Macroeconomics Archives

Why do we need to transform economics, and how do we do it?

In a profoundly invigorating keynote speech, Professor Jayati Ghosh, Chairperson of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at the of Jawaharlal Nehru University, urges young economists to to take initiative and transform their discipline. Outlining eight problems with the status quo, and providing five clear ways to combat them, she inspires the next generation of economists to forge alliances, gather strength, and most importantly: be bold.

Keynote Lecture to UNCTAD-YSI Summer School 2020

By Jayati Ghosh | It’s truly a delight for me to be able to address the UNCTAD-YSI Summer School. This is not only because these are two groups that I have huge respect for and sympathy with. It’s also because the theme of this Summer School (“From the Transformation of Economics to Economic Transformation: Pathways to a Better Future”) is something very close to my heart, something I and some of my colleagues have been grappling with for decades. It’s really quite energising to realise that there are so many young people willing to engage in this project. So I am going to treat this as an opportunity for me to think through some of the concerns I have, in the hope that all of you are going to be the ones taking forward this transformation.

Mainstream economics, why do I not love thee? Let me count the ways.

First, a lot of it is simply wrong: that is, it is misleading about how economies work and the implications of economic policies and processes. For decades now, a significant and powerful lobby within the discipline has peddled half-truths and absolute falsehoods on many critical issues:

how financial markets work and whether they are or can be “efficient” without regulation;
the role and nature of fiscal policy and the implications of austerity;
what impact the deregulation of labour markets and wages actually has on employment and unemployment;
how patterns of international trade and investment affect livelihoods and possibilities of industrialisation and diversification;
the distributive effects of different macroeconomic policies;
the extent to which private investment responds positively (or not) to policy incentives like tax breaks and subsidies or negatively to increased government spending;
the effects of multinational investment and global value chains on producers and consumers in particular countries;
the ecological damage created by patterns of production and consumption;
whether tighter intellectual property rights are really necessary to promote invention and innovation;

And so on—I could go on and on, these are just some of the more evident examples, and you can probably think of many more if you just take the time to do so. But if these are so wrong, why is this not widely known, and how are they so widely propagated? This is done through a fearsome combination of explicit and implicit controls within the discipline (which I will talk about) and without in the wider world through media and by imbuing policy circles with these mistaken notions.

Some of this comes from the second major problem I have with the discipline: too much of it is in the service of power.

And the power that it increasingly serves is that of large capital and its supporting states: effectively the power of kleptocracy, at national and international levels. Many of the theoretical premises and empirical investigations of mainstream economics are conducted in ways that either divert attention from more critical issues, or assume them away, and thereby produce “results” and associated policy recommendations that reinforce existing power structures and imbalances. Therefore notions of exploitation of labour by capital and the unsustainable exploitation of nature by forms of economic activity, of labour market segmentation by social categories that allows for differential exploitation of different types of workers, of the appropriation of value, of the abuse of market power and rent-seeking behaviour by large capital, of the use of political power to push economic interests including of cronies, of the distributive impact of fiscal and monetary policies—all these are swept aside, covered up and rarely brought out as the focus of analysis. The deep and continuing concerns with GDP as a measure of progress are similarly ignored, and despite the conceptual and methodological flaws in its calculation, it simply continues to be used as the basic indicator to track, just because it’s there. All these slights of hand occur at the global level with regard to the international economic and financial architecture; they happens within countries at the level of macroeconomic policies; and they are evident in a lot of microeconomic analysis and in the development industry that claims to focus on poverty reduction.

Once again, you will all be able to find many more examples of this tendency from your own study and experience—but the problem is that often these tendencies to reinforce underlying power imbalances are not immediately evident unless we actively look for them. They are reinforced because they are simply assumed away in the modelling and not accounted for in empirical analysis. And then the discussion on theoretical models or econometric results is shifted onto a purely technical arena, that moves away from their relevance to the actual world or their viability in explaining economic phenomena.

This is related to the third big problem: the tendency to underplay the significance of assumptions in deriving analytical results, and most of all in presenting those results to a wider audience especially in policy debates.

Talk to most mainstream theoretical economists, and they will tell you that they have moved far away from the early neoclassical assumptions like perfect competition, constant returns to scale, full employment, etc., which bear no relation to actual economic functioning anywhere. But these assumptions still persist in the models that are explicitly or implicitly used to undergird far too many policy prescriptions, whether on trade and industrial policies, or macroeconomic policies or “poverty reduction” strategies. These are what give rise to so many of the myths that the next sessions are going to debunk. But because they are repeated so constantly, and because this repetition is done not only by the media but by people in authority, they get taken as axiomatic.

For example, across the world, there were Finance Ministers and other leaders who took it for granted that a public debt level of more than 90 per cent would result in a financial crisis—even though the empirical research that supposedly generated that result was quickly exposed as deeply flawed to the point that the result not only contained spreadsheet errors, but also vanished completely if just one country’s data were removed. While on that topic, it’s interesting to note that many of the governments in advanced countries, which had earlier refused to entertain the possibility of larger fiscal deficits to deal with unemployment because they would add to public debt, completely changed track when confronted with the pandemic. Suddenly large deficits were okay and rising levels of public debt were not a problem—not because the economics of this had actually changed, but because large capital and even finance capital now found it to be necessary.

Being in the service of power requires the enforcement of strict power hierarchies within the discipline, and a system of marginalising and disincentivising alternative theories, explanations and analysis.

This gives rise to the fourth problem: the power structures within the profession that reinforce the dominant (mainstream) thinking, even—and possibly especially—when it is less relevant and applicable.

One way this works is through the tyranny of “top journals” and their gatekeepers. Academic jobs, as well as jobs as economists in other organisations, are dependent on the applicant’s publications; these publications are “ranked” according to the supposed quality of the journal they are in, in a system that openly and aggressively keeps out journals that publish articles from alternative perspectives; promotions and further success in the profession depend on these markers, which in turn continue to disincentivise those who would like to extend their analysis or break away from this mould. Certainly, for young economists, there’s no doubt that professional incentive structures are heavily loaded in favour of staying firmly within the mainstream.

The fifth problem could have emerged from this: because of these pressures and incentives, many of the brightest minds are diverted away from a genuine study of the economy, to try to understand its workings and their implications for people, into what can only be called trivial pursuits.

Too many so-called “top” academic journals contain esoteric models that provide additional “value” only by relaxing one small assumption or providing a slightly different econometric test of some earlier versions. Yet in most cases they leave out some critical aspects that would actually provide a better understanding of the economic reality, because it would make it harder to model or because it might generate inconvenient truths. Since economists mainly talk to each other (and then proselytise their findings among policy makers) they are rarely forced to interrogate this approach. Instead, at the “apex” of the discipline, the more mathematically sophisticated the approach, the better it is taken to be. So economic forces that are necessarily complex, muddied with the impact of many different variables and reflecting the effects of history, society and politics, cannot be studied while recognising all this complexity. Instead they have to be squeezed into a mould that will make them mathematically tractable, even if this means that they cease to have any resemblance to the actual economic reality. This has gone so far that even some of the most successful mainstream economists have railed against this tendency—but with little effect so far on the gatekeepers of the profession. Given the seriousness of the economic and other problems facing humanity, and the importance of developing economic analysis and strategies to confront them, this is probably much worse than Nero fiddling while Rome burnt; it amounts to spending the time looking for little pieces of tinder to fan the flames.

