The origins,development, and fate of Clower's “stock-flow” general-equilibrium programme

Before becoming the hallmark of macroeconomics à la Wynne Godley, the “stock-flow” analysis was already developed in microeconomics and general-equilibrium theory. The goal was to study the formation of economic plans and the determination of market prices when individuals were supposed to consume, produce, and hold commodities. I show that since the early 1950s, Robert W. Clower used the “stock-flow” price theory to offer microfoundations to a Keynesian business cycle model. I analyse the origins of this microfoundation programme, trace its development, and discuss its fate.     

Functional income distribution and effective demand in India: An applied post Keynesian model

This article is an attempt to understand the relationship between functional income distribution and aggregate demand in India. To this end, the article (a) highlights trends in growth and class distribution of income in India; (b) constructs a post Keynesian macro model that links short run growth with profit share, where the latter is itself driven by movements in output and real exchange rate; (c) discusses and, wherever required, estimates key parameters relevant to the Indian case; and (d) simulates the model and discusses the effect of shocks to distributive as well as autonomous demand variables on growth performance. The article finds that, although a possibility of wage-led growth in India cannot be ruled out, by and large, distributive shocks do not have a strong impact on output growth. On the other hand, an increase in public expenditure growth, although it has a strong effect on output growth, tilts income distribution toward profit earners. A comprehensive agenda involving greater public expenditure and higher wages to stimulate growth and improve distribution is therefore recommended.     

Keynes and Wagner on government expenditures and economic development: the case of a developing economy

This paper investigates the Keynesian view and the Wagner’s Law on the role of public expenditure on economic growth for Malaysia (1970–2004). The empirical results using the Auto-Regression Distributed Lag (ARDL) model and the ‘bounds test’ (Pesaran et al. in J Appl Econ 16:289–326, 2001) showed evidence of a long run relationship between total expenditures (including expenditures on defense, education, development and agriculture) and Gross National Product. The results also show that with the structural break in 1998, the long run causality is bi-directional for GNP and expenditures on administration and health, supporting both Keynes view and Wagner’s Law. For all other expenditure categories the long run causality runs from GNP to the expenditures, which supports Wagner’s Law. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Neo-Kaleckian and Sraffian Controversies on the Theory of Accumulation

Abstract

Non-orthodox economists generally share the Keynesian Hypothesis of the independence of investment from capacity savings, in the long run no less than in the short run. This hypothesis marks an essential point of difference from neoclassical theory. Keynes showed that within the limits of the existing capacity utilisation, investment determines savings rather than the other way around. How best to extend this conclusion to the long run is the object of the current paper. The paper assesses the controversy on demand-led growth that has taken place since the mid-1980s between neo-Kaleckian and Sraffian authors. The Sraffian front may be divided into a first and a second Sraffian position, the latter being the Sraffian supermultiplier approach. I shall argue that this second approach is the most promising framework for analysing economic growth.     

“Love of wealth” and economic growth

In a Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans growth framework it is shown that for an optimum a benevolent social planner cannot have an excessive “love of wealth”. With a “right” “love of wealth” an optimum exists and implies higher long‐run per‐capita capital, income, and consumption relative to the standard model. This has important implications for comparative development trajectories. The optimum implies dynamic efficiency with the possibility of getting arbitrarily close to the golden rule where long‐run per‐capita consumption is maximal. It is shown that the optimal path attains its steady state more slowly. Thus, the beneficial effects of love of wealth materialize later than in the standard model. Furthermore, the economy can be decentralized as a competitive private ownership economy. One can then identify “love of wealth” with the “spirit of capitalism.” The paper thus implies that one needs a “right” level of the “spirit of capitalism” to realize any beneficial effects for the long run.     

Growth Rate and Level Effects,the Stability of the Adjustment of Capacity to Demand and the Sraffian Supermultiplier

Abstract

The paper presents a simple but complete formal version of the Sraffian supermultiplier model in which (i) growth is led by the autonomous components of demand that do not create capacity; (ii) private productive investment is an induced expenditure; and (iii) income distribution is exogenous. We show that the main results of the long-period and fully adjusted versions of the model in terms of growth rate and level effects are quite similar and therefore that such results in no way require the full adjustment of capacity to demand. We then analyze a simple set of sufficient dynamic local stability conditions that allow the long-period positions to gravitate towards the fully adjusted position in which capacity is adjusted to demand and that also provide the upper limit to demand-led growth paths. Finally, we show how some critics of the model have misinterpreted it as being supply-led and how this has led to a further confusion between the analysis of the tendency towards a constant value of the capacity-saving-determined warranted rate of growth and the proper stability analysis of the opposite process of adjusting capacity to demand (which tends to adjust the warranted rate endogenously to the growth rate of autonomous demand).     

