A Thoroughly Embodied Economics: A Review of Personalist Economics by Edward J. O'Boyle

In a debate on the future of monetary policy and the displacement of money, Woodford argued that, even if innovations should lead to a situation in which the banks' demand for reserves at the central bank is zero, the central bank can still influence the economy's interest rates because its liability is the economy's unit of account. This paper deals with these topics by considering the implications of emphasizing the function of money as unit of account. In the analysis of money from this perspective, social, institutional and economic factors play a crucial role. Money is a social and historical relation. Therefore, the displacement of money and central banks, though possible, is a complex process involving economic, social and political factors, not merely the result of innovations. The paper also looks at some aspects of Kaldor's theory, which is centered on the fundamental importance of money as unit of account.     

Causality in macroeconomics Kevin D. Hoover

Money is not the result of material processes. Its roles in the economy assume a social and moral ethos. In turn, the ethos is dependent upon custom and custom as law. Money does not remember its origins in these prior agreements, and often ignores the moral import of choices affecting its quantity and cost. Money, too, is not subordinate to society, or limited by societal boundaries. Rather, by a reversal, the structures of the social and moral order are themselves shaped by money. Money’s dominance, and therefore its freedom, appears complete. At the same time, however, the network of financial exchange and currency evaluation require formal agreements which assume the global unity and solidarity of a moral order.     

Public Knowledge and Financial Regulation: Two Post Crisis Periods

Abstract:

Since at least the days of Adam Smith there has been the recognition of essentially two forms of capitalism: in their theoretical extremes, one in which private companies determine the conditions of the social provisioning of credit and money, and one in which the State representing the general interest does. As we argue, the zeitgeist of the 1930s was a high water mark in the popular understanding of money and banking and its relationship with society. In contrast, today the general population is woefully ignorant on these points. As we argue, the relationship between financial governance and those governed hinges on the knowledge of the latter. Today’s public discourse reveals a widespread ignorance over financial matters that must accompany a likewise extreme moment of private control over nations’ money and credit. As we argue, the first steps towards a capitalism at the service of humanity and under public control, the first priority is publicly diffused knowledge.     

Sociology of economics or sociology of economy? theoretical-methodological arguments for sociological economics

This paper makes a proposal for reintroducing sociological or social economics into contemporary economic science. Such a reintroduction is proposed to be substantive, by analyzing the social structuring of the economy, and formal, by including sociological/social economics in the current (JEL) classification system of economic disciplines (code A.15). Both epistemological and ontological arguments can be presented to support the proposal. Epistemological arguments invoke the presence of essential components of sociological economics in the development of economic thought, and ontological arguments stress the role of social factors in economic life. In this paper I present primarily epistemological (theoretical-methodological) arguments for sociological economics, and secondarily ontological ones. I show that the present designation, sociology of economics, is something different from sociological or social economics in that the former refers to economic epistemology (knowledge) and the latter to economic ontology (reality). I conclude that, in addition to a sociology of economic science, we need a sociology of economic life. There is nothing surprising in the habit of economists to invade the sociological field. A major part of their work—practically the whole of what they have to say on institutions and on the…[social] forces which shape economic behavior—inevitably overlaps the sociologist’s preserves. In consequence, a no man’s land or everyman’s land has developed that might conveniently be called economic sociology … [or sociological economics] (Schumpeter 1956:134). The author is grateful to two anonymous referees for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this article.     

Of clouds and clocks and Keynes: conceptions of reality and the growth of knowledge function of money ∗

In this paper, John Maynard Keynes' General theoryand the concept of money are given an evolutionary interpretation. This interpretation is based on Karl Popper's delightful essay ‘Of clouds and clocks: an approach to the problem of rationality and the freedom of man’. The essay presents two things: Popper's conception of indeterminism and his general theory of abstractions. Popper's general theory concerns the role of abstractions and rule-governed, hierarchical systems of abstractions in structuring an indeterministic and uncertain world. He applies his general theory to science.Popper maintains that science is an abstract, rule-governed, linguistic process that facilitates criticism as a way of learning about our world. Popper calls this the growth of knowledge function of science. Popper's general theory can be applied to Keynes' General theory. Following Popper, I argue for a conception of the economy as a rule-governed, monetary language of commerce that facilitates critically minded inquiry in the domain of ordinary economic transactions. A monetary system facilitates the growth of commonsense knowledge in the economy. I call this the growth of knowledge function of money. An awareness of indeterminism and a growth of knowledge like function of money seem to pervade Keynes' General theory.     

Toward a General Theory of Credit and Money

Money is not a thing but a species of credit, and hence a social relation involving rights and obligations. It emerged as the most abstract species in the course of the general process of evolution of credit. Formulation of a theory of credit is, therefore, logically prior to any theory of money. A framework proposed along this line by Macleod, during the second half of the 19th century, has been neglected until now. Combined with Walras's numeraire and etalon concepts, this approach provides the foundation for a General Theory of Credit and Money, presented in this paper.     