This lack of interest in other disciplines has meant a major and growing impoverishment of economics, leading to the sixth concern. The lack of a strong sense of history (which should imbue any current social and economic analysis) is a major drawback.

Recently it has become fashionable for economists to dabble in psychology, with the rise of behavioural economics and the “nudgers”. But this too is very often presented ahistorically and without a sense of the varying social and political contexts that affect how people actually behave and respond in particular circumstances. Over several decades, this also led to a shift in the discipline away from trying to understand evolutionary processes and macro tendencies to a focus on the particular, to microeconomic patterns and proclivities that effectively erase the background and context that shapes economic behaviour and responses. And of course, the underlying and deeply problematic underpinning of methodological individualism remains: it is unfortunately still taken for granted, because (unlike those who began the study of political economy) so few economists go anywhere near a philosophical assessment of their own approach and work.

The short-termism and indeed short-sightedness, not just of some economists but also of the discipline as a whole also deserves to be highlighted, as the seventh problem.

It is true that John Maynard Keynes famously said “in the long run we are all dead”, but he also thought about “economic possibilities for our grandchildren”. But most contemporary economists, despite paying some lip service to issues like climate change mainly because they have to, display hardly any concern for issues that stretch into the future. The most egregious example of this is the inadequate factoring in of ecological damage and climate change concerns into assessments of policy choices and future trajectories.

How can economists keep doing this, making such huge blunders and ignoring so much essential reality? Partly because of the eighth problem: arrogance.

Economics is a very arrogant discipline, even though this is completely unjustified. Most mainstream (and male) economists are especially and appallingly arrogant, whether consciously or unconsciously so, and are either openly or subtly into hierarchies. This arrogance is just one of the reasons that Claudia Sahm (the macroeconomist who formerly worked with the US Federal Reserve) declared that “economics is a disgrace”. There is a marked sense of superiority and unwillingness to engage with and learn from other areas of knowledge, especially other social sciences and humanities, which are brushed aside as “soft”. Several economists who have done so and thereby hugely enriched their own analysis and their contribution to broader economic insights, have been displaced from standard Economics departments and relegated to Sociology or Politics, joining the “second division” teams rather than the front runners of the discipline in terms of perception.

There is of course a strong machismo to all of this, and so it is no surprise that a macho ethos permeates the mainstream discipline, just as an atmosphere of clever aggression dominates a lot of mainstream economics conferences. Male domination (similar to chimpanzee societies) has very much been part of this as well, whereby males compete aggressively with one another but also bond together and gang up to dominate over females. Some strong young women with voice in the profession are just beginning to make inroads into this—and more power to them! —but the spread of patriarchy is still vast and deep. It’s not just machismo, of course: the adverse impact of relational power also affects other socially marginalised categories, whether according to class, race, ethnicity, language, and so on. And then there is the huge impact of location: the mainstream discipline is completely dominated by the North Atlantic, whether in terms of prestige, influence or the ability to determine the content and direction of what is globally accepted in the discipline. Just as an example, all the 84 prizes awarded by the Swedish Central Bank Prize in memory of Alfred Nobel (falsely called the Economics Nobel Prize) have gone to economists resident in the North, and essentially living and working in the US and Europe. The North Atlantic still dominates in publications and in setting the research and policy agenda. The enormous knowledge, insights and contributions to economic analysis that are made by economists located in the Global South are largely ignored, almost certainly by those in the North, but even (sadly) by economists in other parts of the South. There is an even worse tendency in development economics, of treating the South as the objects of study and policy action (with its economists often becoming glorified research assistants in international research projects), while “real” knowledge is supposedly created in the North and disseminated outwards.

And finally, there is the proclivity of economists to play God. In perhaps no other discipline is there so much power to engage in what can only be called social engineering, couched in technocratic terms so as to make it largely incomprehensible to ordinary people who are told and persuaded that rigid economic laws make particular economic strategies the only possible choice. Increasingly, this attitude verges on or collapses into the unethical. The recent craze in development economics personified by the randomistas exemplifies this. There has been a lot of valid outcry and disgust about some Randomised Control Trials being conducted (inevitably) on poor people in the developing world, that have involved cutting off water supply to see if that incentivises bill payments, or checking whether poor parents will send only their better performing children to school once they are informed about their results. Clearly, quite apart from the numerous methodological problems with such studies, this shows the extent to which at least some economists have completely lost moral compass, and the strong class/region forces at work whereby the poor, and especially those in developing countries, can be experimented on in this way. The rot goes beyond those conducting such studies, to the research funders, the international organisations, the editors of journals and the university teachers who put such studies into their course material.

But I want to remind you that while such RCTs and the underlying neo-colonial attitudes they carry are certainly objectionable and distasteful, that this is only the latest example of economists playing God, trying out their pet theories of what will make economic processes change, often regardless of the impact on human lives. Think of the shock therapy so blithely imposed on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and the human tragedies they generated as well as the oligarchies they ultimately gave rise to. Think of the structural adjustment measures in Africa that reduced public health spending and created systemic fragilities that cost so many lives in previous epidemics like Ebola and have rendered health systems completely unfit to deal with the current pandemic. You get the idea: this is not the first time that economists have played with the lives and livelihoods of masses of people, secure in the knowledge that there will be no impact on their own safely distant lives and no accountability for their prescriptions.

So here’s the thing—economics is too important for the present and future of humanity to be left in this appalling state.

It’s certainly true that economics is too important to be left to economists, and that greater genuine economic literacy is required through society to enable people to call the bluff on supposedly technocratic decisions that only favour particular groups. But even within the economics discipline, we simply cannot let one stream, which is currently unfortunately the mainstream, dominate and colour everyone else’ views on how economies work. Fortunately, this is not the only stream: and over the course of the next few days you will be exposed to some of the finest minds who have made important contributions in developing realistic and applicable analyses of economic phenomena. It’s sad that we still have to refer to them and to ourselves as “heterodox” and “non-mainstream”, but that only reflects the power imbalances in economics and in economies, that I have already talked about.

So how do we change all this?

At first sight it appears almost impossible: the structures are so entrenched; the vested interests are so strong; there is so much at stake for global capital and the ruling powers that they will most certainly resist efforts to change. Let me also be honest and admit to you that I speak to you from a position of relative failure, as someone who has tried for nearly four decades but without much success, to make a dent in this power structure and to change both the content and the direction of the economics discipline to a limited extent. The need for drastic change in the discipline has never been so drastic and so urgent. We are facing major existential crises as a species; the global economy was already limping and fragile and is now effectively devastated by the latest blow of the pandemic; environmental threats are already translating into awful reality; inequalities that seemed impossibly large have grown even more, creating societies that will soon become dysfunctional to the point of becoming unliveable. All this requires urgent, major economic action. Yet mainstream economics persists in doing business as usual, as if tinkering at the margins with minor changes will have an impact on these fundamental problems.

