Credit Money And Crises In Post Keynesian Economics

In this volume, Louis-Philippe Rochon and Hassan Bougrine bring together key post-Keynesian voices in an effort to push the boundaries of our understanding of banks, central banking, monetary policy and endogenous money. Issues such as interest rates, income distribution, stagnation and crises – both theoretical and empirical – are woven together and analysed by the many contributors to shed new light on them. The result is an alternative analysis of contemporary monetary economies, and the policies that are so needed to address the problems of today.

Rochon (economics and banking, Kalamazoo College) uses a horizontalist perspective to offer a historical overview of the post-Keynesian and circuit approaches to endogenous money, and provides an informed critique of the development of post-Keynesian economics. He argues that rather than emphasizing the early writings of Minsky, Kaldor, and Tobin in the 1950s and of Davidson and Rousseas later, post Keynesians ought to have followed the writings of Joan Robinson and Richard Kahn who offered better theories of credit-money.

During the past five years, crises in the US savings and loan industry, commercial banks, and other financial institutions have borne out the ideas that Rousseas expressed in the first edition. His main theme stresses the role of innovation in the financial sector of the economy and its implications for control of the money supply and credit, as well as the larger issue of macroeconomic policy. He holds a Post-Keynesian view of an elastic and endogenous money supply that is largely founded on the "general liquidity thesis" of the Radcliffe Committee. Indeed, the elasticity of the credit structure is even greater than the Radcliffe Committee originally claimed. Tables and charts are revised through 1990, and the text has been revised accordingly. An expanded preface to the revised edition makes this book very relevant to contemporary problems and policy.

Hassan Bougrine, Louis-Philippe Rochon and the expert contributors to this book explore issues of economic growth and full employment; presenting a clear explanation to stagnation, recessions and crises, including the latest Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8. With a central focus on the role played by government spending, deficits and debt as well as the setting of interest rates, the chapters propose alternative policies that can be used by central banks and fiscal authorities to deal with problems of income inequality, unemployment and slow productivity. Students and professors of economics, policymakers interested in alternative policies, academics and scholars in all fields will benefit from the explorations therein and would do well to seek out the companion publication, Credit, Money and Crises in Post-Keynesian Economics, also published by Edward Elgar Publishing. Contributors include:P. Arestis, R.A. Blecker, S. Cesaratto, O. Costantini, J.J. da Silveira, M. Dufour, A.K. Dutt, G. Epstein, G. Fujii-Gambero, M. García-Ramos, J. Halevi-Haifa, G.C. Harcourt, E. Hein, E. Kam, J.E. King, P. Kriesler, G.T. Lima, J.A. Montecino, T.I. Palley, F.J. Prante, M. Sawyer, M. Setterfield, J. Smithin, J. Stanford, S. Storm

Has the economic and financial crisis changed the way we conduct monetary policy? Is quantitative easing consistent with the endogeneity of money? These are but two of the questions this new book explores. The various contributors offer interesting and new perspectives on the conduct of monetary policy during the crisis, and provide sharp criticism of central bank policies in the US and Europe. A must read for all those interested in a critical analysis of monetary policy.

This book provides cutting-edge material elaborating on monetary circuit theory and post-Keynesian monetary economics. It contributes to a new approach to monetary analysis, which provides original insights into the complex fields of money, banking, and finance.

In analyzing money, contemporary economics has focused its attention on money's function as a store of value, neglecting its role as medium of circulation. When circulation is put center stage, it becomes apparent that the supply of money does indeed adapt to the needs of trade - and does so in many different ways, often ways that are difficult for a central bank to control, because they reflect the responses of banks and other financial institutions to market incentives. But money's role in circulation must be coordinated with its store of value function, and both with finance. Failure here can lead to instability. The essays in this volume by internationally renowned economists cover these issues in original and contrasting analyses, presenting the American post-Keynesian perspective, on the one hand, and the point of view of the French Circulation School, on the other.

Post-Keynesian Monetary Theory recaps Marc Lavoie's views on monetary theory over a 35-year period, seen from a post-Keynesian perspective. The book contains a collection of nineteen previously published papers, as well as an introduction which explains how these papers came about and how they were received. All of the selected articles avoid mathematical formalism.Readers will find analyses of the earlier advocates of endogenous money such as Nicholas Kaldor and Jacques Le Bourva. They will discover how the arguments in support of the post-Keynesian theory of endogenous money and the credit view of banking have evolved through this 35-year period, and how they have been related to the new procedures pursued by central banks. All these essays show the relevance of the realistic post-Keynesian monetary theory in understanding the subprime and euro crises, quantitative easing and the distributional role of interest rates. Within these pages Marc Lavoie provides an overview of what has happened in post-Keynesian monetary economics over the last three and a half decades for students and scholars with interest in monetary economics, the horizontalist-structuralist debates and the recent history of economic thought.