Monthly Archives: March 2014

When Marxists Deploy the Quantity Theory of Money and Other Economic Nonsense

Posted on March 17, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

It’s truly infuriating to watch left-wingers talk absolute nonsense when discussing the economy. I encounter it all too often. What you generally get is a hodge-podge of incoherent economic ideas — usually incorporating the worst aspects of right-wing doctrines like … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Policy, Economic Theory | Leave a comment

A New Era of Central Banking?

Posted on March 13, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

As I noted in my last post the Bank of England have released an official policy document that concedes that much of Post-Keynesian endoegnous money theory is indeed correct. Interestingly, they have also released some Youtube clips with the authors … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic History, Economic Policy, Economic Theory | 3 Comments

Bank of England Endorses Post-Keynesian Endogenous Money Theory

Posted on March 12, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

Well, the Bank of England has finally come out and said it: loans create deposits; banks create money and don’t simply lend out savings; and the money multiplier in the economics textbooks is false. Actually, we’ve known this for a … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Policy, Economic Theory | 17 Comments

Thirlwall’s Law in Historical Context

Posted on March 11, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

There has been some reticence on the blogs to discuss Thirlwall’s Law and I myself have also been somewhat reluctant to deal with it in any great detail (although I did hint at some problems with it in this post). … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Theory | 5 Comments

Marginalist Microeconomics is a Highly Normative Ethical Doctrine

Posted on March 10, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

In a recent post Lord Keynes raises the question of the so-called ‘law’ of diminishing marginal utility. The ‘law’ states that we will derive ever diminishing satisfaction from the acquisition of a good or service. Lord Keynes notes that this … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy, Psychology | 22 Comments

Keynes and Loanable Funds

Posted on March 8, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

I was recently discussing econometrics and Keynes’ critique of it with Severin Reissl, a particularly clever student currently attending the University of Glasgow who is critical of mainstream economics. (You can find some examples of his writing here in which … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Theory | 9 Comments

Minsky’s Theory of Asset Prices: Why Minsky Was NOT a Neo-Monetarist

Posted on March 6, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

On a recent blogpost that I wrote there was some confusion in the comments section regarding Hyman Minsky’s theories and their relationship to the phenomenon of rising asset prices. I have seen this confusion made many times before — even … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Theory | 10 Comments

Basic Macroeconomics of Income Distribution Cannot Explain Today’s Rising Inequality

Posted on March 4, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

I was recently looking over the debates surrounding the Pasinetti theorem and I thought it might be worth writing a few words on it. Pasinetti formulated his theorem — which is dealt with in detail in a fantastically thorough Wikipedia … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic History, Economic Policy, Economic Theory, Toward a General Theory of Pricing | 37 Comments

Could a Russian Intervention in the Ukraine Burst the London Property Market?

Posted on March 3, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

Over and over again I’ve been asking myself: is there a housing bubble in London? Certainly house prices are booming but I was never comfortable calling a bubble in the typical sense of that word. Why? Because this didn’t look … Continue reading →

Posted in Market Analysis | 3 Comments

Bidding War: The Quantity Theory of Money and the Price Level

Posted on March 3, 2014 by pilkingtonphil

I was going to run a blog on Hans Albert’s critique of the quantity theory of money but it appears that Lord Keynes has gotten there ahead of me. I just wanted to pull out one point that he raised … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Theory | Leave a comment