The good news is that there are apparently winds of change blowing. The world— and the world economy—may be in an unbelievable mess, but we have more economists, especially young economists, recognising this and thinking about how to avert the immediate dangers and transform the future. There are movements that have been led by students, demanding that the discipline and the pedagogy change, like Post Autistic Economics that transformed into Real World Economics. There are hundreds of you who have registered for the Summer School from across the world, suggesting that there is a real intellectual hunger for change. The Young Scholars Initiative and similar groups have huge potential, and I’m hoping that many of you who are based in developing countries will also get more involved in International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs) to take that network forward in raising the voice and enabling exchange between economists based in the Global South.

It’s clear from my earlier interactions with YSI and some young dynamic economists who are at the forefront of these movements, that you don’t really need advice from people like me. Nevertheless, let me offer whatever little insight I have gleaned from my years of trying to do this.

First, something I think you all already know: diversity matters.

Diversity of gender, of race, of class background, of ethnicity and so on: these are essential to enrich the discipline and have now been widely commented on. Currently there is a raging discussion on social media about this, with expected pushback from those accustomed to their privileged positions. But there is also the aspect that is often overlooked, diversity of location, which I mentioned and which is also necessary for enriching the discipline. So I request all of you, in your own work, search out readings by scholars and economists from different parts of the world, even if your teachers have not made you aware of them. Fortunately, the internet now makes this much more possible than ever before. Be mindful of whom you quote or refer to when writing up your research. Don’t look only for “empirical validation” from Southern economists while taking your theoretical knowledge from the North: many economists based in the developing world have made far more insightful and profound contributions to economic understanding, even if they have not found a place in the so-called “top” journals and rarely find their way into reading lists.

Second, remember to be respectful of diversity of approaches, which is really what being “heterodox” is all about.

Recently there has been some discussion about whether this is a useful term at all, and a tendency to be slightly shamefaced about it, which I believe is completely misplaced. To me, a heterodox approach is defined by pluralism, which means that I may adopt a particular theoretical framework to understand how the economy works, but I should be willing to learn from other different approaches. The whole point is that we should be willing to engage with diverse perspectives and draw insights from one another without getting locked into sectarian squabbles. This doesn’t mean that we can’t have arguments, which are of course essential; only that we should try to be as inclusive as possible and encourage diversity in as many ways as possible.

Third, —and this is really important—don’t let identity substitute for analysis.

It’s essential to hold ourselves and our work to the highest standards of rigour and careful, systematic research. This rigour need not be mathematical, but it must be logical, and it must be empirically grounded and aware of history.

Fourth, don’t be too purist and don’t obsess about classifying everyone into their own little methodological boxes.

Try to make allies, across other disciplines, in wider society and also among mainstream economists who are beginning to see its limitations. In searching for and finding allies, it’s also necessary to make ourselves easily comprehensible as well, and not create a miasma of verbiage or formulas that can obscure the argument. In this regard, I have a simple “grandmother rule” for my students: you can be as complicated, nuanced and sophisticated as you like in your work, but ultimately you must be able to state your basic argument in words comprehensible to your grandmother (who is usually a very smart woman, even if she is not as educated in economics). Try it: it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Finally, be bold!

Don’t be afraid to ask awkward questions of anyone, don’t let anyone slap you down using the well-worn techniques of the socially powerful, don’t be intimidated by institutional hierarchies and power structures. The more fearless you are, the more you accomplish; and the more other people whom you can persuade to be fearless with you, the more unstoppable you will be. And also, I think, the more fun the whole process will be.

So here’s hoping that you will indeed be unstoppable and that this Summer School becomes another step in forging alliances and gathering strength to transform the discipline of economics and make it once more the moral yet worldly philosophy it was originally intended to be.

About UNCTAD | UNCTAD is a permanent intergovernmental body established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1964. The organization is governed by its 194 member States and is the United Nations body responsible for dealing with economic and sustainable development issues with a focus on trade, finance, investment and technology. It helps developing countriesto participate equitably in the global economy. UNCTAD carries out economic research, produces innovative analyses and makes policy recommendations to support government decision-making.

UNCTAD YSI Summer School | Entitled “From the Transformation of Economics to Economic Transformation: Pathways to a Better Future”, this year’s summer school took place from August 15-23,2020. It’s aim is to connect the intellectual challenge of rethinking economic analysis to the practical challenge of building a healthier, more resilient, more equal and greener future for all.

Why Inflation Targeting?

By Juan Ianni. Why does mainstream economics recommend the application of Inflation Targeting (IT) regimes? Is it because of its sophistication? Are there other ways of addressing inflation? Perhaps a historical analysis of the roots of what is now the dominant stabilization regime can shed light on these questions.

Although the concept “financialization” is still up to debate, some economists like Chesnais (2001) argue that, since 1970, capitalism has mutated toward a “financialized” model of accumulation. According to Fine (2013), financialization is the derivation of the use of money as a credit other than the use of money as capital. Other authors believe that financialization is the determining structure of other (political, social, economic) structures. Long story short, this would mean that changes in social relationships produce new economic (and non-economic) structures, which replicate the mode of production (or “the dominant structure”). But what does that mean?

The French school of regulation can answer that question. According to the theory they developed, every accumulation pattern (for instance, “financialized” capitalism) needs a mode of regulation. The latter consist of a set of institutions (or policies), which enable social and economic reproduction by solving conflicts (inherent to every accumulation pattern) between agents of the society. Therefore, institutions will appear, disappear and relate in a non-random way, structuring a certain institutional configuration related to the accumulation pattern.

Boyer and Saillard are two of the most influential theorist of the French school of regulation. In one of their articles (Boyer and Saillard, 2005), they identify five core conflicts between agents in every accumulation pattern. Nevertheless, two are enough to understand the emergence of Inflation Targeting regimes: the “wage-labor nexus” and the “valorization of wealth”. While the first conflict refers to the dispute over the economic surplus between the worker and the capitalist, the latter refers to the prevailing mode of accumulation and valorization of wealth.

In their opinion, financialized capitalism is characterized for having the “valorization of wealth” as the central conflict to solve (or stabilize) within a particular set of institutions. In the contrary, the “wage-labor nexus” is the “adjustment” conflict. This means that accumulation will no longer be led by an equal distribution of the production surplus between workers and entrepreneurs. On the contrary, financialized capitalism will ensure a way for wealth to be valued related to credit (and not capital), no matter how damaging that could be to workers.

With the gestation of financialized capitalism (along with its respective institutional configuration process) and the centrality of the “valorisation of wealth” conflict, the New Macroeconomic Consensus was established as a theoretical paradigm. In order to legitimize and deepen this institutional configuration, it propiated the emergence and propagation of Inflation Targeting regimes as a conceptual apparatus regarding anti-inflationary policy-mix.

As these regimes consider inflation as an exclusive consequence of an excess in aggregate demand, contractive monetary policies are “always needed”. In the case of IT, they must constantly ensure a positive real interest rate, which fits perfectly with the need of a way to value wealth. What is more, it decreases inflation by incrementing unemployment, which shows how the “wage-labour nexus” is the adjustment conflict.