The moral meaning of money

Money is not the result of material processes. Its roles in the economy assume a social and moral ethos. In turn, the ethos is dependent upon custom and custom as law. Money does not remember its origins in these prior agreements, and often ignores the moral import of choices affecting its quantity and cost. Money, too, is not subordinate to society, or limited by societal boundaries. Rather, by a reversal, the structures of the social and moral order are themselves shaped by money. Money’s dominance, and therefore its freedom, appears complete. At the same time, however, the network of financial exchange and currency evaluation require formal agreements which assume the global unity and solidarity of a moral order.     

Money Pools in the Americas: The African Diaspora’s Legacy in the Social Economy

Money pools are ancient African traditions that speak to the functionality of getting things done by a historically oppressed group of people. The analysis for this study is based on 583 interviews in five Caribbean countries: Haiti, Grenada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana. African traditions of collectives reveal that Black people have long had money pools that focused on helping people thrive in commerce, including during the hard times of slavery and colonization. This research argues that throughout the Caribbean indigenous banking systems—with localized names such as susu, partner, meeting-turn, box-hand and sol—are long-standing ancient traditions that historically and currently are taking a bold stand against exclusionary financial systems. African-Caribbean people have an important legacy on the social economy through money pools. The ways in which persons of African descent organize in the social economy is vital to unravelling the market fundamentalist view that there is only a singular way to do business in society.     

Governing stigmatised space: the case of the ‘slums’ of Berlin-Neukölln

Spatial stigmatisation – naming spaces with high concentration of poverty as a slum or ghetto – has been well covered in the critical urban geography and sociological debates. Yet, these discussions have neglected to theorise the intersection between the production of stigmatised space and the governance of its inhabitants within the context of one of Germany’s most stigmatised boroughs. By situating Berlin-Neukölln within historical processes of capital accumulation, I show how the discursive, institutional and material practices of neoliberal social policies have played a central, albeit contradictory, role in (re-)producing stigmatise spaces and subjects along racialised, gendered and class lines. This is particularly evident with regard to neoliberal governance strategies that employ and apply the power of public money to repress and integrate impoverished workers into contemporary capitalist society, or what I refer to as the ‘monetisation of socio-spatial reproduction’.     

Monetary policy: Why money matters (and interest rates don’t)

Since the late 1980s the Fed has implemented monetary policy by adjusting its target for the overnight federal funds rate. Money’s role in monetary policy has been tertiary, at best. Indeed, several influential economists suggest that money is irrelevant for monetary policy because central banks affect economic activity and inflation by (i) controlling a very short-term nominal interest rate and (ii) influencing financial market participants’ expectation of the future policy rate. I offer an alternative perspective: Money is essential for monetary policy because it is essential for controlling the price level, and the monetary authority’s ability to control interest rates is greatly exaggerated.     

The state as a creature of money

Recent social theories of money have challenged economic conceptions of it as first and foremost a medium of exchange. Writers such as Geoffrey Ingham and David Graeber have revived the chartalist position that money is essentially a creature of the state, whose primary function is to measure value or debt. In this paper, I argue that this is a wrong turning. I first clarify the conceptual underpinnings of Ingham’s treatment of money as an ‘institutional fact’, a concept drawn from Searle. I clarify the sense in which this argument establishes that the state ‘creates’ money – and show that this sense is quite limited. It is a theory of how something comes to be accepted as money, rather than a theory of why there is money in the first place, and it gives no account of money’s value. Finally, I sketch an alternative way of looking at the relationship between states and money. This recognises that modern states have been shaped in part by strategies with regard to monetary management, with state actors engaging strategically in a system they only partially constitute – so that states are ‘creatures of money’ as much as the reverse.     

Religion,economics and politics: The Bishops and Keynes in the post-Keynesian ERA

This paper makes a proposal for reintroducing sociological or social economics into contemporary economic science. Such a reintroduction is proposed to be substantive, by analyzing the social structuring of the economy, and formal, by including sociological/social economics in the current (JEL) classification system of economic disciplines (code A.15). Both epistemological and ontological arguments can be presented to support the proposal. Epistemological arguments invoke the presence of essential components of sociological economics in the development of economic thought, and ontological arguments stress the role of social factors in economic life. In this paper I present primarily epistemological (theoretical-methodological) arguments for sociological economics, and secondarily ontological ones. I show that the present designation, sociology of economics, is something different from sociological or social economics in that the former refers to economic epistemology (knowledge) and the latter to economic ontology (reality). I conclude that, in addition to a sociology of economic science, we need a sociology of economic life.     

