Showing posts with label supply. Show all posts
Showing posts with label supply. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Matias Vernengo — Investment, interest rates and the accelerator: more evidence for the US


Christian Schoder in a recent paper (here; subscription required), following in the steps of the classic paper on the subject by Fazzari et al. (1988) and looking at the micro data on investment concludes that:
"Overall, demand constraints seem to be crucial factors contributing to the slowdown of accumulation in times of economic distress relative to credit market conditions. In contrast to the prediction of the financial accelerator literature that credit constraints tighten in the downturn (relative to demand constraints) as net worth deteriorates, the cash-flow coefficient does not exhibit a clear counter-cyclical pattern.
Naked Keynesianism
Investment, interest rates and the accelerator: more evidence for the US
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, University of Utah

Monday, December 23, 2013

Ramanan — Good Reference On Wage-Led Growth

An excellent discussion on wage-led economic growth is a paper by Marc Lavoie and Engelbert Stockhammer titled Wage-led Growth: Concept, Theories And Policies which appears in the recently released book Wage-Led Growth: An Equitable Strategy For Economic Recovery (Palgrave Macmillan)...
As Dray and Thirlwall (2011, p. 466) recall, ‘it makes little economic sense to think of growth as supply constrained if, within limits, demand can create its own supply’. This explains why we shall focus on the income distribution determinants of aggregate demand, paying less attention to the supply-side factors… 
The Case For Concerted Action

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Supply-led vs Demand-led Transactions


Lavoie & Godley nail a fundamental, ideological error still undermining orthodox economics.

"Reversed causation also affected the link between investment and saving: ... Neoclassical macroeconomics is essentially supply-led; this to us is its fundamental weakness: [In reality] capitalist economies, most of the time, are demand-led. They generally suffer from a lack of effective demand, not from a lack of capacity or a lack of labour resources."

This fits fundamental biology. All reactions pursue sensed potentials. They do not follow predetermined intent. The world is, after all, completely unpredictable. Classic economics seems worse than overly anthropomorphic when it comes to what are rank assumptions about aggregate behavior patterns. Orthodox economics actually makes incredibly autocratic presumptions.

For example, mountain men & trappers didn't save up their currency and then go out to acquire beaver pelts.

Rather, they borrowed & underwent tremendous privations to acquire pelts, in order to sell at a profit.

A carrot is more compelling than a stick, brick or stale bread.  Ever seen McDonald's successfully selling dry toast, regardless of how much supply they have?

There seems to be an age-old confusion about dual use of currency as a commodity to be saved and as a virtual unit denominating expanding credit.

Credit clearly precedes currency in all social species, denominated via affinity bonds. Once created, actual commodity currency is always both at least a brief store of value and also a unit of account. Yet as populations grow, the role of currency as a unit of fiat credit constantly grows while the utility of money as a commodity becomes negligible.

Any tribal or family member is inherently familiar with limitless credit extensions, most of which are written off. In a social species, interpersonal credit is always a minor cost of pursuing aggregate return on coordination. Scalable social affinity pursues net margins. Ideological intent is just system noise. Teamwork simply works.

We're back to a conundrum. How does a modern, supposedly educated, population so thoroughly divert itself with ideologies which are so obviously self-defeating? The object of our aggregate is survival & growth of our coordinated nation state, NOT hoarding of whatever unit of account we utilize in order to coordinate some, notable transaction chains.

Our problem is entirely one of ideology. There is, by definition, no problem with fiat currency. Our class ideology is misusing our aggregate fiat. That situation only occurs when aggregate communication falters, leading to a declining rather than a more perfect union. Misused aggregate fiat - aka maladaptive policy - can only occur with poor situational awareness by an aggregate.

We're always in this together. We're just not acting like it.