However, it is well known that inflation is a multi-faceted problem. Empirical research shows that in addition to an excess in aggregate demand, inflation can be the consequence of the distributive conflict, international prices, inflationary inertia, etc. The way IT address this phenomena (setting a high real interest rate, increasing unemployment, and letting the exchange rate float) shows how it is the perfect piece for the financialized capitalism puzzle. However, since the existence of very close interconnections between the international monetary systems and the national financial markets (what Chesnais call the “financial globalization”), IT’s effectiveness has lowered.

In addition, when the main cause of inflation is not related to an excess in aggregate demand, IT’s efficiency falls. Vera (2014) argues that using IT demands a strong reliance on the unemployment channel (that is to say, to stop inflation, unemployment needs to increase), which has adverse side effects on both employment and income distribution.

Given these drawbacks, some economic schools have developed other tools to tackle inflation, which may be both more efficient and effective. To that end, a different policy mix in which real exchange rate targeting is combined with income distribution targeting can be structured. In this case, the nominal exchange rate could be set to sustain a balanced external sector, whilst income policies could preserve a more equitable distribution of income. Consequently, a low level of inflation is sustained while the “disciplinary effect” of unemployment is avoided.

In conclusion, Inflation Targeting is not the mainstream policy instrument because of its results or theoretical coherence; after all, it has needless consequences regarding employment and income distribution. The main cause of IT’s popularity is that it assures the reproduction of an institutional configuration related to the “dominant structure”: financialized capitalism. Explaining this process, in addition to noting alternative stabilization regimes, should motivate the design and application of economic policies more consistent with increasing employment and a more equitable income distribution.

About the Author: Juan Ianni just completed a bachelor’s degree in Economics, and has a an interest in political economy and macroeconomics. He is currently studying alternative political schemes to tackle inflation, which is a big challenge for his home country, Argentina.

Rethinking Economic Growth: A Review of “The Growth Delusion” by David Pilling

By Raghunath Nageswaran.

If economic exchange determined by the market forces of demand and supply provided the right incentives for production, how should the exercise of measuring the economy and its performance be undertaken? When did the project of measuring the economy take off and why? Does Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the summary indicator of economic activity, reflect the significant facts of our economic life? And if it doesn’t, what can be done to ensure that it does, going forward?

David Pilling offers some thoughtful and interesting answers to such questions in his book The Growth Delusion: The Wealth and Well-Being of Nations. The book is not a tirade against economic growth; it is not an anti-growth or a de-growth manifesto. Pilling makes his intention to broaden the conversation on growth very clear by including the words “wealth” and “well-being” in the title, concepts that go beyond the narrow definition of economic growth as an expansion in the flow of goods and services measured in monetary terms.

That GDP growth has become a proxy not just for the economic success of a country as measured in material terms, but also for the well-being of its people is a stark reminder about our fixation with an indicator that was devised to measure physical production during the interwar period. The notion of “economy” as an entity to be managed and captured in quantitative/monetary terms by experts came into vogue less than a century ago during the Great Depression years after Simon Kuznets presented his survey of the economic performance of the United States in the report National Income, 1929-32. This effort marked the birth of systematic national income accounting. But Pilling reminds us that:

Kuznets was striving for a measure that would reflect welfare rather than what he considered a crude summation of all activity. He wanted to exclude illegal activities, socially harmful industries, and most government spending. On many of these issues he lost.

This must serve as a useful counterpoint while arguing with uncritical enthusiasts of GDP, who baulk at the idea of using a different set of measures for capturing social welfare in its truest sense—people possessing the agency and capabilities to do things they have reason to value, as Prof. Amartya Sen has persuasively argued in his writings. GDP is not reflective of such a holistic idea of welfare because that would entail an assessment of the distributional impact of growth on various sections of the society, which the GDP isn’t equipped to measure or capture.

One must remember that the measurement of GDP is not a value-free exercise. A whole range of value judgements and assumptions are involved in the demarcation of the production boundary, therefore it shouldn’t be regarded as an innocent measure of economic activity. It is a deeply moral and political affair. The starkest example is the exclusion of household activity undertaken mostly by women, which is considered “unproductive” by conventional national accounting norms. Several scholars have developed and applied tools that measure the amounts of unpaid work done by women using time-use data and by imputing values to an entire gamut of chores, from dish-washing through breast-feeding to child-rearing.

Regarding the efficacy of economic growth as a means of furthering human welfare, there is a view among well-meaning sceptics that developed economies must get over their obsession with unfettered growth enabled by the endless cycle of production and consumption. In the book Doughnut Economics, economist Kate Raworth uses the term “growth agnosticism” to drive home the point that developed countries should ensure that their people continue to thrive irrespective of the trends in economic growth.

While this is the outlook for the developed world, there seems to be a resounding faith in the indispensability of economic growth as a nostrum for developing countries. It rests on the belief that only faster growth can lift people out of poverty and generate more resources for creating a redistributive design. This is a contestable argument, given the inequality enhancing nature of economic growth we have seen in different parts of the world in the last three decades. It would be instructive to go beyond standard narratives to acknowledge the fact that growth doesn’t automatically translate into better living conditions for people, especially when the fruits of growth are mediated by the various fault-lines in the society, not to mention the very framework within which economic growth of a predatory variety takes place.

There are interesting and practicable proposals for ensuring that GDP is reflective of the “trade-offs” involved in our single-minded pursuit of economic growth in part three of the book. It is in this section that Pilling turns the spotlight on “the wealth and well-being of nations.” The chapter titled Wealth is a culmination of Pilling’s effort to indict us for our collective disregard for natural ecosystems from which we draw all our resources and inputs to undertake various economic activities. He draws our attention to the crassness and instrumentalism that characterize our ambition of maximizing current incomes. He says:

Recording today’s national income offers no help whatsoever when making intergenerational decisions. The signal it sends is to maximize growth today no matter what the impact tomorrow. At the extreme, one generation might use up all a nation’s forest cover and all its oil reserves in the interests of double-digit growth and in the expectation that future generations will somehow sort things out. Today a government pushing such policies would point to rapid growth as a justification for its actions.

This short-sighted approach to resource use and management has its origins in the theory that defines efficiency in most primitive terms: make the most of existing resources by allocating those to the profitable areas of production, which is determined by the existing pattern of income distribution. We need to recognize that the humane way of managing natural resources is to augment them and not depleting them for current consumption purposes. That way, both efficiency and equity concerns can be addressed as we allow resources to regenerate themselves and leave behind enough resources for posterity. Pilling’s conversation with the sagacious environmental economist Partha Dasgupta is by far the most illuminating section of this book. After positing that we need to take a balance-sheet view of economic progress to get a big-picture view of the state of our resources, Pilling shares nuggets of wisdom offered by Dasgupta. Dasgupta takes the broadest possible view of wealth/assets and says that:

Contemporary models of economic growth and development regard nature to be fixed, an indestructible factor of production. The problem with that assumption is that it is wrong. Nature is a mosaic of degradable assets. Agricultural land, forests, wetlands, the atmosphere—more generally, ecosystems—are assets that are self-regenerative, but can suffer from deterioration or depletion through human use.