The Role of Demand in Macroeconomics

I argue that the standard approach represented by real business cycle theory is misguided, and that a fundamentally different approach is necessary. The new approach, based on the method of statistical mechanics, leads us to a new concept of “equilibrium”. In equilibrium we must have a distribution of productivities rather than a unique level of productivity. We then find that demand plays a crucial role in the determination of the aggregate output, as the old Keynesian economics claims. I show that the demand constraint is important not only in short‐run but also in long‐run economic growth.     

Demand-led Growth Theory: A Historical Approach

This paper builds upon the Keynesian theory of demand-led growth in order to provide an analytical framework for explaining economic growth and development in concrete terms, consistent with the fundamental idea that growth in output and employment is determined by the growth in aggregate demand. The framework employs a historical approach to identify the main factors and their role in explaining demand-led growth and the accumulation process. The theoretical model developed abandons steady-state conditions by proposing that capacity utilisation varies in the long run as well as in the short run to ensure output has the elasticity to accommodate levels of autonomous demand free of any capacity saving constraint. On the basis of our analytical framework, the paper considers the main factors that explain the growth in aggregate demand: first, by examining the variables that determine the ‘super-multiplier’ and what social, institutional and technical conditions can cause its value to change over time; second, by identifying the components of autonomous demand and the main forces explaining their growth; and third, by considering the manner in which technical progress promotes demand-led growth.     

Optimal Capital Taxation in a Neoclassical Growth Model

This paper studies the optimal factor tax incidence in a neoclassical growth model with a given share of government expenditure in output. In the Ramsey planner's optimization, the effect of next period's capital on government expenditure equals the given share of the marginal product of capital. Capital accumulation reduces the discounted net marginal product of next period's capital by way of increasing government expenditure. In order to internalize the distortion, it is optimal to tax capital income in the long run.     

Long‐Run Fiscal Multipliers for Autonomous Prefectures in China

In this paper, we successfully overcome the problems of data availability and investigate the fiscal multipliers for autonomous prefectures in China. We first estimate the long‐run elasticity of gross regional production with respect to fiscal expenditure at the prefecture level using autoregressive distributed lag models. We find that the estimated long‐run elasticity is much less than unity and that the estimated fiscal multipliers for prefectures lie between 0.61 and 4.93, with an average of 1.93. These results indicate that additional fiscal expenditure remains effective in increasing local income and promoting economic growth for most autonomous prefectures.     

中国共享式经济增长实证研究——基于公共支出、部门效应和政府治理的分析

文章首先基于多维贫困指标SHPI构建了共享式增长指数PEG,然后运用公共支出、政府治理水平和部门效应三个方面的指标来考察共享式增长。文章具体通过协整和误差修正模型分析了长期和短期影响共享式增长的主要因素及其调整机制,并在此基础上重点估计了各部门公共支出对共享式增长的影响。文章发现1978-2008年中国经济增长总体上具有共享性,但是大部分年份的共享程度较低。长期内,在公共支出、部门效应和政府治理水平三大类因素中公共支出方面的三个变量对PEG的影响最大。短期内,政府一般性支出和政府规模对共享式增长程度有非常显著的消极影响。     

To Save or to Consume: Linking Growth Theory with the Keynesian Model

In the neoclassical growth theory, higher saving rate gives rise to higher output per capita. However, in the Keynesian model, higher saving rate causes lower consumption, which may lead to a recession. Students may ask, "Should we save or should we consume?" In most of the macroeconomics textbooks, economic growth and Keynesian economics are in separate, sometimes unsequential, chapters. The connection between the short run and the long run is not apparent. The author builds a bridge between the neoclassical growth theory and the Keynesian model. He links the Solow diagram and the IS-LM curves and depicts the short-run to long-run transition of the economy after changes in saving and other macroeconomic policies.     

