A proposal that the notion of specificity -- the idea that factors of production are not interchangeable -- can provide a unified framework to analyze and understand a wide variety of macroeconomic phenomena stemming from the transactional environment and microeconomic restructuring. The core mechanism that drives economic growth in modern market economies is massive microeconomic restructuring and factor reallocation -- the Schumpeterian "creative destruction" by which new technologies replace the old. At the microeconomic level, restructuring is characterized by countless decisions to create and destroy production arrangements. The efficiency of these decisions depends in large part on the existence of sound institutions that provide a proper transactional environment. In this groundbreaking book, Ricardo Caballero proposes a unified framework to analyze and understand a wide variety of macroeconomic phenomena stemming from limitations, especially institutional, that hinder these adjustments. Caballero argues that macroeconomic models need to be made more "structural" in a precise sense and can not be maintained on the assumption that decisions are fully flexible. What is needed, he proposes, is the notion of specificity -- the idea that factors of production are not freely interchangeable. Many of the major macroeconomic developments of recent decades, he argues, fit naturally into this perspective, including the transition problems of Eastern Europe, the heavy weight of labor regulations in Western Europe, the emerging market crises of the 1990s, the prolonged expansion of the U.S. economy, and Japan's stagnation following the collapse of its real estate bubble. After describing the basic arguments of the book and developing models to illustrate two different kinds of specificity (relationship specificity and technological specificity), Caballero analyzes a variety of aspects of inefficient restructuring and revisits perennial business cycle patterns such as the cyclical behavior of unemployment, investment, and wages. Finally, he looks at the endogenous response of political institutions and technology to opportunistic exploitation of relationship specificity. Economists working on macroeconomics, development, growth, labor, and productivity issues will find Caballero's conceptual framework applicable to phenomena in their fields.
This paper studies the effect of sovereign debt restructurings with external private creditors on growth during the period 1970-2010. We find that there are bad and good (or not so bad) debt restructurings for growth. While growth generally declines in the aftermath of a sovereign debt restructuring, agreements that allow countries to exit a default spell (final restructurings) are associated with improving growth. The impact can be significant. In general, three years after restructuring, growth is about 5 percent lower compared to countries that did not face restructuring over the same period. The exception is for final restructurings, which result in positive growth in the years immediately after the restructuring. Final restructurings tend to be better for growth because they reduce countries’ debt, with the strongest effect for countries that exit restructurings with relatively low debt levels.
Macroeconomics is in disarray. No one approach is dominant, and an increasing divide between theory and empirics is evident. This book presents both a critique of mainstream macroeconomics from a structuralist perspective and an exposition of modern structuralist approaches. The fundamental assumption of structuralism is that it is impossible to understand a macroeconomy without understanding its major institutions and distributive relationships across productive sectors and social groups. Lance Taylor focuses his critique on mainstream monetarist, new classical, new Keynesian, and growth models. He examines them from a historical perspective, tracing monetarism from its eighteenth-century roots and comparing current monetarist and new classical models with those of the post-Wicksellian, pre-Keynesian generation of macroeconomists. He contrasts the new Keynesian vision with Keynes's General Theory, and analyzes contemporary growth theories against long traditions of thought about economic development and structural change. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Social Accounts and Social Relations 1. A Simple Social Accounting Matrix 2. Implications of the Accounts 3. Disaggregating Effective Demand 4. A More Realistic SAM 5. Stock-Flow Relationships 6. A SAM and Asset Accounts for the United States 7. Further Thoughts 2. Prices and Distribution 1. Classical Macroeconomics 2. Classical Theories of Price and Distribution 3. Neoclassical Cost-Based Prices 4. Hat Calculus, Measuring Productivity Growth, and Full Employment Equilibrium 5. Mark-up Pricing in the Product Market 6. Efficiency Wages for Labor 7. New Keynesian Crosses and Methodological Reservations 8. First Looks at Inflation 3. Money, Interest, and Inflation 1. Money and Credit 2. Diverse Interest Theories 3. Interest Rate Cost-Push 4. Real Interest Rate Theory 5. The Ramsey Model 6. Dynamics on a Flying Trapeze 7. The Overlapping Generations Growth Model 8. Wicksell's Cumulative Process Inflation Model 9. More on Inflation Taxes 4. Effective Demand and Its Real and Financial Implications 1. The Commodity Market 2. Macro Adjustment via Forced Saving and Real Balance Effects 3. Real Balances, Input Substitution, and Money Wage Cuts 4. Liquidity Preference and Marginal Efficiency of Capital 5. Liquidity Preference, Fisher Arbitrage, and the Liquidity