18 research outputs found
Goodwin or Kalecki in Demand? Functional Income Distribution and Aggregate Demand in the Short Run
Get PDFIn a seminal paper on Marxian business cycle theory, Richard Goodwin (1967) presented a model which assumed that a higher wage share leads to lower investment and thus a general economic slowdown. In contrast, Michal Kalecki (1971) argued that a higher wage share would have an expansionary effect because the consumption propensity out of wage income is higher than that out of profit income. Based on a general model that allows for wage-led as well as profit-led demand regimes, this paper estimates the effects of a change in the wage share on aggregate private domestic demand with quarterly data for 12 OECD countries.functional income distribution, demand, Goodwin cycle, Kalecki, Post Keynesian economics, Marxian economics
Book Reviews / Rezensionen
No full textBooks reviewed: Joachim Becker, Andrea Grisold, Gertraude Mikl-Horke, Reinhard Pirker, Hermann Rauchen schwandtner, Oliver Schwank, Elisabeth Springler, Engelbert Stockhammer (2009): Hetero doxe Ökonomie, Marburg Herbert Schui (2009): Gerechtere Verteilung wagen. Mit Demokratie gegen Wirtschaftsliberalismus, Hamburg Bo Sandelin, Hans-Michael Trautwein, Richard Wundrak (2008): A Short History of Economic Thought, 2nd edition, London/New Yor
Expenditure cascades, low interest Rates, credit deregulation or property booms? Determinants of household debt in OECD countries
Get PDFThe past decades have witnessed a strong increase in household debt and fast growth of private consumption expenditures in many countries. This paper empirically investigates four explanations: First, the expenditure cascades hypothesis argues that an increase in inequality induced lower income groups to copy the spending behaviour of richer peer groups and thereby drove them into debt (‘keeping up with the Joneses’). Second, the housing boom hypothesis argues that increasing property prices encourage household spending and household borrowing due to wealth effects, eased credit constraints, the prospects of future capital gains and changes in mental accounts. Third, the low interest hypothesis argues that low interest rates encouraged households to take on more debt. Fourth, the credit market deregulation hypothesis argues that deregulation boosted credit supply. The paper tests these hypotheses by estimating the determinants of household borrowing using a panel of 13 OECD countries (1980-2011). Results indicate that real estate prices were the most important drivers of household debt which we interpret as the result of speculative dynamics in real estate markets. In contrast we do not find a significant impact of shifts in the income distribution on household sector indebtedness. Our results are consistent with the credit deregulation and low interest rate hypotheses, but their explanatory power for the 1995-2007 period is low
Building blocks for the macroeconomics and political economy of housing
Get PDFHousing has played an essential part in the global financial crisis 2007-08 and the Euro crisis. Large parts of bank lending go to mortgages. Housing wealth is the largest part of wealth for most households and is, at the same time, more dispersed than other forms of wealth. House prices exhibit pronounced fluctuations that are closely linked to credit growth. Housing thus plays a crucial role in the macroeconomy, which has become even more pronounced under neoliberalism. We scrutinise different theoretical approaches to housing. Despite its theoretical shortcomings mainstream economics has pioneered empirical research on wealth effects in consumption and recently documented the role of house prices in financial cycles. Post-Keynesian theory emphasises endogenous money creation, cycles in asset prices and debt, and have formalised the notion of a debt-driven demand regime. Comparative Political Economy research has recently developed the concept of the varieties of residential capitalism, which has different structures of house ownership and housing finance at the core of political coalitions. Marxist political economy has long established the intrinsic link between ownership of land and economic rent and notes that homeownership can act as force of working class fragmentation. Wealth surveys can be used to trace the extent of conflicting interests in a class-relational approach
The impact of financialisation on the wage share : a theoretical clarification and empirical test
Get PDFIt is frequently asserted that financialisation has contributed to the decline in the wage share. This paper provides a theoretical clarification and a systematic empirical investigation. We identify four channels through which financialisation can affect the wage share: (1) enhanced exit options of firms; (2) rising price mark-ups due to financial overhead costs for businesses; (3) increased competition on capital markets; and (4) the role of household debt in increasing workers’ financial vulnerability and undermining their class consciousness. The paper compiles a comprehensive set of empirical measures of financialisation and uses it to test these hypotheses with a panel regression of 14 OECD countries over the 1992-2014 period. We find strong evidence for negative effects of financial liberalisation and financial payments of nonfinancial corporations on the wage share that are in the same order of magnitude as the effects of globalisation
