Macroeconomics

Does greater inequality produce more fragile economic dynamics? Does concentration of wealth and income make societies more prone to crisis? If so, why?

In modern economies, individuals and companies engage in innovative activities, discovering new ways to use existing physical and human capital, and new technologies in which to invest. The institutional and broader social context within which these activities take place also changes in novel ways.

The economics profession stands on the fragile foundation of presuppositions adopted by professional agreement rather than as a result of empirical observation.

George Soros, Axel Leijonhufvud and Perry Mehrling in Berlin, Germany (2012).

Fundamentally, the ECB is trying to keep the ongoing sovereign debt crisis from turning into a full-fledged bank credit crisis.

Tonight I will talk briefly about the Keynes-Hayek relationship, then will focus on some of Hayek’s insights that may be of relevance today.

Central to John Maynard Keynes (1941) original Bretton Woods proposal was an international clearing union that would issue a new international currency by fiat called bancor. Among other functions, this international central bank would finance the stabilization of individual commodity prices through commodity buffer stocks.

For more than three decades, orthodox economists, policy makers in government and central bankers and their economic advisors, using some variant of old classical economic theory [OCET], have insisted that (1) government regulations of markets and large government spending policies are the cause of all our economic problems and (2) ending big government and freeing markets, especially financial markets, from government regulatory controls is the solutionto our economic problems, domestically and internationally.

It’s a singular honor to have been asked to deliver the Butlin Lecture. I first met Noel Butlin when I had the pleasure of visiting Australian National University for two months in what was, from my perspective, the summer of 1985.

The Institute joined DIME and Central European University in hosting a conference addressing a key question of economics today: How can we create a new macroeconomic theory that takes into account the true relationship of finance to the real economy and can more accurately anticipate crises?