This paper analyses the issues of public finance sustainability and suitability of strategies aimed at fiscal consolidation, contrasting growth-based versus thriftbased strategies. Empirically, this study investigates the experiences with consolidation over the 1990s in the U.S., Japan, and the...

This paper has the simple objective of exploring the implications of a Kaleckian (heterodox) macroeconomic analysis for the effectiveness of monetary policy, specifically one based on the use of interest rates to target the rate of inflation. The paper begins by setting out the essential...

The euro area is currently going through its worst period of recession and economic stagnation since the Great Depression and World War II. The article tries to give an impression of the extraordinary degree of fiscal austerity and the devastating economic effects it has already had and must be...

Geoff Harcourt has been a thoroughgoing Keynesian committed to the achievement of sustainable (environmental and otherwise) and equitable (nationally and internationally) economic development and growth, and full employment of the available labour force. Achieving such an objective would...

In the last two decades Italy implemented a number of reforms of the public pay-as-you-go (PAYG) scheme that curtailed future pensions. Governments therefore felt the need to increase the number of workers contributing to fully funded (FF) schemes to offset the expected fall in public pensions....

This paper estimates the long-term effects of the global recession of 2008–2009 on output in 23 countries. I measure these effects by comparing current estimates of potential output from the OECD and IMF to the path that potential was following in 2007, according to estimates at the time....

In early 2013, the French economy, like many other EU economies, faces tough challenges. French GDP is 9 per cent below the level it would have reached had it continued to grow at its pre-crisis trend. France has committed to cut the public deficit to 3 per cent in 2013 and 0 per cent in 2017...

The paper aims at showing that one of the main channels by which the US 2007 financial crisis became a real and global economic crisis is the 'confidence channel', i.e. that the financial crisis affected firms, banks and households’ expectations and confidence, thus leading to what they...

The aim of this paper is to study the effect of emulation within a basic schema of the monetary theory of production (MTP). A theoretical model is presented, where workers set their target level of consumption based on the comparison with other workers taken as reference. It is shown that...

Consumption theory has always been a neglected field in post-Keynesian economics, whereas it is at the center of New Keynesian economics. This paper investigates similarities and differences between the two approaches. I will show that the newer mainstream models indeed give results that are...