{"title":"Book review: Zachary D. Carter, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes (Random House, New York, NY, USA 2020) 656 pp.","authors":"M. Vernengo","doi":"10.4337/roke.2021.04.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/roke.2021.04.08","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45671,"journal":{"name":"Review of Keynesian Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48650155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study is a contribution to the ongoing debate on whether capital controls are effective in buffering international shocks and reducing capital flows volatility. The author demonstrates that capital controls can considerably mitigate the effects of monetary and exchange rate shocks and reduce the volatility of capital inflows to emerging markets. This study analyses quarterly data of 28 emerging economies over the period between 2000 and 2015 and proposes two methods to identify capital controls actions. Using panel analysis, autoregressive distributed lag, and local projections approaches, this study finds that tighter capital controls may diminish monetary and exchange rate shocks and reduce capital inflows volatility. Furthermore, capital controls respond anti-cyclically to monetary shocks. Under capital controls, countries with floating exchange rate regimes have more potential to buffer monetary shocks. The author also finds that capital controls on inflows are more effective for reducing the volatility of capital flows compared to capital controls on outflows.
{"title":"Effectiveness of capital controls in dampening international shocks","authors":"Chokri Zehri","doi":"10.4337/roke.2021.04.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/roke.2021.04.05","url":null,"abstract":"This study is a contribution to the ongoing debate on whether capital controls are effective in buffering international shocks and reducing capital flows volatility. The author demonstrates that capital controls can considerably mitigate the effects of monetary and exchange rate shocks and reduce the volatility of capital inflows to emerging markets. This study analyses quarterly data of 28 emerging economies over the period between 2000 and 2015 and proposes two methods to identify capital controls actions. Using panel analysis, autoregressive distributed lag, and local projections approaches, this study finds that tighter capital controls may diminish monetary and exchange rate shocks and reduce capital inflows volatility. Furthermore, capital controls respond anti-cyclically to monetary shocks. Under capital controls, countries with floating exchange rate regimes have more potential to buffer monetary shocks. The author also finds that capital controls on inflows are more effective for reducing the volatility of capital flows compared to capital controls on outflows.","PeriodicalId":45671,"journal":{"name":"Review of Keynesian Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48801862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Most empirical macroeconomic research is limited to the period since World War II. This paper analyses the effects of changes in income distribution and in private wealth on consumption and investment covering a period from as early as 1855 through to 2010 for the UK, France, Germany and the USA, based on the data set of Piketty and Zucman (2014). We contribute to the study of wealth effects, of financialization, and of the nature of demand regimes. We find that overall domestic demand has been wage-led in the USA, the UK and Germany. Total investment responds positively to higher wage shares, which is driven by residential investment. For corporate investment alone, we find a negative relation. Wealth effects are found to be positive and significant for consumption in the USA and the UK, but weaker in France and Germany. Investment is negatively affected by private wealth in the USA and the UK, but positively in France and Germany.
{"title":"Distribution, wealth and demand regimes in historical perspective: the USA, the UK, France and Germany, 1855–2010 Online Appendices","authors":"Engelbert Stockhammer, J. Rabinovich, Niall Reddy","doi":"10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.10","url":null,"abstract":"Most empirical macroeconomic research is limited to the period since World War II. This paper analyses the effects of changes in income distribution and in private wealth on consumption and investment covering a period from as early as 1855 through to 2010 for the UK, France, Germany and the USA, based on the data set of Piketty and Zucman (2014). We contribute to the study of wealth effects, of financialization, and of the nature of demand regimes. We find that overall domestic demand has been wage-led in the USA, the UK and Germany. Total investment responds positively to higher wage shares, which is driven by residential investment. For corporate investment alone, we find a negative relation. Wealth effects are found to be positive and significant for consumption in the USA and the UK, but weaker in France and Germany. Investment is negatively affected by private wealth in the USA and the UK, but positively in France and Germany.","PeriodicalId":45671,"journal":{"name":"Review of Keynesian Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44565027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We present a stylized model to explore the interaction between household debt, functional income distribution, and technological change. We assume that weak labor bargaining power allows firms to set their mark-ups in order to meet a target profit rate. At a low wage share, workers’ households are assumed to have limited flexibility in meeting financial goals, so household indebtedness tends to rise as the wage share falls. Rising indebtedness further lowers labor's bargaining power, a phenomenon that was observed in the wave of financialization that began in the late twentieth century. Thus, rising debt levels allow firms even greater freedom to raise their target profit rate. We find that the dynamics can be either stable or unstable, with the potential for a self-reinforcing pattern of rising household indebtedness and falling wage share, consistent with trends in the US from the 1980s onward. The unstable cycle can be triggered by increased willingness by workers to incur debt and rising influence of household indebtedness on labor's bargaining strength and income distribution. The model can shed some light on widely observed trends over recent decades regarding household indebtedness, inequality, and technological changes in the US, and potentially in other OECD countries.
