This paper investigates how the concept of public purpose is used in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). As a common denominator among political scientists, the idea of public purpose is that economic actions should aim at benefiting the majority of the society. However, the concept is to be...

Die Covid-19-Pandemie und die russische Invasion in der Ukraine haben, zusammen mit dem Bericht des Weltklimarats im April 2022, die Welt verändert. Um die globalen Probleme des 21. Jahr-hunderts lösen zu können, müssen wir einen frischen Blick auf die Welt werfen. Aus der Vogelperspektive...

In this paper, we discuss the balance sheet mechanics of the Swedish government. We examine spending, government bond purchases, and tax payments. As long as the Swedish central bank, which is created through Swedish laws, supports the Swedish central government, it cannot run out of money. The...

The German debt brake forces the German government to target a very specific public deficit to GDP ratio. A ruling of the German constitutional court has drawn attention to the debt brake, as it is to be enforced more tightly than the federal German government previously thought. In this...

The economic crisis in the euro zone proves that neither the creators of the euro nor today's policy-makers fully understand the functioning of a currency union. Explanations of the macroeconomic relations inside a currency union are therefore in demand. It is now clear that macroeconomic...

Since the 1980s empirical research has been conducted on the influence of MNEs on local firms. The spillovers predicted by growth theory models used in the research designs have not been found. The main result is the importance of increased competition for the productivity of local firms. When...

The Alchemy of Finance, a book written by George Soros (1987) on the workings of financial markets, 'has found a place in the reading lists of business schools as distinct from economics departments', according to the author (2003, 4). His theory of reflexivity, which is at the center of the...

Die andauernde Finanzkrise hat tief iegende Probleme des ökonomischen Mainstreams offengelegt und lässt Forderungen nach einer Erneuerung des ökonomischen Denkens lauter werden. Die Autoren beschreiben die Kritik am Status quo und gehen dabei auf die Vorwürfe von Einseitigkeit, blinden...

In 1905, Georg Friedrich Knapp published The State Theory of Money in his native German, claiming that money is a "creature of law" and not connected to metals via some intrinsic value. When the English translation appeared in 1924, apparently at the wishes of John Maynard Keynes, the German...

In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), and within the context of significant macroeconomic imbalances in the world economy, economists have shown renewed interest in the way central banks and financial systems work. The rise of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has relied on the...