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.