Foucault on the Marginal Revolution in Economics: Language and the Cartesian Legacy

Scholars have long debated the ‘revolutionary’ character of the ‘Marginal Revolution’ in economics, focusing on theoretical foundations, methodological devices, social context and political aspects. This article offers a new perspective by investigating ontological and epistemological conditions of that intellectual movement. This requires, in turn, a characterization of those conditions, for which purpose we will draw on Foucault's configurations of thought into ‘epistemes’ in The Order of Things. Although not mentioning those conditions, there have been few references in economics to Foucault's approach. They have mainly claimed that he neglected its importance because he did not see it as a ‘revolution’ in The Order of Things. It is argued here that he actually considered it a ‘revolution’ in The Archaeology of Knowledge. A revision of Foucault's account provides some ideas regarding deep philosophical conditions of the emergence of neoclassical theory and defies some usual interpretations of the circumstances that led to the mathematization of economics. The main conclusion is that its revolutionary character did not stem from a change of ontological beliefs, but—just as many historians of economics have defended—it was a methodological revolution. This study suggests a reinterpretation of that event, claiming that it resulted from a new conception of language and a crisis of Descartes's project of a mathematical unifying science. Going beyond that debate, these reflections proffer ideas that deserve an appraisal in economics.     

Don Patinkin and the origins of postwar monetary orthodoxy

Don Patinkin's Money, Interest, and Prices (1956) set the ground rules of postwar monetary discourse, for better or worse. A close look at the intellectual origins of the book in Patinkin's own life shows it to emerge equally from the Old Chicago School of Simons/Mints/Knight and the Cowles Commission of Lange/Marschak/Haavelmo. Patinkin's conception of money as essentially an outside asset is argued to emerge from the historical context of war finance, and is contrasted with the Gurley-Shaw conception of money as a form of inside credit.     

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.     

Widening Wicksell’s conception of political economy: his “thoroughly revolutionary programme”

Abstract

Knut Wicksell’s opinion that political economy is a “thoroughly revolutionary programme” has often been neglected in the literature. Actually, Wicksell aimed at implementing such a programme in order to enlarge political economy as a “practical science”. It is articulated around three main features: a criticism of the marginal theories, the redefinition of society as a whole, and the advent of social justice. Indeed, Wicksell claimed that economic and social problems may be solved only by a complete social reorganisation. Hence, I show that Wicksell’s social reform programme drives his particular view of and approach to political economy.     

Bentham and Owen on entrepreneurship and social reform

Abstract

Jeremy Bentham invested an important amount of money in New Lanark's cotton mills, which at that time were run by Robert Owen. However, apparently Bentham never took a serious interest in the organisation of such a successful entrepreneurship and new model society, although it seemed to fit in with Bentham's ideas of the entrepreneur (‘projector’) and also with Bentham's ideas on social reform, seeking the greatest happiness of the greatest number. This article explains how Bentham's share in New Lanark came about. It tries to ascertain whether the New Lanark experiment and Owen's ideas fit Bentham's managerial theory and ideas on social reform so as to understand why Bentham did not pay more attention to Robert Owen's practice.     

An Epistemological Reflection on Social and Solidarity Economy

Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) is emerging as life affirming solutions to the global crises through the multiple ways people locally reinvent economic life on the margins of the capitalist system based on values of solidarity, reciprocity and sustainability. Although the SSE builds on a strong foundation of real practices and institutions of economic transformation as the way forward for us, this paper argues that this world of practice is in need of its theory to frame discourses and engage with the bigger picture with confidence as an alternative to the dominant economic paradigm. The author argues that the orthodox economics, with its ontological construct of the homo economicus, Cartesian dichotomy and logical positivist epistemology severely constrains our abilities to understand and appreciate economic alternatives based on ‘other’ rationalities. Hence, there is a need for an epistemological revolution to construct a coherent theoretical framework from the wreckages of the neoclassical economics for the SSE. This paper seeks to outline the basic structure and the key elements of the ontological and the epistemological framework for this ‘science-in-the-making’ as a step to stimulate further debate for a paradigm revolution.     

Elements of the institutionalization process of the forest and pasture commons in Romania as particular forms of social economy

In Romania, the study of jointly owned property (dev?lm??ie) has been of great interest for social scientists during the different political regimes of the country. After the fall of the communist regime and after over 50 years of state ownership, the forests and pasture commons (ob?ti and composeorate) returned to be private property of newly established associative forms. This paper aims to identify and define the contemporary Romanian commons by reference to the general characteristics of social economy organizations. In order to achieve this and obtain a clearer view of the place of the commons in Romania's organizational environment, presentation of some elements of the commons’ institutionalization process after the fall of the communist regime is included. The data used for answering these two objectives comes from the analysis of a database comprising 328 questionnaires applied to board members of commons in Romania and various legal documents. The main argument of the paper is that the restitution process that led to the re‐establishment of the Romanian commons from public property to common private property—marked by hardships, conflicts, misunderstandings or faults—deepened the scarce knowledge of the political actors, general public and other stakeholders in regard to these organizations and perpetuated their unclear position in the organizational field.     

Exogeneity of Money and its Policy Implications for Price Control: Evidence from South Asia

Abstract. We investigate the policy role that could be assigned to money stock in controlling the price level in four South Asian countries, namely, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The problem of policy assignment associated with the Granger non‐causality tests is pointed out. Various forms of exogeneity are tested. Money stocks (M₁ and M₂), consumer price index (CPI) and real GDP are cointegrated and causally related but we find overwhelming evidence of endogeneity of money. The endogeneity of money does not support the authorities’ policy stance of controlling price level through the control of money stock.