Accumulation, distribution and employment: a structural VAR approach to a post-Keynesian macro model
Get PDFThe paper investigates the relation between effective demand, income distribution and unemployment empirically. Its aim is to evaluate Keynesian, Kaldorian and neoclassical hypotheses about the determination of labor market variables. To do so, a vector autoregression model consisting of capital accumulation, capacity utilization, the profit share, unemployment and the growth of labor productivity is estimated. A general post-Keynesian model following the lines of Kalecki and Kaldor is presented and provides the specification for a structural VAR. The model is estimated for the USA, UK and France.Keynesian economics; macroeconomics; capital accumulation; distribution; unemployment; structural vectorautoregression
Demand and distribution regimes, output hysteresis, and cyclical dynamics in a Kaleckian model
No full textThis study analyses the interaction of demand, income distribution, and natural output level in a dynamic Kaleckian model with output hysteresis. Hysteresis means that the natural output level depends on the path of the demand-driven actual output level. We consider wage-led and profit-led demand regimes and goods market-led and labour market-led income distribution regimes. We find that the stability of the steady state is closely related to hysteresis in certain regimes. Limit cycles can arise when the strong flexibility of either prices or wages to the output gap is combined with a moderate degree of natural output hysteresis. We make the persuasive case that a Kaleckian model with a wage-led demand regime and anticyclical profit share is less unstable and that pseudo-Goodwin cycles can arise in the profit-led demand regime with a procyclical profit share
Dimensions and Determinants of Financialisation:Comparing OECD Countries since 1997
Get PDFThe financialisation literature has grown over the past decades. Despite a generally accepted definition, financialisation has been used to describe different phenomena. We distinguish between financialisation of non-financial companies, households and the financial sector and use activity and vulnerability measures. We identify seven financialisation hypotheses in the literature and empirically investigate them in a cross-country analysis for 17 OECD countries and two time periods, 1997–2007 as well as 2008–17. We find different financialisation measures are only weakly correlated, suggesting the existence of distinct financialisation processes. There is strong evidence that financialisation is linked to asset price inflation and correlated with a debt-driven demand regime. Financial deregulation encourages financialisation. There is limited evidence that market-based financial systems are more financialised. Foreign financial inflows do not seem a main driver. We do not find indication that an investment slowdown precedes financialisation. Our findings suggest financialisation should be understood as a variegated process, playing out differently across economic sectors and countries.</p
Debt-driven business cycles in historical perspective: The cases of the USA (1889-2015) and UK (1882-2010)
Get PDFMinsky (1975) proposed a theory of endogenous cycles that results from the interaction of real and financial variables. Minsky's work has inspired a growing body of literature on theoretical business cycle models, but relatively little work has been done in the empirical field. In particular, while interest in financial cycles has risen significantly after the 2007-8 financial crash, and recent empirical studies have explored the impact of debt on aggregate demand or its effect on the probability of financial crises, the literature does not test for endogenous cycle mechanisms. In contrast, the present paper investigates econometrically whether or not business cycles are driven by corporate debt and/or by mortgage debt. We estimate simple vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) models, using historical macroeconomic data for the USA (1889-2015) and the UK (1882-2010). We find robust evidence of endogenous corporate debt-driven cycles for the USA, weak evidence of mortgage debt-driven cycles in the USA and no evidence of corporate or mortgage debt-driven cycles for the UK
Short and medium term financial-real cycles: An empirical assessment
Get PDFTheories such as Minsky's financial instability hypothesis or New Keynesian financial accelerator models assign a key role to financial factors in business cycle dynamics. We present descriptive statistics and a simple estimation framework to examine the financial-real interaction mechanisms that are at the core of these theories. Specifically, we examine cycle frequencies in seven OECD countries over the period 1970 to 2015, and find that interest rates, business debt, and household debt exhibit cycle lengths of 4-6, 8-11, and 14-26 years, respectively. We then estimate bivariate VAR models which provide evidence for financial-real interaction mechanisms, (i) at high frequencies between interest rates and GDP, and (ii) at low frequencies between business debt and GDP. In contrast, there is no evidence for a cycle mechanism between household debt and GDP
