Economic Crisis And Crisis Theory

Keynesian economics claimed to have overcome the problem of economic depressions. However, as Mattick argues that crises are inherent within capitalism and that neither the market nor Keynesianism can stop "the steady deterioration of the economy". Written in 1974, Economic Crisis and Crisis Theory is one of Mattick's most valuable contributions to the Marxist critique of political economy and radical theory in general.

Recent events in the global financial markets and macro economies have served as a strong reminder for a need of a coherent theory of capitalist crisis and analysis. This book helps to fill the gap with well-grounded alternative articulations of the forces which move today's economic dynamics, how they interact and how ideas of foundational figures in economic theory can be used to make sense of the current predicament. The book presents a comprehensive collection of reflections on the origins, dynamics and implications of the interlinked crises of the U.S. and global economies. The book is a thoughtful collaboration between Japanese heterodox economists of the Japan Society of Political Economy (JSPE) and non-Japanese scholars. It provides a unique immersion in different, sophisticated approaches to political economy and to the crisis. The book illustrates with the understanding of Marx's crisis theory and how it can serve as a powerful framework for analyzing the contemporary sub-prime world crisis. The book explains the subprime loan crisis as a crisis in a specific phase of the capitalist world system and concludes that it is a structural one which destroys the existing capital accumulation regime. It pays attention to structural changes and to how these changes beget profound and controversial consequences. The result is a must-read - one which truly contributes to the resurgence of radical analyses of the political economy, free from the market optimism of the main-stream economics.

Economists have rightly been criticized for not having foreseen the crisis that exploded in 2007–2008. As Giancarlo Bertocco eloquently argues, responsibility does indeed rest heavily on their shoulders. By developing a theory which excluded the possibility that a catastrophic crisis could ever happen, the economics profession has justified decisions and behaviours that caused the Great Recession. This book presents an alternative theoretical approach built on the lessons of Marx, Keynes, Schumpeter, Kalecki, Kaldor and Minsky, which highlights the structural instability of a capitalist economy and the endogenous nature of the current crisis.

Why did the economists of the so-called "mainstream" seem to fail to foresee the global economic crisis that exploded in 2008? And why do they appear to have difficulty in putting forward an interpretation of it that is consistent with the theoretical foundations of their models? These two questions have echoed insistently since the outbreak of the crisis, not only in academic circles but also in the mass media, and appear to reflect increasingly widespread dissatisfaction with the dominant paradigm of economic theory. Many believe that the global recession now underway may constitute an historic watershed for the evolution of economics and therefore that an authentic change of paradigm is called for, rather than only minor adjustments to the dominant approach. Since the start of the crisis, there has indeed been a profusion of contributions from alternative areas of economic study, and in particular from those adopting a critical stance with respect to mainstream economic theory. This collection puts forward promising reinterpretations of the primary schools of heterodox political economy, stringent critiques of the conventional readings of the recession, new schemes of theoretical and empirical analysis of the crisis, and proposals for economic policies alternative to those hitherto adopted. This book contains a selection of some of the most recent contributions to the critique of mainstream economic theory and policy, and discusses the origins and possible evolutions of the current economic crisis. The collection should be of interest to students and researchers focussing on macroeconomics, monetary economics, political economy and financial economics.

The ongoing economic crisis has revealed fundamental problems both in our economic system and the discipline which analyses it. This book presents a series of contrasting but complementary approaches in economic theory in order to offer a critical toolkit for examining the modern capitalist economy. The global economic crisis may have changed the world in which we live, but not the fundamental tenets of the discipline. This book is a critical assessment of the relation between economic theory and economic crises: how intellectual thinking impacts on real economic events and vice versa. It aims at challenging the conventional way in which economics is taught in universities and later adopted by public officials in the policymaking process. The contributions, all written by distinguished academics and researchers, offer a heterodox perspective on economic thinking and analysis. Each chapter is inspired by alternative theoretical approaches which have been mostly side-lined from current academic teaching programmes. A major suggestion of the book is that the recent economic crisis can be better understood by recovering such theoretical analyses and turning them into a useful framework for economic policymaking. Economic Crisis and Economic Thought is intended as a companion to economics students at the Master’s and PhD level, in order for them to confront issues related to the labour market, the financial sector, macroeconomics, industrial economics, etc. with an alternative and complementary perspective. It challenges the way in which economic theory is currently taught and offered via alternatives for the future.

Orthodox economics operates within a hypothesized world of perfect competition in which perfect consumers and firms act to bring about supposedly optimal outcomes. The discrepancies between this model and the reality it claims to address are then attributed to particular imperfections in reality itself. Most heterodox economists seize on this fact and insist that the world is characterized by imperfect competition. But this only ties them to the notion of perfect competition, which remains as their point of departure and base of comparison. There is no imperfection without perfection. In Capitalism, Anwar Shaikh takes a different approach. He demonstrates that most of the central propositions of economic analysis can be derived without any reference to standard devices such as hyperrationality, optimization, perfect competition, perfect information, representative agents, or so-called rational expectations. This perspective allows him to look afresh at virtually all the elements of economic analysis: the laws of demand and supply, the determination of wage and profit rates, technological change, relative prices, interest rates, bond and equity prices, exchange rates, terms and balance of trade, growth, unemployment, inflation, and long booms culminating in recurrent general crises. In every case, Shaikh's innovative theory is applied to modern empirical patterns and contrasted with neoclassical, Keynesian, and Post-Keynesian approaches to the same issues. Shaikh's object of analysis is the economics of capitalism, and he explores the subject in this expansive light. This is how the classical economists, as well as Keynes and Kalecki, approached the issue. Anyone interested in capitalism and economics in general can gain a wealth of knowledge from this ground-breaking text.

An in-depth look at how to account for the human complexities at the heart of today’s financial system Our economy may have recovered from the Great Recession—but not our economics. The End of Theory discusses why the human condition and the radical uncertainty of our world renders the standard economic model—and the theory behind it—useless for dealing with financial crises. What model should replace it? None. At least not any version we’ve been using for the past two hundred years. Richard Bookstaber argues for a new approach called agent-based economics, one that takes as a starting point the fact that we are humans, not the optimizing automatons that standard economics assumes we are. Sweeping aside the historic failure of twentieth-century economics, The End of Theory offers a novel perspective and more realistic framework to help prevent today's financial system from blowing up again.

The theory of crisis has always played a central role within Marxism, and yet has been one of its weakest elements. Simon Clarke's important new book provides the first systematic account of Marx's own writings on crisis, examining the theory within the context of Marx's critique of political economy and of the dynamics of capitalism. The book concentrates on the scientific interpretation and evaluation of the theory of crisis, and will be of interest to mainstream economists, as well as to sociologists, political scientists and students of Marx and Marxism.