big Pharma Save the Day?","authors":"P. Polyak","doi":"10.1080/08911916.2022.2046347","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2022.2046347","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Similar to the Eurozone crisis, Ireland engineered a more successful bounce back from the COVID-19 shock than crisis-hit peers. This article argues that the Irish path is less of a product of a generalizable export-led growth strategy, but, rather, can be explained by a set of idiosyncratic features. Using a wide array of macroeconomic indicators, the analysis assesses the opportunities and risks associated with Ireland's distinct path. It shows how strong ties to the United States, and emergence as the European hub for the world’s fastest growing firms sets Ireland apart from European peers. The US is a reliable “spender of last resort,” countercyclically spending and borrowing, boosting growth prospects of trading partners. Irish sectoral specialization in pharmaceutical manufacturing and digital services was also a boon in this crisis. The pandemic created opportunities for health-related industries; reliance on digital technologies helped digital firms. The article also finds, however, that banking on tech and pharma giants has significant limitations. First, multinationals’ accounting tricks artificially inflate economic statistics, and these two sectors are most affected. Second, to the extent that there is job-sustaining activity, it is not straightforward how the success of these sectors is transmitted to the rest of the economy. In the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis, the hospitality industry played a significant role as a “‘transmission belt,” receiving spillovers from the high value-added export sector. Since lockdowns hit hospitality the most, the social insurance function of fiscal policy is of paramount importance to ensure a more broad-based recovery.","PeriodicalId":44784,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48596158","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}