By Stephanie Kelton and Randall Wray
A few days ago, Jared Bernstein posed some Questions for the MMTers in order to gain a “better understanding [of our] arguments.” We appreciate his interest in our ideas and, especially, his direct appeal for clarification of our views. He raised four big questions, which our Australian counterpart, Bill Mitchell, has already answered in his own three-part series. What follows is a response from two North American MMTers.
The Department of Economics at UMKC lost a member of its family last night. Fred Lee, prolific scholar, humanist, and devoted husband, father and grandfather, spent the last several months battling a startling diagnosis — a non-smoking variety of stage 4 lung cancer. Like the disease itself, Fred was a rare type. His commitment to the advancement of heterodox economics built an infrastructure of newsletters and list serves to enable this community of scholars to engage and build ties. He recorded this podcast with me shortly after learning that his diagnosis was terminal. Fred left an indelible mark on the UMKC Economics Department and on heterodox economics. We will miss him terribly. ~Stephanie Kelton
*Podcast audio starts garbled but quickly resolves.
Click here to watch Fed’s last lecture in his MA-level Micro theory course.
Posted in Stephanie Kelton
Video of public debate on the role of Government in the economy presented at the Kansas City Public Library, Plaza Branch on September 16, 2014. This excerpt only contains Dr. Stephanie Kelton’s presentation. Her slides are available below the video. The full version of the debate including the Q&A session at the end is available on our YouTube channel.
Scott Fullwiler spent part of the afternoon reading (and reacting to) a paper that John Cochrane just gave at a conference on central banking in Stanford, CA. I haven’t read the paper yet, but judging by Scott’s reaction on Twitter, there’s lots to like about it. (Mostly because it appears to draw heavily from a broad swath of at least a decade of published work from MMTers.)
We’ll have to wait for Scott’s forthcoming post to see just how close the parallels are (and how much Cochrane 2014 departs from Cochrane 2009). It will be interesting, particularly because several years ago Cochrane wasn’t interested in garnering insight from outside the mainstream. “Every now and then,” he confessed, “there’s an excluded subgroup that turns out to be right.” But he readily admitted — nay, disparaged — “I haven’t read their specific work. I’m busy, and I try to read what is considered interesting and valid.” Being right matters, and I think that’s why MMT has begun to seep into the mainstream. The risk (though this is not how Noah sees it) is that “all the interesting heterodox ideas [will] quickly get incorporated into the mainstream in some slightly bastardized form,” leaving the discipline as a whole only marginally better off, while those who did the heavy lifting remain at the margins.
Posted in Stephanie Kelton
Tagged john cochrane, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, Scott Fullwiler
Stephanie’s latest podcast. This episode is a broad-ranging discussion of conventional economics and the heterodox alternatives to IS/LM, Ricardian equivalence, among others.
Stephanie’s latest podcast. She talks with UMKC Economist Dr. Fred Lee about the micro/maco distinction, Post-Keynesian price theory, the problems with neoclassical economics and his ideas about how to move the discipline in a more useful direction. (Note: There are some audio quality issues but only for the first 30 seconds).
(Updated – slides added)
Stephanie Kelton’s keynote address to the students, faculty, and visitors at Augustana College’s (Sioux Falls, SD) Undergraduate Research Symposium on Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 10am. Stephanie begins at 2:40. The topic of the keynote is Debt and Deficits in the Modern Economy. The slides are available below the video.
What gives money its value? PBS explores. You can check it out here.
In early Summer 2013, Class Conscience interviewed Dr. Edward J. Nell, the Malcolm B. Smith Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Both Drs. Stephanie Kelton and Mathew Forstater were students of Dr. Nell.
Posted in Stephanie Kelton
It’s been five-and-a-half years since the US economy officially went into recession and three-and-a-half years since we entered the “recovery” phase of the business cycle. While technically in “recovery,” it’s no secret that when it comes to the labor market, workers are suffering the weakest turnaround in the post-WWII era.
And despite what you may have read, the truth is we’re still nowhere near full employment — at least not if you’re honest and you’re counting everyone who wants full-time work and can’t get it.
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