{"title":"Household indebtedness, distribution, and bargaining power under distribution-induced technological change: a macroeconomic analysis","authors":"E. Kemp-Benedict, Y.K. Kim","doi":"10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.01","url":null,"abstract":"We present a stylized model to explore the interaction between household debt, functional income distribution, and technological change. We assume that weak labor bargaining power allows firms to set their mark-ups in order to meet a target profit rate. At a low wage share, workers’ households are assumed to have limited flexibility in meeting financial goals, so household indebtedness tends to rise as the wage share falls. Rising indebtedness further lowers labor's bargaining power, a phenomenon that was observed in the wave of financialization that began in the late twentieth century. Thus, rising debt levels allow firms even greater freedom to raise their target profit rate. We find that the dynamics can be either stable or unstable, with the potential for a self-reinforcing pattern of rising household indebtedness and falling wage share, consistent with trends in the US from the 1980s onward. The unstable cycle can be triggered by increased willingness by workers to incur debt and rising influence of household indebtedness on labor's bargaining strength and income distribution. The model can shed some light on widely observed trends over recent decades regarding household indebtedness, inequality, and technological changes in the US, and potentially in other OECD countries.","PeriodicalId":45671,"journal":{"name":"Review of Keynesian Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45487674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Sergio Cesaratto, Heterodox Challenges in Economics: Theoretical Issues and the Crisis of the Eurozone (Springer, Cham, Switzerland 2020) 296 pp.","authors":"Karsten Kohler","doi":"10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.09","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45671,"journal":{"name":"Review of Keynesian Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47218894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Most empirical macroeconomic research is limited to the period since World War II. This paper analyses the effects of changes in income distribution and in private wealth on consumption and investment covering a period from as early as 1855 through to 2010 for the UK, France, Germany and the USA, based on the data set of Piketty and Zucman (2014). We contribute to the study of wealth effects, of financialization, and of the nature of demand regimes. We find that overall domestic demand has been wage-led in the USA, the UK and Germany. Total investment responds positively to higher wage shares, which is driven by residential investment. For corporate investment alone, we find a negative relation. Wealth effects are found to be positive and significant for consumption in the USA and the UK, but weaker in France and Germany. Investment is negatively affected by private wealth in the USA and the UK, but positively in France and Germany.
{"title":"Distribution, wealth and demand regimes in historical perspective: the USA, the UK, France and Germany, 1855–2010","authors":"Englebert Stockhammer, J. Rabinovich, Niall Reddy","doi":"10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.03","url":null,"abstract":"Most empirical macroeconomic research is limited to the period since World War II. This paper analyses the effects of changes in income distribution and in private wealth on consumption and investment covering a period from as early as 1855 through to 2010 for the UK, France, Germany and the USA, based on the data set of Piketty and Zucman (2014). We contribute to the study of wealth effects, of financialization, and of the nature of demand regimes. We find that overall domestic demand has been wage-led in the USA, the UK and Germany. Total investment responds positively to higher wage shares, which is driven by residential investment. For corporate investment alone, we find a negative relation. Wealth effects are found to be positive and significant for consumption in the USA and the UK, but weaker in France and Germany. Investment is negatively affected by private wealth in the USA and the UK, but positively in France and Germany.","PeriodicalId":45671,"journal":{"name":"Review of Keynesian Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49582771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the Kaleckian theoretical framework, an economy's demand regime is characterized as either wage-led or profit-led depending on the relative effect of an increase in the wage share on consumption, investment, and net exports. Based on this framework, a vast empirical literature has focused on estimating demand regimes in numerous countries. Although they contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between distribution and demand in different economies and time periods, they also face various critiques on theoretical and methodological grounds. This paper aims to address one dimension of these critiques by investigating a potential omitted-variable bias in the estimated relationship between distribution and demand in the Brazilian economy between 1997 and 2014. Our results suggest that when controlling for some of the relevant factors in Brazil's inclusive growth experience of the early twenty-first century, namely wage inequality, commodity prices, and household credit, the empirical characterization of the Brazilian demand regime as profit-led loses its statistical significance. Also, the demand-regime definition was found to be most sensitive to intra-wage distribution, confirming previous findings in the Kaleckian empirical literature for the Brazilian case.
