Abstract Drawing upon heterodox contributions that highlighted the impact of the global financial crisis and austerity on inequality, this paper builds on recent research about spatial and distributional dynamics to argue that the post-crisis approach of monetary expansion and fiscal contraction has exacerbated disparities both between and within regions as well as along the income distribution. Given the deep gaps in regional, human and social capital stocks, the paper also shows that the current approach to fiscal policy and public investment will not reduce inequalities. The fiscal framework and policy on public investment require fundamental reform if the UK government is to raise economic growth and living standards in every part of the UK.
This paper examines Arthur Cecil Pigou's microeconomic analysis of speculation. Although Pigou's treatment of speculation has been examined insofar as it relates to his theory of the business cycle, his microeconomic analysis of speculation has received very little attention from historians of economic thought. This paper contributes to the literature by illustrating how Pigou's microeconomic analysis of speculation fits within his landmark economic welfare framework. More specifically, it sheds light on an overlooked institutional theme therein-namely, that his assessment of the welfare consequences of speculation depends crucially upon the nature of the institutional context within which that activity takes place. This paper not only provides a more faithful representation of Pigou's microeconomic treatment of speculation but also highlights some of its more fruitful aspects with relevance for modern economic analysis.
The article examines the influences of post-Keynesian authors of the Cambridge School, particularly Nicholas Kaldor, on Celso Furtado's theory of economic development. Furtado developed an original approach to understanding the challenges faced by underdeveloped countries, incorporating ideas from authors like Kaldor into his theory to construct his economic model. Kaldor contributed to the understanding of the dynamics of economic development, providing analytical tools that Furtado adapted to the specific context of Latin America. These post-Keynesian influences enriched Furtado's theory of economic development, providing a solid foundation for his policy proposals and contributing to his lasting impact in the field of economic development.
This article challenges the prevailing view that John Maynard Keynes ignored income distribution in his economic thinking. While scholars such as Branko Milanovic argue that Keynes lacked an 'integrative vision' of inequality, a closer reading reveals that distributional concerns are woven throughout his work-from The Economic Consequences of the Peace to How to Pay for the War. Though Keynes never developed a full theory of distribution like Micha & lstrok; Kalecki, he embedded inequality into key parameters of his macroeconomic analysis, particularly in relation to effective demand, wage policy, full employment and the burdens of war. I argue that Keynes's evolving engagement with a 'functional theory of distribution'-in which inequality is assessed mainly by its effects on the macroeconomy-offers essential insights for current policy challenges. Far from indifferent, Keynes provides a historically grounded and macroeconomically coherent framework for understanding inequality. Revisiting this overlooked dimension of his thought opens the way towards a Keynesian 'economics of enough' for today's ecologically constrained and unequal world.
The purpose of this paper is to consider how political economy can be applied to address the interconnected problems of the global maldistribution of wealth and of climate change at a time of weak economic growth. These problems are addressed here as moral issues for which technical solutions are inadequate. Yet a synergy between ethics and efficiency can be achieved. Given the evident inability of market forces to address social and environmental problems, the state needs to take leadership in designing and implementing solutions. This requires democratic support and, crucially given power structures, the support of vested interests. The policy stance therefore needs to appeal both to considerations of social and environmental justice and to self-interest. We pursue this line of enquiry with the aid of analyses ranging from Smith to Keynes and beyond about the nature of capitalism and of human motivation.
The article explores the potential of the recent 'Pragmatist Turn' in 4E cognition to enhance the theoretical framework of a 4E economics approach. The paper will be structured as follows. Firstly, Kahneman's concepts of reason and intuition are exposed, highlighting the epistemological dualism that informs Behavioural Economics. Next, various proposals for redefining the concept of embodied bounded rationality within the context of 4E cognition are presented. Finally, the article inquires about some pragmatist concepts that might contribute to 4E economics to redefine rationality as an enactive-organic adaptation. Specifically, it refers to James's idea of emotion as a behavioural response to a problematic situation and its reprise in Dewey's theories of emotion and organic circuit, which emphasizes the ideo-sensorimotor process.
In recent years, central banks have significantly altered their practices, widening the law-practice gap between their formal legal mandates and their actual policy conduct. Monetary conservatives call for a return to the old consensus on economic and constitutional grounds, whereas monetary populists call for the re-politicisation of money by returning monetary powers to elected officials. Although these positions oppose each other, both regard the current configuration as illegitimate because it departs from the governing principles of liberal democracy, regardless of its economic effectiveness. While economists have recognised the economic merits of this configuration, the political and legal criticism levelled against it by conservatives and populists has remained unanswered. This article offers such an answer. It contends that the present configuration of central banking is best understood as reflecting a Keynesian-Schumpeterian problem-solving model: independent yet activist, separate from government but not bound by rigid rules. The article argues that this model represents the most reasonable compromise between the legal and constitutional constraints of liberal democracies, the non-ergodicity of capitalist economies, and the shortcomings of representative democracy. This model draws on post-Keynesian economic assumptions, supply-side theories of democracy, and a Schumpeterian notion of technocracy.
