A new issue of ‘Intervention. European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies’ is out. It starts with an interview with John E. King, an Australian economist who is both a historian of economic thought and a political economist. The issue includes also a special issue with articles on “Aspects of finance, instability, distribution and investment”, edited by Stefan Ederer, Eckhard Hein and me.
This is an overview of the contributions taken from the editorial to the special issue:
‘It starts with a contribution by Fernando J. Cardim de Carvalho contrasting the views of Keynes and Wicksell on investment and savings. The loanable funds theory, which in the paper is represented by Wicksell’s position, is still the dominant approach. Keynes, however, argued that investment generates savings and not vice versa. Carvalho shows the eminent impact of this theoretical insight on the analysis of the investment process and the role of banks and finance. In the second article of this special issue, Toichiro Asada not only reconsiders the financial instability hypothesis of Hyman Minsky but gives a formal representation similar to an extended Lotka-Volterra predator-prey system, often used in evolutionary economics. Against the background of his model, effects of stabilising macroeconomic policies are derived. The next contribution by Daniel Detzer compares two policy instruments to tackle financial instability, asset-based reserve requirements and asset-based capital requirements. He concludes that in principle both instruments can reduce excessive asset price inflation but asset-based reserve requirements are the more predictable tool. Philip Arestis, Ana Rosa González and Óscar Dejuán model accumulation theoretically and empirically in the fourth article of this special issue. An accumulation function, based on the accelerator principle, is developed that is able to cover different kinds of uncertainty and the role of conventions. Moreover, they estimate the investment function for a panel of twelve OECD countries over the period of 1970 to 2010. The focus of the fifth contribution by Peter Skott and Ben Zipperer is again on investment. The authors compare three long-run post-Keynesian models – a Kaleckian, a Robinsonian and a Kaldorian. The empirical results they are presenting, based on US data, confirm the Kaldorian model. An article on endogenous income distribution within the Bhaduri-Marglin framework concludes the special issue. Bernhard Schütz endogenises functional income distribution which was assumed to be exogenous in the original model. He shows how this impacts on the conditions for wage- and profit-led regimes and their (in-)stability.’
This issue is the last one published with Metropolis Publishers. From 2013 on the journal will be published with Edward Elgar, the renowned British publisher. For more information see the new webpage of the journal. The journal will then come out as ‘European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention (EJEEP)’. In other words, title and subtitle switch positions. With Edward Elgar the journal will reach an even wider readership and spreading among academics and practitioners.