The enduring impact of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism can be evidenced by the fact that individual utility, expressed in terms of market price, is still considered to be the best proxy for the subjective well-being of human beings, and it forms the bedrock of the measurement of social welfare in many theoretical exercises. The utilitarian way of looking at happiness and well-being has been the dominant principle for justifying all kinds of economic decisions and actions. While the standard interpretation of utilitarianism is the maximization of overall welfare, achieved when competing economic individuals are left alone to make “rational” decisions, a more creative and humane interpretation of the principle can focus on cooperation instead of competition and solidarity as against selfishness to maximize welfare.

It is certainly nobody’s argument that alternative measures such as Bhutan’s Gross Happiness Index (GHI) and composite indices such as the Human Development Index (HDI) are necessarily fail-safe. As Pilling says in the opening paragraph of the last chapter, “if the beauty of GDP is aggregation, that is also its biggest flaw. No single number can capture all that is worth knowing in life”. The way forward is to use a dashboard of indicators that will reflect the variegated aspects of human life and the state of resources in the economy.

It is also imperative to seriously rethink the nature, composition, and distribution of economic growth in order to make growth, and its GDP measure, humane. Economic thinkers belonging to the “classical school” of economic thought believed that the question of distribution of surplus couldn’t be separated from production, as the contribution of different economic classes to social production was dictated by the prior distribution of endowments among them. To turn the focus back to ‘distribution’ we can draw inspiration and insights from the classical school.

The Growth Delusion is a highly readable and insightful book. It covers a lot of ground and the examples offered are wide-ranging. Pilling’s journalistic fervour and sharp wit make the narrative engaging. As the old Chinese proverb goes, a thousand mile journey begins with a single step. This book promises to be one such step in a long journey towards our realization that growth is a useful tool but an intolerable tyranny.

Raghunath Nageswaran has an M.A. in Economics from Madras Christian College, Chennai (India). He is a student of Indian democracy and political economy.

International Trade and Globalization: Are Benefits Truly Mutual?

By Aabid Firdausi.

The euphoria around international trade and the general consensus regarding capitalism’s inevitable sustenance among countries of the Global South is at least partly due to the absence of an alternative after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The politics of capitalism, with its expansionary dynamics, has assumed a truly “global” avatar by aggressively pursuing a neoliberal globalization agenda. Thus, we see much hype around the numerous trade treaties that governments around the world sign, claiming they would boost economic growth and create jobs. However, a critical examination of mainstream trade theories reveals several insights as to why there has been a hegemony of thought when it comes to attitudes around globalization.

The idea that “free” trade and globalization imply mutual benefits and prosperity for all the parties involved is simply accepted as common sense. Mainstream trade theories argue that if nations engage in international exchange, then all parties will be better off. Although this seemingly innocuous assumption is based on an unrealistic worldview, it has deep implications when translated into practice. This article provides a basic understanding of some of the areas that theories in mainstream international economics conveniently ignore.

It is pertinent that we pause and critically question what we are told, taught, and made to believe – for nothing that is promoted with such great fanfare by economic elites can be free of costs. When it comes to trade treaties, the devil often lies in the details, which often reveal policies that lead to the further immiseration of the working class and the peasantry, especially in the Global South. First, it is extremely important to understand trade in a historical perspective and how it has changed with different epochs within capitalism. The North-South trade in many instances was first a colonial tragedy (the British colonization of India, for example) and has now become a neo-colonial farce. This manifests itself in the myriad ways in how multinationals shape spheres of public and private actions from land-grabbing to a homogenization of consumption patterns.

Secondly, international trade theories blatantly disregard the asymmetric power relations that exist in the global political economy. Despite the dichotomous classification of nations on the basis of the degree of development, trade theories often assume that transactions between two unequal nations tend to benefit both. While it is naïve to discard any benefits at all from the process, it is essential that we ask who frames these trade policies and what sections of society receives the lion’s share of the benefits.

Third, mainstream theories often categorize labor and capital as homogenous and lump them together as factors of production. In reality, as it is obvious, labor and capital are far from homogenous. A critical reader looking at these flawed assumptions that most theories rest upon could easily conclude they would better suit interregional trade on an extremely local basis, than an international basis! The variations in factors on a local level would be significantly smaller than the variations and imbalances that exist on a broader scale.

Fourth, I would argue that trade theories commit a grave injustice in its treatment of labor, which shows the class nature of most theories and the subsequent policies that are influenced by it. Cheap labor is often hailed as a virtue of the Global South – and this is projected as an open invitation to set up sweatshops for global capital in the name of manufacturing competitiveness. Thus, the hegemonic narrative around the potential for trade is essentially dehumanizing in nature. Such trends that have been persistent since the vigorous promotion of mathematical economics have largely dissociated the discipline from the wider branch of social science.

Fifth, there exists a systematic misdiagnosis of the power relation between capital and labor. This is perhaps most evident in the asymmetries observed in the globalization of capital and the globalization of labor. While the former has largely been internationally mobile, the latter has not been so. Though this can be partially explained by the existence of the state and its territorial boundaries, it would be foolish to discard the class dynamics of this asymmetric transnational mobility.

Finally, the after-effects of (primitive) accumulation have largely been ignored in mainstream theories. The presence of regional endowments that creates a fertile land for foreign capital and the subsequent invitation of the so-called job-creating corporations ignore the displacement of the livelihoods of the peasantry. This dispossession that Marx referred to as the primitive accumulation has been rampant in the Global South. However, the compensation and rehabilitation provided to the dispossessed have largely been inadequate. This raises larger questions about what development actually is and whose interests it serves.

Thus, it is important that we see through the haze and understand the basis and implications of mainstream theories on trade, and who they truly favor. What is taught in classrooms shapes to a large extent convictions and the worldview of a large number of students. There is a pressing need to promote and develop alternative streams of thought that are “social” in nature amidst the contemporary backlash against capitalist globalization. It is necessary that an interdisciplinary perspective on globalization in general and international trade, in particular, is cultivated in academic institutions in the Global North and South. Only then can we undo the hegemony of the “globalization benefits all” narrative.

Aabid Firdausi is from India and is a Master’s student at the Department of Economics, University of Kerala. He is interested in understanding the socio-spatial dynamics of capitalism from an interdisciplinary perspective.

PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

By Hannah Temple.

It is difficult to get through a day without encountering the idea that we as a species and a planet are at some kind of a tipping point. Whether for environmental, economic or social factors (or a mix of them all) there is a growing collective of voices claiming that the fundamental ways in which we live our lives, often linked to the structures and incentives of capitalism, must change. And they must change both radically and soon if we are to protect the future of the human race. Paul Mason’s PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future adds another compelling voice to this increasingly hard-to-ignore din. However, what makes this book refreshingly different is the tangible picture it paints of our possible path to a “postcapitalist” world. Mason’s belief is that capitalism’s demise is in fact already happening, and it is happening in ways we both know and like.