Maurice Dobb's Wages, a short textbook-style work commissioned by John Maynard Keynes for the Cambridge Economic Handbooks series, was first published in 1928. It went through six revised editions by 1959, along with numerous reprints and translations up to the 1980s. This paper analyses the evolution of the book's content in order to question the status of economic theory in relation to the study of labour issues. The first section examines the making of the handbook and shows how Wages addressed the usefulness of economic theory, particularly price theory. The second section traces the evolution of Dobb's views on wages, shaped by his controversy with John Hicks in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The third section explores the growing scepticism of Wages across its subsequent editions and translations, following its trajectory from the centre to the periphery of economics.
Despite different national debt levels, centre-right and centre-left politicians in Germany and the UK embrace fiscally restrictive approaches to state spending that have been criticised for their detrimental impact on needed public investments. This paper expands the critique beyond the economic and welfare consequences and shows that, additionally, politicians championing 'fiscal responsibility' are not addressing concerns of the public either. Using original survey data, the analysis demonstrates how public perceptions of economic policies should not be assumed to match the assumptions of balance-sheet-accounting approaches to thinking about state expenditure and why politicians could be more confident in providing positive narratives about debt-financed state investments.
Venture capital (VC) is fuelling the boom in artificial intelligence (AI). Yet analysis of a UK dataset reveals that VC is dominated by men, both as investors and the AI start-ups they fund. Gender disparities are identified in VC decision-makers, the composition of founders and the average capital raised by predominantly male, compared to female, teams. This is particularly pronounced in AI software start-ups, the sector that attracts most investment. Whether and how this gender gap shapes the innovation process itself is a further question explored here. Drawing on feminist science and technology studies, we argue that the homogeneity of the VC ecosystem is key to perpetuating the gender gap in innovation. On this basis, we conceptualise venture capital as effectively a form of 'male-lens investing', illustrating the limitations of the male-dominated and profit-driven VC investment model. We believe this theoretical framing contributes to contextualising debates about the need for inclusive innovation systems.
The objective of this study is to examine the productivity puzzle in Europe by employing the augmented Kaldor-Verdoorn law. The analysis is conducted using a panel of 277 European NUTS2 regions, encompassing twenty-seven EU countries, during the period from 1980 to 2017. The Kaldor-Verdoorn law is a well-researched empirical pattern that connects demand growth to productivity growth. It suggests that an increase in productivity is driven by an increase in demand. Recent studies have expanded on the traditional Kaldor-Verdoorn law by incorporating the Kaldorian technical progress function. This addition suggests that productivity is also influenced by investments, as technical progress is embedded in newly installed capital goods. The findings of this research reveal regional disparities in both the Verdoorn effect and the capital accumulation effect across European regions. Furthermore, the analysis tests the Kaldor-Verdoorn law across regions divided into quartiles based on productivity growth levels. The results highlight a non-linearity in the Kaldor-Verdoorn coefficients based on the regions' productivity growth rates. Moreover, notable variations exist between economic sectors and among regions with and without the euro currency.
By tending to take the existence of communities for granted, most approaches in social sciences overlook how national communities reconstruct themselves through the redefinition of their identity and their ideas about the nature of the collective. This paper seeks to address this blind spot by arguing that the two-way causation between individual motivations and institutions is itself constituted by, and constitutive of, the 'imaginary' foundations upon which communities are built. Its theoretical contribution is made through an analysis of how the reformulation of three ideational factors that are constitutive of these 'imaginary' foundations informs institutional changes. By relying upon in-depth analysis of primary documentary material, its empirical contribution sheds a new light on the reconfiguration of industrial policy during the Gaullist period (1958-69). Such reconfiguration aimed at allowing the reconstructed purposive content of national identity to be pursued more effectively, in congruence with reformulated ideas about the nature of the collective.
This article explores Marx's conceptualization of capitalist wage labour in Capital, through focusing on a single chapter, 'The Working Day'. In the chapter, Marx examines campaigns in Britain for the 'normal' working day conducted during the first half of the 19th century. The article identifies four distinct, but intersecting, dimensions of capitalist wage labour, respectively classified here as philosophical-economic, political-economic, moral-economic and socio-economic. The first two are both strictly abstract, with the philosophical-economic dimension being integrated within his process of political-economic conceptualization. This integration creates an internally dynamic concept of capitalist wage labour, which Marx applies to a range of sources from various perspectives, classified here as moral-economic. Marx's application of this concept leads to a radical, pluralist, socio-economic analysis, encompassing such factors as workers' gender, age and religion. The article concludes by addressing the theoretical and strategic implications arising from this discussion.
