Monday, October 5, 2020

Mainstream economics today — David F. Ruccio

In this post, I continue the draft of sections of my forthcoming book, “Marxian Economics: An Introduction.” The first five posts (here, here, here, here, and here) will serve as the basis for chapter 1, Marxian Economics Today. The text of this post is for Chapter 2, Marxian Economics Versus Mainstream Economics (following on from the previous post).
Is MMT "mainstream" yet? Biting at the edges, maybe.

Notice that the mainstream neoclassical model is built in "possibility space." This implies nothing of itself about real space. That is a matter of comparing model to modeled. As a possibility, there is nothing wrong with the model, that is, it is consistent with its assumptions.

The problem is with a mismatch between model and modeled. A major reason implied by Professor Ruccio's presentation, is the givens (assumptions) that are exogenous to the model and simply assumed to be true. Heterodox economics and well as economic sociology and anthropology shows why the assumptions are untenable, accounting for the discrepancies between the model and modeled.

Marxian economic is one such explanation from a particular viewpoint. MMT is another, from a different angle. These models could be overlapping rather than mutually exclusive. For example, Michael Hudson works from a combination of a Marxian and MMT viewpoint.

Occasional Links & Commentary
Mainstream economics today
David F. Ruccio | Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Notre Dame

1 comment:

Peter Pan said...

The stories we tell ourselves are "mainstream". Be careful what you wish for.