Is economics changing?
In an article entitled How economics is changing, FT columnist Harvey Nripia paints a generally positive picture of economics as an academic discipline in the 21st century. He argues that economics has become more inventive and empirical and now provides, on the whole, increasingly useful advances in our knowledge about economies and how human societies…
Part three – a value theory of inflation
In this post, I return to my review of the theories of the causes of inflation in modern economies. In the first part, I discussed the mainstream theories; in the second part, I discussed heterodox and other Marxist theories. In this third part, I present a value theory of inflation developed by Guglielmo Carchedi and myself.…
WAPE 2026: Adam Smith, imperialism and financialisation – and an award
Last week, the 19th Congress of the World Association of Political Economy (WAPE) took place at the University of Greenwich, London. WAPE is a Chinese-run academic economics organisation, linking up with Marxist economists globally. “Even though that might seem like bias, the WAPE forums and journals still provide an important outlet to discuss all the developments in the world capitalist…
Japan: caught between inflation and slump
Back last February, I posted about the state of the Japanese economy when Sanai Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister called a snap general election, which she won in a landslide. Takaichi, who models her views on Britain’s Margaret Thatcher of the 1980s and now on Trumpism, claimed she would be different from all past…
Theories of inflation part two – heterodox and Marxist
This is the second part of my discussion of the causes of inflation in modern capitalist economies, based on an unpublished paper by Guglielmo Carchedi and me. There are various heterodox views on the causes of inflation. Generally, they argue against the mainstream focus on monetarism, excess demand and inflation expectations as discussed in part…
Theories of inflation: part one – the mainstream
Guglielmo Carchedi and I have been working on a theory of inflation for several years. We completed a detailed paper some time ago which was accepted for publication by a Marxist journal. However, publication takes forever, so I thought I would provide a shortened version of our work on my blog. For the blog, I…
AI and productivity
Alphabet (Google) announced its earnings results yesterday. At first sight, the results were spectacular: revenue was up 24%, with revenue from its ‘cloud’ business up 82%. Earnings per share were $9.11, which is very high. But more than two-thirds of those earnings were based on booking $77bn from ‘unrealised’ gains from its purchase of shares…
EU companies: a ‘capitalism of rent’?
Why is Europe falling behind in investment and growth compared with the US, let alone China and India? In a new report, Labour Squeezed, Investment Stalled – the renowned economist Mariana Mazzucato and a team at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, financed by the European Trade Union Federation (SETU), reckon that the EU’s declining…
China’s slowdown
China’s second quarter GDP growth saw a significant deceleration, down to 4.3% year over year from 5.0% in the first quarter and weaker than forecast. This was the slowest growth in any quarter since the pandemic lockdown hit in 2022. But, even with this Q2 slowdown, China’s real GDP growth for the first half of…
250 YEARS: the United States – from independence to empire (part three)
From hegemony to decline In just some 200 years from winning independence from the British empire in 1776, the United States had become the most successful capitalist state, leading all the major economies in the world in national output, in income per head, in productivity of labour, in financial dominance and in military power. That…
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