1,721,249 research outputs found
Sustainability
No full textSustainability refers to the capacity of a process to endure or to be maintained and improved. This term acquired a specialized meaning in ecology where it came to describe biological systems, such as wetlands or forests, which may survive and evolve in healthy conditions, that is, without irreversible depletion of resources or deterioration of their environmental qualities. By extension, the Bruntland Report, commissioned by the United Nations (WCED 1987), introduced the neologism sustainable development that refers to the long-term well-being of social systems in the light of the interaction between their economic, environmental and social conditions. In this entry the focus is on the sustainable development of single countries and the global community is examined in its interaction with the process of globalization (a more detailed analysis on the same lines may be found in Borghesi & Vercelli 2008). Although some background information on this interaction since the first industrial revolution will be provided, the analysis will focus on developed countries after World War II
Discretely proceeding from cycle to chaos on Goodwin's path
No full textGoodwin’s [Goodwin, R.M., 1951. The nonlinear accelerator and the persistence of business cycles.
Econometrica 19, 1–17; Goodwin, R.M., 1955. A model of cyclical growth. In: Lundberg, E. (Ed.), The
Business Cycle in the Post-war World. Macmillan, London, pp. 203–221] nonlinear multiplier–accelerator
model, worked out in continuous-time, is a recognised contribution to business cycle theory. It is rarely
observed that its first version was a linear model formulated in discrete-time [Goodwin, R.M., 1946.
Innovations and the irregularity of economic cycles. Review of Economics and Statistics 28, 95–104]. A
few decades later, he restated the fully-fledged nonlinear version of the model in discrete-time showing that
such a version may account better for the complex behaviour of empirical time series [e.g., Goodwin, R.M.,
1985. An irregular, asymmetric oscillator, or The discrete charm of erraticism, Mimeo, Siena (reproduced,
with the title The discrete charm of erraticism, in Goodwin, R.M., 1989. Essays in Nonlinear Economic
Dynamics. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 139–156); Goodwin, R.M., 1988. The multiplier/accelerator
discretely revisited. In: Ricci, G., Velupillai, K. (Eds.), Growth Cycles and Multisectoral Economics:
The Goodwin Tradition. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 19–29]. The article reconstructs the evolution of the
multiplier–accelerator model in Goodwin’s thought with special emphasis on the early and late discrete
version. First, the genesis of the model is considered in some depth in order to clarify its foundations based
on the constraints of a monetary economy. Second, the results of Goodwin’s late contributions are amended
and generalised. Finally, the path followed by Goodwin is reconstructed and appraised in the light of the
dialectics between continuity and discontinuity, regularity and irregularity, stability and instability that
steered its direction. The main conclusion is that Goodwin’s path should be further pursued as an effective
alternative to the equilibrium business cycle models
Genesis and foundations of the multiplier: Marx, Kalecki and Keynes
No full textThis article explores the Marxian roots of the multiplier in order to clarify its
foundations and validity conditions. The authors argue that from Marx’s analysis of the
evolution of institutions and technology of exchange crucial insights may be derived. In
the light of this analysis Kalecki reformulated Marx’s reproduction schemes as an
instrument to understand and control the dynamics of a capitalist economy. Though the
focus is restricted to the first two volumes of Capital and Kalecki’s early contributions,
we can draw from these works valuable understanding into the theoretical and empirical
scope of the Kahn-Keynes multiplier and its implications for contemporary
macroeconomic problems
Heterogeneous expectations and strong uncertainty in a Minskyian model of financial fluctuations
No full textWe examine the role of expectations in a model aimed to explain financial fluctuations. The
model restates the core of Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis, focusing on the role of
expectations. The hypotheses concerning the process of formation and revision of expectations
are discussed in light of Keynes’s epistemological view of the behavior of boundedly
rational agents under conditions of strong uncertainty. These hypotheses are formalized
by drawing on recent advances in complex dynamics, decision theory and behavioral economics.
We show that widespread use of extrapolative expectations by economic agents
produces a high degree of financial instability that may lead to a serious financial crisis,
and that the use by economic agents of a mix of extrapolative and regressive expectations
reduces the dynamical instability of the model but may give rise to complex dynamics
Happiness and health: two paradoxes
No full textThis paper aims to establish systematic relationships between the two rapidly growing research streams on the socio-economic determinants of happiness and health. Although they have been pursued quite independently by different communities of researchers, empirical evidence points to very similar underlying causal mechanisms. In particular, in both cases per capita income seems to play a major role only up to a very low threshold, beyond which relative income and
other relational factors become crucial for happiness and health.
On the basis of these structural analogies, we argue that a process of cross-fertilisation between these two research streams would contribute to their development by clarifying the relationship
between happiness, health and their determinants. Finally, we observe that the two literatures have converging policy implications: measures meant to reduce poverty and inequality and invest in
social and environmental capital may improve both health and happiness of the individuals
Financial fragility and economic fluctuations
No full textThis paper proposes a simple prototype model that describes the complex dynamics of a sophisticated
monetary economy. The interaction between the current and intertemporal financial constraints on economic
units brings about irregular fluctuations at both micro and macro levels.We use qualitative dynamic analysis
and numerical simulations to investigate the interaction between financial fragility, modeled in terms of
structural instability, and dynamically unstable financial fluctuations. The model, suggested recently by one
of the authors, is here reformulated in more operational terms and extended in a number of new directions
Unemployment, income distribution and debt-financed investment in a growth cycle model
No full textAs recent experience suggests, the most significant economic fluctuations are those that combine real and financial factors. This paper works out a simple mode lthat couples a version of Goodwin's (1967) growth cycle model of rea lfluctuations with insights drawn from a model of financial fluctuations based on Minsky's financial instability hypothesis
(Vercelli, 2000; Sordi and Vercelli, 2006, 2012). The model suggested substantially modifies that of Keen(1995), who combined insights from Goodwin and Minsky within a model of fluctuating growth. In the real part of the model we introduce the possibility of disequilibrium in the goods market and formalize a mechanism of output adjustment based on the conventional dynamic multiplier. The model so obtained may exhibit
persistent dynamics and provide insights to enable better understanding of the nature of real-world fluctuations
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