For 30 years, feminist economists have challenged the silence of macroeconomics on gender, but citation analysis shows little recognition of their work by heterodox economists, who tend to ignore the processes through which labour is reproduced. This paper sets out a feminist vision of how a macroeconomy works, including unpaid as well as paid labour, and drawing attention to the ever-present risk of depletion of human capabilities. Examples are discussed of how cuts to public spending on care, health and education services tend to deplete human capabilities, and the safety net that can be provided by unpaid work has many holes. The paper concludes with a discussion of caring macroeconomics that would safeguard against depletion and degradation and promote replenishment and regeneration.
Taking stock of 30 years of research in feminist macroeconomics, we outline five reasons for why we need to gender macroeconomics: First, labour needs to be reproduced; hence, the care economy needs to be analysed as a key sector of the economy, including both unpaid domestic work and paid work, having significant effects on demand, supply and distribution, impacting on well-being, productivity, labour supply and demographic change and fertility. Second, gendered social norms, which in turn affect the gendered division of labour, lead to gendered behavioural differences and have a significant impact on determining macroeconomic outcomes. Third, an explicit modelling of the care sector in macroeconomic modelling is essential for an accurate analysis of the demand and supply-side interactions and adequate fiscal and industrial policy design. Fourth, the distribution of income and wealth is determined by not only class but also gendered and racial profiling of jobs. Finally, the needs of our societies in the care sectors and climate action are intersecting and interrelated, which requires gendering ecological macroeconomic analysis, moving forward towards an ecofeminist post-Keynesian/Kaleckian synthesis model.
This paper examines how a feminist macroeconomic policy agenda centered on public investment in care intersects with three critical policy domains: full employment, ecological sustainability, and democratic resilience. First, building on feminist economics research on the economic returns to investing in care, it demonstrates strong complementarities with heterodox and post-Keynesian macroeconomics by advancing full employment, demand-led growth, and equitable distribution through the high employment multipliers and favorable distributional effects of care services sectors. Second, it highlights the synergies with ecological economics, showing how expanding and upgrading care sectors can contribute to a green and just transformation through the creation of low-emission ‘purple jobs’. Third, the paper argues that care-centered development contributes to democratic resilience by expanding women’s access to paid employment, reducing gender inequalities, and weakening the socio-economic foundations of authoritarian and conservative political mobilization. By integrating these three dimensions, the paper positions investment in transformative care systems as a central pillar of an inclusive, sustainable, and democratic macroeconomic policy framework.
Women are globally under-represented in manufacturing, yet even within the sector their employment remains highly concentrated. Textiles and wearing apparel, for instance, absorb a disproportionate share of women’s manufacturing jobs, while men’s employment is distributed more broadly across subsectors. This paper asks how economic development, measured by per capita GDP, and manufacturing productivity growth shape this within-sector gender segregation. Using industry-level data on 23 manufacturing industries in 63 countries from 1990 to 2019, we construct country-level measures of gender segregation using the dissimilarity index and estimate static and dynamic panel data models to address endogeneity. Three findings stand out. First, rising manufacturing labor productivity is associated with lower gender segregation, an effect driven primarily by within-industry productivity gains rather than employment reallocation. This finding complements prior evidence on the primacy of the within-industry channel in manufacturing defeminization. Second, we identify an inverted-U relationship between per capita income and manufacturing gender segregation, which we term the ‘gender segregation Kuznets curve’. Segregation rises at early stages of development and declines at later stages. Third, this non-linear pattern is driven entirely by Global South countries; no significant relationship holds for the high-income OECD subsample, pointing to structurally differentiated mechanisms across development levels. We argue that lower segregation should not be read straightforwardly as a gender equality gain. The negative productivity–segregation association may partly reflect the distributional consequences of defeminization rather than women’s expanded access to manufacturing industries.
This article examines the relationship between a set of labor market institutions (LMIs) and unemployment rates in 11 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries from 1991 to 2019. The methods used included two-way fixed-effects models with Driscoll–Kraay’s (1998) standard errors (TWFE-DK), dynamic fixed-effects models (DFE), and spatial autoregressive models (SAR). The results showed that the strictness of employment protection for permanent and temporary contracts (EPR and EPT), wage-bargaining centralization, and wage-bargaining coordination are all negatively and significantly associated with the unemployment rate. Conversely, union density is positively and significantly correlated with the unemployment rate when considered in isolation. Thus, the employment effects of labor market institutions appear to depend on the broader institutional setting in which they operate. Spatial analysis also highlights a robust spatial interdependence of unemployment across CEE countries, with results that remain broadly consistent, although EPT loses statistical significance. Interactions between LMIs were also significant, suggesting that broader, coordinated reforms, rather than piecemeal measures, may be a more effective strategy for reducing unemployment in CEE countries. Finally, these results are consistent with theoretical approaches that emphasize the stabilizing role of labor institutions in sustaining effective demand and employment.
