Historical macroeconomics and economic theory
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- Historical Macroeconomics and American
Macroeconomic History
- Abstract of the NBER working paper No. 4935, November
1994. What can macroeconomic history offer macroeconomic
theorists and macroeconometricians? Macroeconomic history
offers more than longer time series or special
“controlled experiments.” It suggests an
historical definition of the economy, which has implications
for macroeconometric methods.
- Thermodynamic Economics
- A dialog on the MAI-not list, January 1998. A critique of
monetarist economic policy. The issue: Monetary economic
efficiency doesn't exist and the only economic
efficiency is the thermodynamic one. Therefore, costs can
not be cut by monetary manipulations, only through the
reduction of physical inputs of resource/energy.
- The Market as God: Living in the new
dispensation
- By Harvey Cox, The Atlantic Monthly, March
1999. The lexicon of The Wall Street Journal and the
business sections of Time and Newsweek turn out to bear a
striking resemblance to Genesis, the Epistle to the Romans,
and Saint Augustine's City of God. A grand narrative
about the inner meaning of human history, why things had
gone wrong, and how to put them right. Theologians call
these myths of origin, legends of the fall, and doctrines of
sin and redemption.
- The case for national economic
sovereignty
- By Mark Weisbrot, Third World Network Features, July
1999. The best prospects for economic reform reside at the
national level, not within unaccountable, colonial,
supra-national institutions like the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank.
- The Danger of GDP
- By Juchang He, 19 March 2000. Western economists tend to
use GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as a measure of the
economic status of a country. This is misleading and
unscientific and so disguises the actual economic
realities. It perpetuates poverty. It leads to the pollution
and destruction of the earth. It even leads to war.
- Taking on ‘rational man’
- By Peter Monaghan, The Chronicle of Higher
Education, 24 January 2003. Dissident economists'
efforts to open the field to diverse views are smothered,
they say, by an orthodoxy—neoclassical economics and
its derivatives—that is indulgently theoretical and
mathematical in its aspiration to be more
“scientific” than any other social science.
- Why less should be so much more: Degrowth
economics
- By Serge Latouche, Le Monde diplomatique,
November 2004. ‘Degrowth’ is a topic that has
become a major subject of debate, not just within the
counter-globalisation movement but in the wider world. The
big question is: how should ‘degrowth’ apply to
the South?
- A Comparison of Economic Democracy and
Participatory Economics
- By Adam Weiss, 4 May 2005. Many advocates of economic
justice have long believed that capitalism needs to be
transcended. However, positive programs for a just economy
have been lacking compared to the hailstorm of
anti-capitalist critiques that the left has produced. This
shortage of vision has resulted in activists lacking a
common praxis and prevents them from connecting with
potential sympathizers.
- Baroque fantasies of a most peculiar
science
- By Philip Ball, Financial Times, 29 October
2006. Any fool can see that the world of neoclassical
economics, which dominates the academic field today, is a
gross caricature in which every trader or company acts in
the same self-interested way—rational, cool,
omniscient. Mainstream economists no longer consider their
core theory to be a “start”. The tenets are so
firmly embedded that economists who think it is time to move
beyond them are cold-shouldered.
- Chain-Gang Economics
- By Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus, 30
October 2006. Global overcapacity has made further
investment simply unprofitable, which significantly dampens
global economic growth. Global demand has not kept up with
global productive capacity. And if countries are not
investing in their economic futures, then growth will
continue to stagnate and possibly lead to a global
recession.
- Milton Friedman, 1912–2006
- By Jon Britton, Socialism and Liberation,
January 2007. A Marxist appraisal of the ideologue of
capitalist freedom. Milton Friedman is acclaimed by the
bourgeois media as a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning economist
who explained how free markets and free trade, privatization
of public services and unrestrained pursuit of capitalist
profit can raise living standards to the maximum extent
possible.