The book starts by looking at Kondratieff waves– the idea developed by Nokolai Kondratieff in the 1920s that capitalist economies experience waves or cycles of prosperity and growth, followed by a downswing, characterised by regular recessions, and usually ending with a depression. This is then followed by another phase of growth, and so on and so on. Many people, especially those that benefit from the current economic model, argue that what we are experiencing currently is just another of these regular downswings and we all just have to hunker down and ride the wave until the going gets good again. Mason, however says that even a quick glance at whatever form of evidence takes your fancy (global GDP growth, interest rates, government debt to GDP, money in circulation, inequality, financialization, productivity), demonstrates that the 5th wave that we should currently be riding has stalled and is refusing to take off.

The shift from the end of one wave and the start of a new one is always associated with some form of societal adaptation. Usually this is through attacks on skills and wages, pressure on redistribution projects such as the welfare state, business models evolving to grab what profit there is. However, if this de-skilling and wage reduction is successfully resisted then capitalism is forced instead into more fundamental mutation- the development of more radically innovative technologies and business models that can restore dynamism based on higher wages rather than exploitation. The 1980s saw the first adaptation stage in the history of long waves where worker resistance collapsed. This allowed capitalism to find solutions through lower wages, lower-value models of production and increasing financialization and thus rebalance the entire global economy in favour of capital. “Instead of being forced to innovate their way out of the crisis using technology, the 1 per cent simply imposed penury and atomization on the working class.”

This failure to resist the will of capital and the subsequent emergence of an increasingly atomised, poor and vulnerable global population is part of Mason’s explanation for our stalled 5th wave. The other half of the explanation comes from the nature of our recent technological innovations. Mason contends that the technologies of our time are fundamentally different to those of previous eras in that they are based on information. This is significant in that information doesn’t work in the ways that printing presses or telephones or steam engines work. Information throws all the basic tenets of capitalism- supply and demand, ownership, prices, competition- on their heads. Information technology essentially works to produce things that are increasingly cheap or even free. Think of music- from £10 for a CD in 1997 to 95p for an iTunes track in 2007 to completely free via sharing sites like Spotify in 2017. Over time, Mason claims the market mechanism for setting prices for certain information-based goods will gradually drive them down and down until they reach essentially or even actually zero – eroding profits in the process.

Capitalism’s response to this shift has basically been to put up lots of walls and retreat to stagnant rentier activity rather than productivity or genuine innovation. Legal walls such as patents, tariffs and IP property rights are used to try to maintain monopoly status so that profits can continue to be earnt. Politics is following in the same path with some real walls as well as plenty of metaphorical ones in the form of disintegrating international agreements and partnerships, import tariffs, immigration caps and so on. “With info-capitalism a monopoly is not just some clever tactic to maximise profit, it is the only way an industry can run. Today the main contradiction in modern capitalism is between the possibility of free, abundant socially-produced goods and a system of monopolies, banks and governments struggling to maintain control over power and information”.

However, what seems to be part of the problem is, according to Mason, a critical part of the solution. These new sharing, or “information” technologies, have led to what Mason sees as an already emerging postcapitalist sector of the economy. Time banks, peer-to-peer lending, open-source sharing like Linux and Wikipedia and other technologies are not based on a profit-making motive and instead enable individuals to do and share things of value socially, outside of the price system. This peer-to-peer activity represents an indication of the potential of non-market economies and what our future might look like.

Mason argues that we have now reached a juncture at which there are so many internal and external threats facing our existing system- from climate change, migration, overpopulation, ageing population, government debts- that we are in a similar position to that faced by feudalism before it dissolved into capitalism. The only way forward entails a break with business as usual. Mason emphasises that it is important to remember that capitalism is not a “natural” state of being, nor has it gone on for such a long time. We live in a world in which its existence is seen to be unquestionable but we must take time to teach our brains how to imagine something new again. For Mason, in rather sci-fi fashion, this “something new” is called Project Zero.

Project Zero aims to harness to full capabilities of information technologies to:

– Develop a zero-carbon energy system
– Produce machines, services and products with zero marginal costs (profits)
– Reduce labour time as close as possible to zero

“We need to inject into the environment and social justice movements things that have for 25 years seemed the sole property of the right: willpower, confidence and design.”

Mason provides us with a comprehensive and exciting list of activities to be cracking on with to shape our new world. Some of his ideas are excitingly fresh and new such as the development of an open, accurate and comprehensive computer simulation of current economic reality using real time data to enable the planning of major changes. Others are more familiar such as the shifting of the role of the state to be more inventive and supportive of human wellbeing by coordinating infrastructure, reshaping markets to favour sustainable, collaborative and socially just outcomes and reducing global debts. He also supports the introduction of a universal basic income, the expansion of collaborative business models with clear social outcomes and the removal of market forces- particularly in the energy sector in order to act swiftly to counter climate change. He calls for the socialisation of the finance system. This would involve the nationalization of central banks, setting them explicit sustainability targets and an inflation target on the high side of the recent average to stimulate a “socially just form of financial repression”. It would also involve the restructuring of the banking system into a mixture of non-profit local and regional banks, credit unions and peer-to-peer lenders, a state-owned provider of financial services and utilities earning capped profits. Complex, financial activities should still be allowed but should be separate and well-regulated, rewarding innovation and punishing rent-seeking behaviour.

This push towards a system that rewards and encourages genuine innovation underlies most of Mason’s suggestions for our postcapitalist future. He contends that, if we continue down our current path, it will suffocate us and lead to a world of growing division, inequality and war. We already have systems for valuing things without prices. Working on optimising the technologies we have available to expand these systems, allowing us to live more sustainable, equal and happy lives, Mason argues, should be the key focus for us all.

This book review of Paul Mason’s PostCapitalism by Hannah Temple is originally posted at Rethinking Economics. 

The Neoliberal Tale

“The tide of Totalitarianism which we have to counter is an international phenomenon and the liberal renaissance which is needed to meet it and of which first signs can be discerned here and there will have little chance of success unless its forces can join and succeed in making the people of all the countries of the Western World aware of what is at stake.” (Friedrich Hayek)

In the past year we’ve seen a number of mentions to the maladies that neoliberalism and globalization have brought upon Western societies (e.g., see here, here, and here). It is well known that during the past decades the levels of inequality and wealth concentration have continued to increase in capitalist economies, leading to the arrival of “outsiders” to the established political powers such as Trump in the US and Macron in France, a turn to the right all over Latin America, and Brexit.

Neoliberalism, one of the main elements to blame, is better known for the policies that defined the world economy since the 1970s. Faithful devotees like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, in the US and UK respectively, exported a number of their neoliberal policies to low and middle income countries through the Washington Consensus under the pretense that it would bring about development.

Neoliberal policies did not exactly turn out the way their creators envisioned. They wanted to reformulate the old liberal ideas of the 19^th century in a deeper and coherent social philosophy – something that was actually never accomplished. This article will review some of the origins of neoliberalism.

The first time the term “neoliberalism” appeared, according to Horn and Mirowski (2009), was at the Colloque Walter Lippmann in Paris, in 1938. The Colloque was organized to debate the ideas presented in Lippmann’s recent book The Good Society in which he proposed an outline for government intervention in the economy, establishing the boundaries between laissez-faire – a mark of the old liberalism – and state interventionism.