Endogenous business cycles and Harrodian instability in an agent-based model

The article presents an original stock-flow consistent macroeconomic agent-based model with the aim to reexamine Harrod’s instability principle as an explanatory element of macroeconomic dynamics. The main findings are that bottom-up economic models can be subject to Harrodian instability and can produce endogenous cycles without introducing innovation waves, monetary wage spirals, or financial instability. Upward instability is stopped by the ceiling of full employment, and downward instability can be tamed by introducing an autonomous expenditure that feeds aggregate demand.     

Social security expenditure and GDP in OECD countries: A cointegrated panel analysis

Abstract

Using panel data unit root tests and panel cointegration tests, as well as estimation techniques appropriate for heterogeneous panels such as the full modified OLS, this paper re-examines the long-run co-movement and the causal relationship between GDP and social security expenditure in a bivariate model, employing data on 25 OECD countries from 1980 to 2001. Our cointegration test results show strong evidence in favour of the existence of a long-run equilibrium cointegrating relationship between GDP and social security expenditure after allowing for a heterogeneous country effect. Regarding the panel-based error correction model, we find that GDP and social security expenditure lack short-run causality, but reveal the existence of long-run bidirectional causality. This shows that, in the long run, economic growth must be based on a social welfare policy that should be carried out, and economic growth can facilitate contiguous development in a social welfare policy. Lastly, we also provide evidence to support that social security expenditure can affect growth through the savings and human capital accumulation in OECD countries.     

Asymmetries in price and quantity adjustments by the competitive firm

Focusing on the crucial role of inventory carry-overs in the production and sales decision, we describe the profit maximizing behavior of a dynamic competitive firm facing random prices. Each firm's behavior is incorporated into a stochastic equilibrium model of the competitive industry with uncertain demand. The industry model exhibits asymmetric cyclical fluctuations of the “Keynesian” sort: when demand is weak, output contracts while price holds at a fixed floor; when demand is strong, price increases as output is constrained by a ceiling. Even in a pure world of constant returns, without increasing costs, the inability to instantaneously coordinate production and sales along with the existence of inventories is sufficient to yield a “backward L” shaped supply curve for the short run.     

中国财政科教支出动态经济效应分析

财政科技与教育支出的经济增长效应是经济学界研究的重要问题。文章通过构建以资本、知识和产出为研究对象的动态理论模型与研究,发现财政科教支出对三者的稳定增长路径及经济体系稳态点均具有重要影响。文章在理论模型研究的基础上进一步构建了动态计量模型,实证结论是:中国财政科教支出对其资本形成、产出增长及全要素生产率的提高均有积极影响,但作用力度和影响方式存在区别。因此,应进一步增加财政科教支出,并通过改进支出结构和进度,使之对经济转轨和长期经济增长起到更为重要的促进作用。     

地方政府支出结构的经济增长效应

文章运用面板数据分析方法对1998—2008年间我国31个省、自治区和直辖市的地方政府支出结构与经济增长的关系进行了实证分析。结果表明,生产性支出对经济增长的影响更为显著,东、中、西部的政府支出对经济增长的影响较为显著的分别是城市维护建设支出、教育支出和农业支出。从全国范围看,教育支出对经济增长的影响最为明显。     

Rational demand and expenditures patterns under habit formation

This paper proposes a model in which habit formation is present in a relatively general but tractable way. The consumer's problem is transformed into a sequence of two-period Fisherian problems by introducing a “reduced utility function” to ensure full dynamic rationality of the consumer. By making preferences dependent on past real expenditure levels rather than past consumption bundles, it is possible to characterize the long-run behavior of the consumer. Stability analysis is performed. The cases of “immediate habit formation” and “delayed habit formation” are discussed.     

Creative accounting and electoral motives: Evidence from OECD countries

Using an unbalanced panel of 27 OECD countries over the period 1970–2011, I examine whether electoral motives influenced creative accounting. Governments engage in “below-the-line” operations, such as transactions in financial assets, that do not show up in the deficit figures but give rise to changes in debt. I use the difference between the change in public debt and the deficit (stock-flow adjustment) to measure creative accounting. The results suggest that governments strategically engaged in creative accounting before regular elections so as to sugarcoat the budget balance. I also provide an overview of government interventions that gave rise to large stock-flow adjustments.