{"title":"Omitted-variable bias in demand-regime estimations: the role of household credit and wage inequality in Brazil","authors":"Julia Burle, L. Carvalho","doi":"10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.04","url":null,"abstract":"In the Kaleckian theoretical framework, an economy's demand regime is characterized as either wage-led or profit-led depending on the relative effect of an increase in the wage share on consumption, investment, and net exports. Based on this framework, a vast empirical literature has focused on estimating demand regimes in numerous countries. Although they contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between distribution and demand in different economies and time periods, they also face various critiques on theoretical and methodological grounds. This paper aims to address one dimension of these critiques by investigating a potential omitted-variable bias in the estimated relationship between distribution and demand in the Brazilian economy between 1997 and 2014. Our results suggest that when controlling for some of the relevant factors in Brazil's inclusive growth experience of the early twenty-first century, namely wage inequality, commodity prices, and household credit, the empirical characterization of the Brazilian demand regime as profit-led loses its statistical significance. Also, the demand-regime definition was found to be most sensitive to intra-wage distribution, confirming previous findings in the Kaleckian empirical literature for the Brazilian case.","PeriodicalId":45671,"journal":{"name":"Review of Keynesian Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43023758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Ajit Sinha, A Revolution in Economic Theory: The Economics of Piero Sraffa (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK, New York, NY, USA and Melbourne, Australia 2016) 264 pp.","authors":"Enes Işık","doi":"10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.08","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45671,"journal":{"name":"Review of Keynesian Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42769327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The aggregative and structural approaches are the main approaches used to investigate the US demand regime. They have reported mixed findings whereby the former tends to find profit-led results and the latter tends to find wage-led results. Blecker (2016) suggests that those conflicting findings can be explained, at least in part, by the different time dimensions captured by the two approaches. That is because the US economy tends to be profit-led in the short run and wage-led in the long run. This note discusses and extends Blecker's analysis. An alternative interpretation of the findings of studies using the structural approach is offered, suggesting that their conclusions rest on their handling of the short run. Specifically, the structural approach fails to find cointegration relations among integrated variables in most equations. That absence means it fails to pick up the stronger effect of the wage share on consumption in the long run, which is a key mechanism explaining different regimes across time horizons. The note concludes by briefly discussing other possible explanations for the conflicting results reported in the empirical literature.
{"title":"A note on ‘Wage-led versus profit-led demand regimes: the long and the short of it’","authors":"L. Rolim","doi":"10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.06","url":null,"abstract":"The aggregative and structural approaches are the main approaches used to investigate the US demand regime. They have reported mixed findings whereby the former tends to find profit-led results and the latter tends to find wage-led results. Blecker (2016) suggests that those conflicting findings can be explained, at least in part, by the different time dimensions captured by the two approaches. That is because the US economy tends to be profit-led in the short run and wage-led in the long run. This note discusses and extends Blecker's analysis. An alternative interpretation of the findings of studies using the structural approach is offered, suggesting that their conclusions rest on their handling of the short run. Specifically, the structural approach fails to find cointegration relations among integrated variables in most equations. That absence means it fails to pick up the stronger effect of the wage share on consumption in the long run, which is a key mechanism explaining different regimes across time horizons. The note concludes by briefly discussing other possible explanations for the conflicting results reported in the empirical literature.","PeriodicalId":45671,"journal":{"name":"Review of Keynesian Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45593128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The extensive empirical effort made in the growth and distribution literature to estimate whether economic growth is wage- or profit-led has not sufficiently considered the theoretical foundation of the Neo-Kaleckian model. This paper attempts to respect key tenets of the investment function by estimating a panel-data model in which country-specific structural characteristics and possible endogenous relationships in income distribution and economic growth are explicitly considered. The identification strategy is based on several estimates of the capital stock and the rate of capacity utilization for 61 countries over the period between 1995 and 2014. The main results suggest that the growth regime was wage-led in developed countries, while most developing countries exhibited a profit-led growth regime. Interestingly, however, while the profit-led regime occurs through the international trade channel in Latin American countries, in other developing countries, the causality channel is mainly related to the domestic investment function.
{"title":"Wage- and profit-led growth regimes: a panel-data approach","authors":"Guilherme de Oliveira, Eduardo Prado Souza","doi":"10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/ROKE.2021.03.05","url":null,"abstract":"The extensive empirical effort made in the growth and distribution literature to estimate whether economic growth is wage- or profit-led has not sufficiently considered the theoretical foundation of the Neo-Kaleckian model. This paper attempts to respect key tenets of the investment function by estimating a panel-data model in which country-specific structural characteristics and possible endogenous relationships in income distribution and economic growth are explicitly considered. The identification strategy is based on several estimates of the capital stock and the rate of capacity utilization for 61 countries over the period between 1995 and 2014. The main results suggest that the growth regime was wage-led in developed countries, while most developing countries exhibited a profit-led growth regime. Interestingly, however, while the profit-led regime occurs through the international trade channel in Latin American countries, in other developing countries, the causality channel is mainly related to the domestic investment function.","PeriodicalId":45671,"journal":{"name":"Review of Keynesian Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43403882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}