哈耶克对凯恩斯有关通货膨胀理论的批判及其启示

在全球应对金融海啸初见成效之时,国内外无论政府还是学界都对通货膨胀存在一定预期。本文通过对哈耶克有关文献的梳理,站在哈耶克立场上着重对凯恩斯通货膨胀的性质、形式及后果进行了批判。剖析了人为的、只重视结果的凯恩斯通货膨胀理论在经济和政治层面可能造成的后果,并运用哈耶克理论为中国预防通货膨胀从心理、政治和现实三个方面提供了思想资源。     

The Keynesian Features of Graziani's Monetary Theory of Production and Some Unresolved Issues

Abstract

The aim of this article is twofold. First, it seeks to verify the elements of affinity between Graziani's approach to the Monetary Theory of Production and Keynes’ Treatise on Money and his General Theory. It is shown that two important theoretical elements, from the Treatise on Money, enter Graziani's basic schema, namely the view of endogenous money supply and the distribution process. At the same time, uncertainty and aggregate demand—conceived as a crucial variable in the General Theory—can play a significant role in the basic schema of the Monetary Theory of Production. Second, the article sets out a critical reconstruction of Graziani's basic schema emphasising the existence of ‘open issues’– such as bank behaviour and the ‘paradox of profits’—relating to internal and external inconsistencies.     

Keynes, Lucas and involuntary unemployment: a reply to Hayes

In this response to Mark Hayes's criticism of his article, ‘Lucason involuntary unemployment’, the author insists on theneed to draw a distinction between labour rationing (a marketoutcome) and unemployment (the activity of job seeking). Economictheory is mainly concerned with the former. Yet the issue ofthe voluntarity versus the involuntarity of unemployment pertainsto unemployment as an activity. Failing to make this distinctioncannot but lead to semantic confusion.     

Knowledge Questions: Hayek,Keynes and Beyond

This paper discusses the knowledge problem in terms of both the use and generation of knowledge. This is analyzed in the context of Hayek's failure to respond to the Keynes Challenge—the claim that markets fail to produce relevant knowledge—by suggesting that in the aftermath of The General Theory he was not well-positioned to address that problem. Ironically, his post-World War II work in cognitive psychology, The Sensory Order, offers a theory of the generation of knowledge which can provide a useful analogy for understanding the generation of market-level knowledge.     

Foreign investment, reparations and the proposal for an international bank: notes on the lectures of J M Keynes in Geneva, July 1929

Keynes's lectures to the Geneva School of International Studiesprovide substance to the intellectual linkages between the Cambridgedon and economists working in international economic agenciesduring the inter-war period. Keynes was keenly sought afteras a policy adviser; as the notes to these lectures indicate,he provided his audience with theoretical insights into thepressing issues of the day - reparations and the transfer problem,the economic foundations of the Dawes and Young Plans, and proposalsfor an international bank.     

Keynes, uncertainty and interest rates

Uncertainty plays an important role in The General Theory, particularlyin the theory of interest rates. Keynes did not provide a theoryof uncertainty, but he did make some enlightening remarks aboutthe direction he thought such a theory should take. I arguethat some modern innovations in the theory of probability allowus to build a theory which captures these Keynesian insights.If this is the right theory, however, uncertainty cannot carryits weight in Keynes's arguments. This does not mean that theconclusions of these arguments are necessarily mistaken; intheir best formulation they may succeed with merely an appealto risk.     

International Markets and Open Economy Macroeconomics: a Keynesian view

This paper attempts to sketch a Keynesian response to the gap between the reality of international capital markets and the ‘standard paradigm’ of economic theory that underpins the policy model offered to poor countries in relation to their participation in the world economy and their national macroeconomic management. Recent work on imperfect markets, much of it from self-styled ‘New Keynesian’ point of view, implies a substantial modification of this standard paradigm to allow for non-price clearing but this does not appear to to have been integrated with new trade theories, while the implications of systemic volatility and credit rationing behaviour have not been theorized. The paper suggests that a return to Keynes's original approach to investor uncertainty and global demand might not only help to integrate international macroeconomic theory in a plausible manner but also contribute to the foumulation of more desirable policy positions.     

