John Harvey:
John Harvey, a Post Keynesian at Texas Christian University, has some good responses to my earlier post on Post Keynesian blogs here, here, and here. The second one is interesting - he agrees with me that non-PK Keynesians share the liquidity preference theory of the interest rate, but he actually suggests the these Keynesians put more emphasis on that than the Post Keynesians do in talking about being below full employment (presumably they rely more heavily on effective demand). I'm just not sure how big this distinction is. This is very important and a point I definitely agree with him on: "Neoclassical Keynesians view the labor market as somehow self-correcting, but blocked from doing so by certain frictions. The PK view is that there is simply no reason to expect it to adjust even in the absence of minimum wage laws, unions, implicit contracts, etc. Frictions don't screw up capitalism, capitalism is inherently unstable." Neoclassicism, though, is just a set of tools. I'm not willing to simply abandon neoclassicism, but I'm certainly not of the variety that says "if it weren't for these frictions we'd have full employment". That's a statement that only someone with micro-blinders on could say.
John shares this link, which is a summary of all his blog posts on the crisis. I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet.
stickman:
Stickman shared his thoughts on Minsky as well, and provides a link to a Tyler Cowen interview he recommends.
Social Democracy for the 21st Century:
This reliable Post Keynesian blog provides a discussion of G.L.S. Shackle, an economist who worked a lot with Keynesian uncertainty, and a bibliography on Keynesian uncertainty.
Friday, March 4, 2011
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I'm not sure what "microblinders" are. I don't see how any competent microeconomist, for example, could say nowadays that the labor market would be self-correcting if it were not for certain frictions, etc. I understand the point of these Alessandro Roncaglia comments.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the question of what neoclassical synthesis Keynesians say about, for example, money is decisive. (Some times their statements would be confusing to those who don't understand that when they say "uncertainty", they frequently mean to refer to what Post Keynesians call "risk".) To me, the question is what neoclassical synthesis Keynesians can say consistently with their models. I think of many new Keynesians as being merely pre-Keynesian followers of Pigou.
I think Post Keynesians have always been willing to accept political alliances when needed, though.
There are definitely Pigovians in their midst. That's fine - frictions are frictions, you know. It's not that the story as wrong so much as it is bizarre that it's been passed off as Keynesian, and of course it's woefully incomplete.
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