Lippmann set the foundations for a renovation of the liberal philosophy and the Colloque was a first opportunity to discuss the classical liberal ideas and to first draw a line in what the new liberal movement would or should differ from the old liberalism. It was a landmark that, in subsequent years, sparked several attempts to establish institutions that would reshape liberalism, such as the Free Market Study at the University of Chicago and Friedrich Hayek’s Mont Pelerin Society (MPS).

This event announced major difficulties among the peers of liberalism. Reservations and disagreements among free market advocates were not uncommon. A notable mention is Henry Simons, of the Chicago School, whose position against monopolies and how they should be addressed was a point of disagreement with fellow libertarians such as Hayek, Lionel Robbins – both at the London School of Economics (LSE) at the time – and Ludwig von Mises.

Simons’s view that the government should nationalize and dismantle monopolies would nowadays be viewed as a leftist attack on corporations but it fits perfectly under the classical liberal basis that Simons and Frank Knight, also from the University of Chicago, were following. Under their interpretation, any concentration of power that undermines the price system and therefore threatens market – and political, individual – freedoms should be countered, even if it meant using the government for that purpose.

It becomes clear that the reformulation of liberal ideas into what we know today as neoliberalism was not a smooth and certain project. In fact, market advocates struggled to make themselves heard in a world guarded by state interventionism that dominated the Great Depression and post-war period. Keynes’s publication of The General Theory in 1936 and the wake of the Keynesian revolution, swiped economic departments all over and further undermined the libertarian view.

By the end of the 1930s and of Lippmann’s Colloque, however, the perception that neoliberalism would only thrive if there were a concerted collective effort by its representatives changed Hayek’s perception over his engagement in the normative discourse. In 1946-47, the establishment of the Chicago School and the MPS, were both results of a transnational effort to shape public policy and fit liberal ideas under a broader social philosophy. The main protagonists beyond Hayek were Simons, Aaron Director, and the liberal-conservative Harold Luhnow, then director of the William Volker Fund and responsible for devoting funds to the projects.

The condition for success, as remarked in the epigraph, was to “join and succeed in making the people of all the countries of the Western World aware of what is at stake.” What was at stake? Social and political freedom. Hayek and many early neoliberals understood that any social philosophy or praxis crippling market mechanisms would invariably lead to a “slippery slope” towards totalitarianism.

It is important to note, though, that the causation runs from market to social and political freedom and not the other way around. As Burgin (2012) indicates, while market freedom is a precondition to a free democratic society, the latter may threaten market freedom. Free market should not be subjected to popular vote, it should not be ruled over by any “populist” government (a common swear-word today), and there needs to exist mechanisms to protect that from happening.

Once we have that in mind, it is not so bugging the association that Hayek, Milton Friedman, and the Chicago School once had with authoritarian governments such as Pinochet’s in Chile, one of the most violent dictatorships in Latin American history.

Several liberal economists that occupied important public positions in the Chilean dictatorship had been trained at the Chicago School. The famously known “Chicago Boys” first experimented in Chile what later would be applied in the US and UK and then exported to the rest of the developing world through the Washington Consensus.

In brief, the adoption of some form of authoritarian control over popular sovereignty was deemed acceptable in order to guarantee market sovereignty.

Nevertheless, in the discussions within the early neoliberal groups the boundaries of disciplinary economics were trespassed, and the formulation of neoliberalism – and the Chicago School and MPS – was not grounded on any scientific analytical basis but simply on political affiliation.

The multidisciplinary character, dispersion, and incertitude are some of the reasons why it is hard to give a straightforward definition of what the term “neoliberalism” really means. In order to understand it, we have to mind the set of “dualisms” (capitalism vs. socialism; Keynesianism vs. liberalism; freedom vs. collectivism, and so on) that marked the period. Its defenders (academics, entrepreneurs, journalists, etc.) did not know what their own agenda was – they only knew what they were supposed to oppose. Neoliberalism was born out of a “negative” effort.

It wasn’t until many years later that the division between normative and positive economics came to surface with Friedman and his book Capitalism and Freedom, published in 1962. The increasing participation of economists in the MPS, and a more active public policy advocacy by Milton Friedman brought an end to Hayek’s intention to construct a new multidisciplinary social philosophy.

Economically, Friedman embraced laissez-faire; methodologically, he embraced empirical analysis and positive policy recommendations, getting ever further away from abstract notions of value and moral discussions that his earlier MPS fellows, such as Hayek, were worried about. Neoliberalism lost its path on the way to its triumph; it became a “science” that offered legitimacy to a new credo, a new “illusion”.

As the shadows of neoliberalism became more intertwined with the current neoclassical economics and Friedman’s monetarism, it not only lost its name but also gave birth to a corporate type of laissez-faire; one in which social relations are downgraded to market mechanisms; politics, education, health, employment, it all could fit under the market process in which individuals maximize their own utility. There’s nothing that the government can do that the market cannot do better and more efficiently. Monopolies, if anything, are to be blamed on government actions, while labor unions are disruptive to the economy’s wellbeing. Neoliberalism became a set of policies to be followed: privatization, deregulation, trade liberalization, tax cuts, etc. on a crusade to commoditize every single essential service – or every aspect of life itself.

Hayek believed that these ideas could spread and change the world. And they certainly did. What is worth noting is that there is no fatalistic understanding that neoliberalism was unavoidably a result of historical factors.

The rise of neoliberalism was not spontaneous but rather orchestrated and planned; it was a collective transnational movement to counteract the mainstream of the time; it was originated out of delusion in a period marked by wars, authoritarianism and economic crisis; it was grounded on political affiliations and supported by the dominant ruling class that funded its endeavors and transformed public opinion. These are the roots of what is now the mainstream economic thought.

Doughnut Economics – Grab a pencil, draw a doughnut!

Many of us know we need to rethink economics, but Kate Raworth actually did it. Envisioning the economy as a doughnut, two boundaries become clear. If we fall into the doughnut’s middle hole, human needs fail to be met. If we drop off of the outer edge, life is unsustainable.

You should be weary of people who seek to get the “first lick” on a young impressionable brain. Paul Samuelson knew that by writing a successful economics textbook, he could influence how students frame the economy, and thus the world. From the 50’s to the 70’s, his textbook was the most widely used in introductory economics courses. Today, that role has been given to Gregory Mankiw’s “Macroeconomics” (see the Open Syllabus Project). Both view the economy in the same narrow way, with the same simple pictures that don’t seem useful today. Raworth’s Doughnut Economics breaches the pattern and envisions a new economics, for a new generation with clearly defined challenges and scant tools to solve them.

For so many years, the principle goal of economics, and thus the economy, has been GDP growth. Growth for whom or through what means wasn’t nearly as important as just ensuring there was in fact growth. Raworth emphasizes the importance of framing, and if you ask an economist what picture they foresee for GDP, they often describe an upward exponential function.

Thankfully, many young students that I’ve met recognize that infinite growth is unsustainable. Hopefully, their generation can popularize a GDP graph in the shape of a sideways S, respecting the upper bound to growth we have to live within. Enter Raworth’s doughnut. In Raworth’s framework, the outside of the doughnut reflects an upper bound we can not pass based on environmental limits of our planet. The inside of the doughnut reflects a social foundation we can not let crack, the necessities for humanity to thrive.