This paper studies long-term consequences of a zero-growth regime on the evolution of employment and unemployment, depending on the assumptions made about the evolution of the working population, labor productivity and working hours. These consequences are examined through three scenarios, corresponding to three different types of institutionalized compromises concerning income distribution and employment management in a world without growth. These institutionalized compromises govern the evolution of functional distribution and, consequently, determine the level of economic activity, against a backdrop of no capital accumulation. The most worrying question is how a shrinking demand for labor (if productivity still grows) can ensure employment for the entire workforce, especially if the latter continues to grow. The answer is quite obviously to be found in reducing individual working hours. Going that way, we seek to grasp more precisely how the elements of this dramaturgy would jeopardize the viability, in terms of employment and unemployment, of a zero-growth regime, by threatening to break the various distributional compromises that could a priori regulate such a regime. This leads us to conclude that the goal of full employment would be put under greater strain by demographic growth (if this were to persist) than by productivity gains (if these were to persist). Admittedly, a sufficiently rapid individual reduction in working hours can counter the negative effects on employment of these two trends combined. But productivity gains are the only way to keep per-capita wages constant.
This paper explores the mechanisms of endogenous money creation in Argentina, which became more evident due to a ‘natural experiment’ – a fiscal moratorium that triggered a massive inflow of capital during the second half of 2024. This inflow directly contributed to exchange-rate stabilization, an improvement in real wages and economic activity, and, more indirectly, to a positive reassessment of creditworthy demand by the banking system. Both direct – or induced demand – and indirect – or autonomous demand – effects ultimately lead to credit expansion. Furthermore, due to Argentina’s specific regulatory framework, dollar-denominated loans generate deposits in domestic currency while simultaneously increasing the Central Bank’s net international reserves, thus supporting financial stability. We conclude that, while the combination of the moratorium and domestic regulations played a key role in the 2024 stabilization effort, potentially creating conditions for self-sustained stability, the process had only transitory effects and could not be maintained.
The recurring cycles of economic activity in a capitalist economy have prompted a variety of explanations. Some of these focus on the excessive indebtedness of economic agents during a growth phase, which may result from overly optimistic behavior or excessive risk-taking. From a post-Keynesian circuit theory perspective, this article shows that this excess debt could also result from firms’ current production expenditures generating insufficient income to enable them to purchase production. In this case, society must go into debt to consume what it produces, creating ever-increasing debt. This situation tends to be reversed during a depression. Based on these assumptions, endogenous cycles of economic activity can be modeled within the framework of a monetary economy of production.
AiRza G & uuml;ngen It can be argued that the rich world has long reached the social limits to growth, which were prescientlyseenby key figuresinpost-Keynesian economics. Reducing working hours, therefore, may Social Science , Columbia Co eg , Canada have a greater potential to increase peoples' life satisfaction than more economic growth. One of the & Uuml;mitobstaclestoAk & ccedil;ayareduction in working hours is the 'ratrace'forrelative income. The rat race is exacerbatedby highwage inequality, weakcollective bargaininginstitutions, andlowquality of public Institute for International Political Economy, Berlin School of Economics and L w, Berlin, Germany services. Results from arepresentative survey of German workers show that, despite the rat race, Uemit.A cay@hw-berli .de public support for measures to reduce working hours, such as the four-day week or a social service period, is high in Germny. Compard tthe United Sates, the Geman political conomy still can aeo trebe characterized as a coordinated market economy, in which wage inequality is lower, collective bargaining plays a larger role, and public services are more universal.
What has led to the growing disillusionment with the European project? What have we learned from the process of Europeanisation, and can these lessons guide us in the present? To answer these questions, the article offers a long-term view of the diverging trajectories of Central and Peripheral European countries in terms of interdependent economies with different productive capacities. It briefly traces the evolution of the European Union, from the founding fathers' vision of a federation of states to the acrimonious economic union of divided governments and peoples. Looking back at moments of crisis, we try to understand where we went wrong and explore the possibility that the current difficult times and the disintegration of the international order may foster the recovery of the original idea of Europe
The reform of the European fiscal rules came into force on 30 April 2024. The new rules, like the former ones, impose a depressive bias on domestic fiscal policies, leaving Member States' no fiscal room for manoeuvre. At the same time, the European Pillar of Social Rights sets ambitious targets for national social protection systems and requires an increase in social spending. A new form of governance would be required to prevent the fiscal rules from imposing restrictive fiscal policies to the expense of economic activity and, of more important, objectives (green transition, defence). This would require abandoning arbitrary targets for public deficits and debts and accepting, when needed, an increase in social contributions and taxation.
