This paper seeks to evaluate the strength of the case for a financial transactions tax, judged against the three rationales which have been proposed for such a tax: the excessive volume of short-term foreign exchange transactions and their effects on exchange rate volatility; the revenue-raising...

This paper focuses on an alternative perspective on inflation to that of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU). It indicates that there are no automatic forces leading to a level of aggregate demand consistent with constant inflation. Inflationary pressures arise from...

This paper proposes an alternative stability and growth pact to the one which accompanied the introduction of the euro in January 1999. The latter is part of the third stage of economic and monetary union and, will govern the economic policies of the member countries which have joined the single...

This paper considers the nature and role of monetary policy when money is modelled as credit money endogenously created within the private sector. There are currently two schools of thought that view money as endogenous: one has been labelled the 'new consensus' in macroeconomics, and the other...

Monetary policy has become firmly based on the use of interest rate as the key policy instrument, and in a one instrument--one target framework. The approach to monetary policy is closely associated with the new consensus in macroeconomics (NCM). This paper undertakes a critical appraisal of the...

Lionel Robbins, in his famous Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, correctly showed that the task of economics is to develop, step by step, a realistic comprehension of the economic system based upon the abstract starting point of a theory of value. His mistake was to think...

This paper examines critically the method of abstraction offered by critical realism. Our main argument is that critical realism fails to articulate the synthetic side to abstraction. For this reason, the critical realist method is unable to capture the 'inner connection' of social phenomena. We...

The evolving response of the UK fiscal authorities to the financial crisis and recession are briefly outlined with a focus on the fiscal austerity programme introduced by the incoming Coalition government during 2010. The reasoning for that programme is critically examined and largely dismissed....