This paper investigates the writings of Luigi Lodovico Pasinetti (1930-2023) and Geoffrey Colin Harcourt (1931-2021) with the purpose of trying to understand how theorists conceptualise scientific progress and the impact this has on how they do their work. Most of the literature on the progress of science focuses on the process that explains scientific progress in general, as a community phenomenon, and the methodological and ontological underpinnings of this process. In this paper, we focus on a different question: how does the perception of the progress of science influence the way a theorist does their work? We investigate the link between Pasinetti and Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions (Pasinetti, 1981, 2007) and contrast it with Harcourt's (1999) 'Horses for Courses' approach that, we contend has similarities with Larry Laudan's 'research traditions' conception. We argue that differences in the conception of the nature of the field and of progress in the discipline lead theorists to start from different ontological frameworks and, essentially, do theory building with different strengths and limitations.
This paper analyses the determinants of shareholder returns of Brazilian publicly traded companies in the period 2001-21. The empirical study shows that in the short-term, earnings distributions via dividends, interest on equity and share repurchases contribute to increase the shareholder returns. In contrast, in the long term, capital inflows and retained profits channelled towards productive investments predominantly foster shareholder value. The study shows empirical evidence on a trade-off between dividends and productive investment in the short and long term. A corporate strategy that prioritizes short-term gains can compromise the long-term growth of companies. The study proposes that the current tax framework and financial market regulation may serve to mitigate the short-term predilections of certain shareholder segments.
This paper is concerned with evaluating megaprojects and their failures in T & uuml;rkiye in the contradictory foundations of capitalism under the AKP rule. It discusses how the Turkish state's interventions through megaproject investments have created economic dilemmas in terms of fiscal crisis, currency crisis and legitimacy crisis. In doing so, this paper draws on Jessop's strategic relational approach to the state as the theoretical framework. Accordingly, beyond considering the success or failure of state interventions in a specific period, I argue that these interventions should be discussed in terms of their contradictions, which, while solving certain economic problems, persistently tend to create new ones. Hence, the contribution of this paper is to demonstrate how the production of space through state spatial interventions rests on the contradictory nature of capitalism, as exemplified by the case of T & uuml;rkiye's megaprojects and their failures.
As the popularity of crypto-assets grows, so does the interest of scholars in exploring different features of these so-called decentralised forms of private digital money. This essay dives into the seminal question of whether the inner characteristics of the so-called cryptocurrencies-understood as privately issued, decentralised and technologically based assets-allow for their natural evolution into money. Prior debates on electronic money are revisited to question whether new technological developments, such as decentralised ledgers, will successfully elevate cryptocurrencies to money. This paper argues that this scenario should be disregarded, not only due to the practical shortcomings of cryptocurrencies, but mainly because the foundations of such fully mechanised currencies are irreconcilable with an ontology of money as a claim, denominated in money of account, as proposed by credit theories of money.
High income inequality has been a hallmark of Chile's political economy for decades, even centuries. The purpose of this article is to explore a 'forgotten' strand in the Chilean debate, that is to say, the role of the union's power as a countervailing force against high income inequality. Mainstream interpreters have sidelined this approach. Using the Power Resources Approach, it is argued here that Chilean income inequality can be related to fluctuations in organisational power and the lack of an inclusive wage-setting system (e.g. industry-wide collective bargaining). This analysis is based on a deductive approach using relevant literature and two official datasets. In addition to the original investigation, a Propensity Score Matching model is conducted. It is found that changes to the labour code, in 1979, and the imposition of a radically decentralised industrial relations system adversely affected workers' ability to achieve a large share of incomes.
Why do some economists support price controls in the face of inflation during peacetime? Our thesis is that, in the history of economic thought, understanding the role of profits in inflationary dynamics is the crucial variable. To demonstrate this, we investigate the extensive literature on incomes policy, insofar as much of the thinking on macroeconomic price control in peacetime is part of this literature. This corpus is crossed by a major schism: some advocate price and wage controls while others limit control to wages alone. We show that the defence of price controls is always based on the thesis that profits play an autonomous role in inflationary dynamics. Conversely, the advocates of an incomes policy reduced to wage controls see margins as mere transmission belts for excessive wage increases into prices. Price controls are thus rejected ex ante, even before any criticism of the consequences of their application.
Complete mobility of labour in the long run equalises the 'rate of return' to employment, independently of any particular price structure. Then, given some level of net output, aggregate net value added is proportional to aggregate labour effort, a macroeconomic equal exchange. Complete mobility of capital in the long run equalises the rate of profit, a process that creates prices that are different from the prices that directly reflect labour effort in production. Hence, microeconomic unequal exchange is the norm. Then monetised effort appears in locations different from where that effort was performed. Hence, the profit of any and every firm depends upon the exploitation of the world's working class, and not upon the exploitation of its own workforce. Some empirical consequences of this approach are explored for the world's largest 500 firms.