Functional income distribution and growth in Thailand: A post Keynesian econometric analysis

The aim of this article is to analyze the effect of the income distribution between labor and capital on the growth performance of Thailand from a post Keynesian view. It rests on the theoretical model of Bhaduri and Marglin (1990 Bhaduri, A., and Marglin, S. “Unemployment and the Real Wage: The Economic Basis for Contesting Political Ideologies.” Cambridge Journal of Economics, December 1990, 14 (4), 375–393.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to see if an increase in the labor income share has a sufficient positive effect on consumption to offset a negative effect on investment and export demand. In order to investigate the question empirically we adopt and develop the approach of Stockhammer, Onaran, and Ederer (2009 Stockhammer, E.; Onaran, Ö.; and Ederer, S. “Functional Income Distribution and Aggregate Demand in the Euro-area.” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2009, 33 (1), 139–159.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Several measures of the labor income share are calculated to take into account the fact that wage labor represents only half of the total labor force and check the robustness of our results. We also introduce a new treatment of external trade to better integrate the price competitiveness of Thailand. The econometric investigation shows that the growth regime is profit-led over the period 1970–2011, which shows that rebalancing the Thai economy will be difficult and requires an overall change of strategy going beyond a simple prolabor policy.     

Vicarelli,Keynes, and the unstable nexus between investment,liquidity, and finance

The goal of this article is to reconstruct Keynes’s vision of the unstable nexus between investment, liquidity and finance, as set out by the Italian economist Fausto Vicarelli (1936–1986). As argued in the article, one of Vicarelli’s main contributions consists of explaining the inherent instability of financially sophisticated capitalist economies in terms of the interaction (and double dissociation) between investment, saving, and stock-holding decisions, within a Keynesian framework characterized by the presence of fundamental uncertainty. While Vicarelli’s interpretation of Keynes is best understood in the context of the post-Keynesian literature, its relevance goes beyond that, as its sheds light on current issues related to the post-2008 financial crisis and its policy implications.     

Marx's value forms and Hayek's rules: a reinterpretation in the light of the dichotomy between physis and nomos

This paper argues that both Marx and Hayek objected to the dichotomybetween physis and nomos, and offered concepts which integrate,or mediate between, the two. Marx's value forms and Hayek'srules aim to grasp something neither purely natural nor purelyartificial or social, but ‘socially natural’. Valueforms and rules are natural in the sense that they pre-existagents and are taken by agents as given. On the other hand,forms and rules are social in that production relations or spontaneousorder are reproduced as the unintended consequences of agents'using forms or following rules. Thus value forms and rules standas links between agents and production relations or spontaneousorder.     

Keynes and a post-Keynesian controversy over the effect of debt on income expansion

The paper considers arguments of Robertson (1938) and Asimakopulos (1983) that the Keynesian multiplier expansion of output may be constrained by debt implicitly incurred in the financing of autonomous investment necessary to start the multiplier process. The task of this essay is to show that within the ‘short-period’ and static analytical framework of Keynes, this line of reasoning regarding the adverse effects of debt on multiplier-induced expansions of output is unwarranted. Nevertheless it is concluded that if the Keynesian framework is abandoned in favour of a dynamic framework in the manner of a steady trend rate of growth - a choice dependent on how one conceives of the economy, as inherently static or dynamic - then such arguments have troubling implications. In particular, the dependence of Keynes's approach on credit and hence debt forges links between ‘short-periods' whose distinctness from one another is crucial to Keynes's result.     

Economics, realism and reality: a comparison of Maki and Lawson

There is presently considerable debate about the applicationand interpretation of realism in economics. Interest in thisarea of the philosophy and methodology of economics has intensifiedover the last twenty years, especially owing to the substantialcontributions by Uskali Mäki and Tony Lawson, respectively.Although their work falls under the same banner of realism ineconomics, their projects differ significantly in many importantrespects. This review tries to clarify the contrasting approachesof each author and explains the main reasons for the differencesbetween them. The emphasis is on clarification of their respectivepositions rather than a comprehensive critical evaluation assuch.     