The goal should no longer be growth, but ensuring we take care of our social foundation and respecting our environmental ceiling. Raworth calls this balanced space in the middle the safe and just space for humanity, and that’s the goal we should direct ourselves toward. We can not ignore who growth is leaving behind, or what damage this growth is doing to our planet. These bounds are the crucial factor for Kate’s “doughnut.” They can move us beyond a narrow single measure called GDP, to looking at all the interconnected measures that are so important for our livelihood.

Once we’ve moved beyond the single measure, we have to also abandon the single neoclassical narrative that espouses the godlike nature of “the market”. The market, the household, the state, and the commons all have a place in the big picture, and different challenges have to be faced by different actors. The neoclassical story tells us there is a “tragedy of the commons,” what if that story was actually the tragic one? Kate takes a stab at the characters of the old narrative, and offers us a new script for them.

EARTH, which is life-giving—so respect its boundaries

SOCIETY, which is foundational—so nurture its connections

THE ECONOMY, which is diverse—so support all of its systems

THE HOUSEHOLD, which is core—so value its contribution

THE MARKET, which is powerful—so embed it wisely

THE COMMONS, which are creative—so unleash their potential

THE STATE, which is essential—so make it accountable

FINANCE, which is in service—so make it serve society

BUSINESS, which is innovative—so give it purpose

TRADE, which is double-edged—so make it fair

POWER, which is pervasive—so check its abuse

The big picture story requires the next generation of economists to be savvy with systems thinking. The old economics used mechanical equilibrium thinking, where economies trend towards a static state. A new economics recognizes the flaws of this equilibrium thinking, recognizing like Minsky said that “stability is destabilizing.” A new framework for economics will recognize the different feedback loops that influence the economies stability.

The language of complexity, evolution and systems needs to infiltrate economics. We need to be thinking about how we can design a resilient economy, one that can resist shocks. We need to look at the big picture, understanding the sources and sinks of different resources. We have to know where our food comes from, ensuring it is distributed properly, and we have to know where our plastic is being disposed, ensuring it’s not destroying the planet. We have to get familiar with the language of stocks and flows, the stores of resources and also their movements. These will be our new tools.

Raworth’s story gives hope to the young economists that are bent on saving the dying planet we’ve inherited. Her vision for a new economics, and the new economy, align with the work we’ve been doing here at The Minskys. Even better though, she has produced a frame for which we can better espouse our ideas. We started out thinking about systems – the sources and sinks of money creation. We’ve recognized the physics envy of mainstream economics. We understand the need to nurture human nature, so maybe we should be studying the grants in the economy and not just monetary exchanges. Without this, we’ll fall inside the doughnut’s hole, where there is no paid maternity leave, and austerity all around. We’ve also thought about ways not to breach the doughnut’s bounds, with a Green Job Guarantee, Basic Income, or Community Currencies for example.

Raworth’s doughnut frames the important aspects of the economy, and is simple to use. Observe your local community! Do you see human needs not being nurtured? That means we’ve breached the inside of the doughnut. Do you see irresponsible damage being done to our home, the earth? Then we’ve breached the outside of the doughnut. We have to design solutions to keep us in the doughnut. We’re all economists now, because we have to be. The future is pretty bleak for humanity without a planet to stand on.

If you too wish to start thinking like a 21st century economist, be sure to check out the book in it’s entirety here. There are also a series of animated shorts here. After that, it’s as simple as grabbing a pencil and drawing a doughnut.

Using Minsky to Better Understand Economic Development – Part 2

The work of Hyman Minsky highlighted the essential role of finance in the capital development of an economy. The greater a nation’s reliance on debt relative to internal funds, the more “fragile” the economy becomes. The first part of this post used these insights to uncover the weaknesses of today’s global economy. This part will discuss an alternative international structure that could address these issues.

Minsky defines our current economic system as “money manager capitalism,” a structure composed of huge pools of highly leveraged private debt. He explains that this system originated in the US following the end of Bretton Woods, and has since been expanded with the help of financial innovations and a series of economic and institutional reforms. Observing how this system gave rise to fragile economies, Minsky looked to the work of John Maynard Keynes as a start point for an alternative.

In the original discussions of the post-war Bretton Woods, Keynes proposed the creation of a stable financial system in which credits and debits between countries would clear off through an international clearing union (see Keynes’s collected writings, 1980).

This idea can be put in reasonably simple terms: countries would hold accounts in an International Clearing Union (ICU) that works like a “bank.” These accounts are denominated in a notional unit of account to which nation’s own currencies have a previously agreed to an exchange rate. The notional unit of account – Keynes called it the bancor – then serves to clear the trade imbalances between member countries. Nations would have a yearly adjusted quota of credits and debts that could be accumulated based on previous results of their trade balance. If this quota is surpassed, an “incentive” – e.g. taxes or interest charges – is applied. If the imbalances are more than a defined amount of the quota, further adjustments might be required, such as exchange, fiscal, and monetary policies.

The most interesting feature of this plan is the symmetric adjustment to both debtors and creditors. Instead of having the burden being placed only on the weakest party, surplus countries would also have to adapt their economies to meet the balance requirement. That means they would have to increase the monetary and fiscal stimulus to their domestic economies in order to raise the demand for foreign goods. Unlike a pro-cyclical contractionist policy forced onto debtor countries, the ICU system would act counter-cyclically by stimulating demand.

Because the bancor cannot be exchanged or accumulated, it would operate without a freely convertible international standard (which today is the dollar). This way, the system’s deflationary bias would be mitigated. Developing countries would no longer accumulate foreign reserves to counter potential balance-of-payment crises. Capital flows would also be controlled since no speculation or flow to finance excessive deficits would be required. Current accounts would be balanced by increasing trade rather than capital flows. Moreover, the ICU would be able to act as an international lender of last resort, providing liquidity in times of stress by crediting countries’ accounts.

Such a system would support international trade and domestic demand, countercyclical policies, and financial stability. It would pave the way not only for development in emerging economies (who would completely free their domestic policies from the boom-bust cycle of capital flows) but also for job creation in the developed world. Instead of curbing fiscal expansion and foreign trade, it would stimulate them – as it is much needed to take the world economy off the current low growth trap.

It should be noted that a balanced current account is not well suited for two common development strategies. The first is import substitution industrialization, which involves running a current account deficit. The second is export-led development, which involves a current account surplus. However, the ICU removes much of the need for such approaches to development. Since all payments would be expressed in the nation’s own currency, every country, regardless it’s size or economic power, would have the necessary policy space to fully mobilize its domestic resources while sustaining its hedge profile and monetary sovereignty.

Minsky showed that capable international institutions are crucial to creating the conditions for capital development. Thus far, our international institutions have failed in this respect, and we are due for a reform.

Undeniably, some measures towards a structural change have already been taken in the past decade. The IMF, for example, now has less power over emerging economies than before. But this is not sufficient, and it is up to the emerging economies to push for more. Unfortunately, the ICU system requires an international cooperation of a level that will be hard to accomplish. Aiming for a second-best solution is tempting. But let’s keep in mind that Brexit and Trump were improbable too. So why not consider that the next unlikely thing could be a positive one?