This interview was commissioned in October 2019 for a special issue on "Accumulation and Politics: Approaches and Concepts" to be published by the Revue de la régulation. We submitted the text in March 2020, only to learn two months later that it won't be published. The problem, we were...

The paper examines the factors of global inflation acceleration in 2021-2022. We consider primarily the developed economies, where rates of inflation over the last two years have exceeded multi-year highs and have significantly exceeded target levels. We find that the cause of accelerating...

Discussions on "profit inflation" are mired in conceptual unclarities, definitional idiosyncrasies and data problems. This article attempts to bring conceptual clarity to the debate on profit inflation, defining profit inflation strictly as an increase in the gross output price that is caused by...

This paper provides a simple demonstration of an empirical observation pointed out by the existing literature that the presence of informality in the production sector of an economy moderates the impact of economic shocks affecting it. We show that in the presence of informality, adverse demand...

The resurgence of inflation since the late 2021 is now accompanied by a reversal of prospects of growth, reviving fears of stagflation across the world (IMF 2022, World Bank 2022). In almost all accounts of the mounting stagflation threats a prominent role is played by the fall of households'...

This paper investigates the timing of labour strikes in Hollywood. The occurrence of strikes, such as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023, can make sense when we have the hindsight to piece together the historical details of what created rifts between labour and management. But was 2023 a...

We recover the persistent ("core") component of nominal wage growth over the past twenty-five years in the United States. Our approach combines worker-level data with time-series smoothing methods and can disentangle the common persistence of wage inflation from the persistence specific to some...

In his article, Sebastian Knake challenges the general assumption that traditional savings accounts in the US disappeared naturally as a result of the combination of interest rate regulation and extraordinarily high market interest rates during the stagflation period. By comparing the US...

As much of the world grapples with post-Covid price gouging, it seems like a good time to revisit our understanding of inflation. In this post, I’m going to test Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler’s ‘stagflation thesis’. The idea is that ‘stagflation’ — economic stagnation...

In my last post, I looked at the relation between economic growth and inflation. As per usual, the evidence didn’t sit well with mainstream economics. According to standard theory, there is a trade off between low inflation and high economic growth. The idea is that you can have one or the...

Rapid technological change is often touted as a fundamental reality of capitalist societies. It is also presented as concrete evidence for the supposed progressive improvement of material well-being that characterises the capitalist system of social order. Since its emergence in the mid-20th...

This paper provides a simple demonstration of an empirical observation pointed out by the existing literature that the presence of informality in the production sector of an economy moderates the impact of economic shocks affecting it. We show that in the presence of informality, adverse demand...

Nicht nur die digitale und ökologische Transformation greifen tief in die Gewohnheiten der ökonomischen Akteure und in die gesamtwirtschaftliche Arbeitsteilung ein, sondern auch der demografische Wandel und eine drohende Deglobalisierung. In Verbindung mit den Nachwirkungen aus exogenen...

We recover the persistent (“core”) component of nominal wage growth over the past twenty-five years in the United States. Our approach combines worker-level data with time-series smoothing methods and can disentangle the common persistence of wage inflation from the persistence specific to...

We propose a Bayesian VAR model with stochastic volatility and time varying skewness to estimate the degree of labour at risk in the euro area and in the United States. We model the asymmetry of the shocks to changes in the unemployment rate as a function of real activity and financial risk...

Nicht nur die digitale und ökologische Transformation greifen tief in die Gewohnheiten der ökonomischen Akteure und in die gesamtwirtschaftliche Arbeitsteilung ein, sondern auch der demografische Wandel und eine drohende Deglobalisierung. In Verbindung mit den Nachwirkungen aus exogenen...

Global inflation has risen sharply from its lows in mid-2020, on rebounding global demand, supply bottlenecks, and soaring food and energy prices, especially since the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine. Markets expect inflation to peak in mid-2022 and then decline, but to remain...

The rapid recovery of demand combined with supply constraints has led to rising prices during the past months. This is evident in oil and gas markets, but also in international trade, which has been thrown out of step by bottlenecks at Asian ports. This situation creates a trade-off for the...

Die Europäische Union (EU) sieht sich innerhalb kürzester Zeit mit zwei großen und historisch einmaligen Krisen konfrontiert. Die Corona-Krise führte zu asymmetrischen wirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen in der EU. Maßgeblich für die konjunkturelle Entwicklung zwischen dem vierten Quartal 2019...

Few will argue with the claim that shortages are socially harmful. Shortages, by definition, imply a lack of something – not enough stuff to go around. A shortage of food implies hunger; a shortage of electricity implies darkness. But are shortages harmful to everyone equally? And if they are...

הקפיטליזם שולט בעולם. דיונים סוערים מתנהלים בין המלומדים הממסדיים לבין "הביקורתיים" על טיבו של הקפיטליזם הגלובלי. הבעיה היא שטיבו של המוסד המרכזי בקפיטליזם -- ההון...

The resurgence of inflation since the late 2021 is now accompanied by a reversal of prospects of growth, reviving fears of stagflation across the world (IMF 2022, World Bank 2022). In almost all accounts of the mounting stagflation threats a prominent role is played by the fall of households'...

In Deutschland und der Europäischen Währungsunion (EWU) entwickelte sich ab 2021 eine kostengetriebene Inflationswelle, die von steigenden Energiekosten und Nahrungsmittelpreisen sowie Störungen in globalen Wertschöpfungsketten vorangetrieben wird. Führt der kräftige Preisniveauschub zu...

הקפיטליזם שולט בעולם. דיונים סוערים מתנהלים בין המלומדים הממסדיים לבין "הביקורתיים" על טיבו של הקפיטליזם הגלובלי. הבעיה היא שטיבו של המוסד המרכזי בקפיטליזם -- ההון...

Rapid technological change is often touted as a fundamental reality of capitalist societies. It is also often presented as concrete evidence for the supposed progressive improvement of material well-being that characterises the capitalist system of social order. Since its emergence in the...

Global inflation has risen sharply from its lows in mid-2020, on rebounding global demand, supply bottlenecks, and soaring food and energy prices, especially since the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine. Markets expect inflation to peak in mid-2022 and then decline, but to remain...

The rapid recovery of demand combined with supply constraints has led to rising prices during the past months. This is evident in oil and gas markets, but also in international trade, which has been thrown out of step by bottlenecks at Asian ports. This situation creates a trade-off for the...

In Deutschland und der Europäischen Währungsunion (EWU) entwickelte sich ab 2021 eine kostengetriebene Inflationswelle, die von steigenden Energiekosten und Nahrungsmittelpreisen sowie Störungen in globalen Wertschöpfungsketten vorangetrieben wird. Führt der kräftige Preisniveauschub zu...

We present evidence that the rise of inflation in Japan since 2014 is driven by technology stagnation: the relative prices of consumer durable and ICT investment goods stopped declining, reflecting the technology stagnation and putting inflationary pressure on the economy and; the real side of...

Die Europäische Union (EU) sieht sich innerhalb kürzester Zeit mit zwei großen und historisch einmaligen Krisen konfrontiert. Die Corona-Krise führte zu asymmetrischen wirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen in der EU. Maßgeblich für die konjunkturelle Entwicklung zwischen dem vierten Quartal 2019...

We examine asset class and factor premiums across inflationary regimes. As periods of high inflation and deflation are relatively uncommon in recent history, we use a deep sample starting in 1875. Moderate inflation scenarios provide the highest returns across asset class and factor premiums....