Toward the crisis: a Kaleckian-Keynesian interpretation of the instability of growth and capital accumulation in Brazil

This article examines theoretically and empirically the instability of Brazilian investment and growth for the past couple of decades, highlighting the evolution that led to the current crisis. A theoretical discussion highlights the importance of Kaleckian and Keynesian approaches in understanding the semi-stagnation of the Brazilian economy since the 1990s. Empirical evidence shows that investment has increased until 2013, but not to the point of getting the economy back on the track of high growth rates and higher investment-GDP ratios. The econometric findings are compatible with the theoretical underpinnings of investment activity based on Keynes and Kalecki and suggest the existence of room for activist policies in Brazil in order to stimulate economic activity.     

The Economic Problem of Happiness: Keynes on Happiness and Economics

By stressing the substantial continuity of vision between John Maynard Keynes’s early unpublished essays and his more mature writings, the paper discusses Keynes’s ethics and focuses on his thoughts about happiness. In particular, we emphasize the anti-utilitarianism of Keynes’s vision and his belief that material wealth is but a precondition to enjoy the possibilities of a good life, and direct attention to problems of incommensurability raised by the multidimensional nature of happiness as considered by Keynes. We then argue that the rediscovery of Keynes’s legacy in this respect may be a precious counterweight to the most controversial aspects of today’s happiness research.     

Uneven Development and the Destabilization of the North: a Keynesian view

Can Keynesian theory illuminate the questions of rising North–South trade in manufacturing, industrial relocation from North to South, rising wage inequality and unemployment in the North, and the consequent breakdown of Northern labour movements as effective political forces? I think so. Indeed I will argue here that the main relevance of Keynesian theory today may lie in its capacity to capture the dynamics of the North–South relationship, and especially the influence of Northern macroeconomic policy and Northern business cycles on industrial trading patters.     

Classical political economy: the subsistence wage,and job guarantee concerns

Abstract:

In the theoretical framework of classical political economy, including the revisions of Marx and the more recent work of Piero Sraffa and others, the concept of the subsistence wage figures prominently. Here, following a recounting of this concept and demonstrating its significance not only for classical theory but also for larger social concerns, I argue that the “base wage” (as it is sometimes termed) as articulated within a “Job Guarantee” program, is (or should be) comparable to the subsistence wage but requires modification to make it (roughly) equivalent. It will be demonstrated that adherents of the classical approach did not rest their wage theory on a quasi-neoclassical supply–demand approach (with some primitive marginal productivity notion lying behind a supposed demand for labor schedule), but understood wages as socially determined where institutional and historic forces established a normative standard around which market wages gravitated. Such an approach was shared by, among others, Thorstein Veblen and John Maynard Keynes.     

Wage Flexibility and Unemployment: The Keynesian Perspective Revisited

Keynes' main concern in the General Theory is about the capacity of an economy to return to full employment equilibrium when subject to a (negative) demand shock. He maintains that money wages cuts may not help reabsorb unemployment, as they do not necessarily imply a fall in real wages. On the contrary, wage rigidity may be necessary for avoiding that a cumulative process propels the economy far away the full employment equilibrium. Co‐ordination failures in the investment‐saving market are behind this conclusion. However, the analysis is carried out within a static equilibrium framework. This paper is an attempt to focus on the problems of intertemporal co‐ordination arising within the context of a sequential economy. Our analysis of the out‐of‐equilibrium process of adjustment stirred by a shock allows to generalize the original Keynesian intuition. Unemployment emerges as the result of a lack of co‐ordination due to irreversibly constrained choices, and not only nominal but also real wage flexibility does not necessarily help to restore equilibrium. As a matter of fact, it may even be harmful, by triggering processes that make the economy diverge from equilibrium. Our analysis has important analytical implications as regards the role of market imperfections and the interpretation of the effects of monetary policy.     

Keynes's Z function, heterogeneous output and marginal productivity

Keynes was adamant that the assumption of homogeneous outputand capital in macroeconomic theory is inadmissable. His aggregatesupply or Z function is a generalisation of Marshall's ordinarysupply function to take account of heterogeneous output, andis an essential element of the principle of effective demand.The ‘linear Z curve’ controversy can be attributedto Keynes's desire to demonstrate how his general monetary theoryof value and output encompasses the special case of Classicaltheory, including the marginal productivity theorem. The infamoussecond footnote on pages 55–6 of The General Theory canthereby be fully resolved.