Trap 6. The System as a Whole 7. The IS/LM Model 8. Keynes and Friends on Financial Markets 9. Financial Markets and Investment 10. Consumption and Saving 11 "Disequilibrium" Macroeconomics 12. A Structuralist Synopsis 5. Short-Term Model Closure and Long-Term Growth 1. Model "Closures" in the Short Run 2. Graphical Representations and Supply-Driven Growth 3. Harrod, Robinson, and Related Stories 4. More Stable Demand-Determined Growth 6. Chicago Monetarism, New Classical Macroeconomics, and Mainstream Finance 1. Methodological Caveats 2. A Chicago Monetarist Model 3. A Cleaner Version of Monetarism 4. New Classical Spins 5. Dynamics of Government Debt 6. Ricardian Equivalence 7. The Business Cycle Conundrum 8. Cycles from the Supply Side 9. Optimal Behavior under Risk 10. Random Walk, Equity Premium, and the Modigliani-Miller Theorem 11. More on Modigliani-Miller 12. The Calculation Debate and Super-Rational Economics 7. Effective Demand and the Distributive Curve 1. Initial Observations 2. Inflation, Productivity Growth, and Distribution 3. Absorbing Productivity Growth 4. Effects of Expansionary Policy 5. Financial Extensions 6. Dynamics of the System 7. Comparative Dynamics 8. Open Economy Complications 8. Structuralist Finance and Money 1. Banking History and Institutions 2. Endogenous Finance 3. Endogenous Money via Bank Lending 4. Money Market Funds and the Level of Interest Rates 5. Business Debt and Growth in a Post-Keynesian World 6. New Keynesian Approaches to Financial Markets 9. A Genus of Cycles 1. Goodwin's Model 2. A Structuralist Goodwin Model 3. Evidence for the United States 4. A Contractionary Devaluation Cycle 5. An Inflation Expectations Cycle 6. Confidence and Multiplier 7. Minsky on Financial Cycles 8. Excess Capacity, Corporate Debt Burden, and a Cold Douche 9. Final Thoughts 10. Exchange Rate Complications 1. Accounting Conundrums 2. Determining Exchange Rates 3. Asset Prices, Expectations, and Exchange Rates 4. Commodity Arbitrage and Purchasing Power Parity 5. Portfolio Balance 6. Mundell-Fleming 7. IS/LM Comparative Statics 8. UIP and Dynamics 9. Open Economy Monetarism 10. Dornbusch 11. Other Theories of the Exchange Rate 12. A Developing Country Debt Cycle 13. Fencing in the Beast 11. Growth and Development Theories 1. New Growth Theories and Say's Law 2. Distribution and Growth 3. Models with Binding Resource or Sectoral Supply Constraints 4. Accounting for Growth 5. Other Perspectives 6. The Mainstream Policy Response 7. Where Theory Might Sensibly Go References Index Reconstructing Macroeconomics is a stunning intellectual achievement. It surveys an astonishing range of macroeconomic problems and approaches in a compact, coherent critical framework with unfailing depth, wit, and subtlety. Lance Taylor's pathbreaking work in structural macroeconomics and econometrics sets challenging standards of rigor, realism, and insight for the field. Taylor shows why the structuralist and Keynesian insistence on putting accounting consistency, income distribution, and aggregate demand at the center of macroeconomic analysis is indispensable to understanding real-world macroeconomic events in both developing and developed economies. The book is full of new results, modeling techniques, and shrewd suggestions for further research. Taylor's scrupulous and balanced appraisal of the whole range of macroeconomic schools of thought will be a source of new perspectives to macroeconomists of every persuasion. --Duncan K. Foley, New School University Lance Taylor has produced a masterful and comprehensive critical survey of existing macro models, both mainstream and structuralist, which breaks considerable new ground. The pace is brisk, the level is high, and the writing is entertaining. The author's sense of humor and literary references enliven the discussion of otherwise arcane and technical, but extremely important, issues in macro theory. This book is sure to become a standard reference that future generations of macroeconomists will refer to for decades to come. --Robert Blecker, American University While there are other books dealing with heterodox macroeconomics, this book surpasses them all in the quality of its presentation and in the careful treatment and criticism of orthodox macroeconomics including its recent contributions. The book is unique in the way it systematically covers heterodox growth theory and its relations to other aspects of heterodox macroeconomics using a common organizing framework in terms of accounting relations, and in the way it compares the theories with mainstream contributions. Another positive and novel feature of the book is that it takes a long view of the development of economic ideas, which leads to a more accurate appreciation of the real contributions by recent theoretical developments than is possible in a presentation that ignores the history of macroeconomics. --Amitava Dutt, University of Notre Dame
This is an open access book. Europe faces significant challenges in the coming decades: geopolitical, demographic, technological, increased competition, climate-related, and health issues due to an aging population, to mention a few. Given these challenges, technological progress and new ways of handling complex issues will be key to continued prosperity and growth. To accomplish a growth process driven by innovation and entrepreneurship, the institutional environment must take into account a multitude of different policy areas that interact to either strengthen or weaken an economy's innovative potential. Innovation is not only about R&D and higher education but is also intimately related to entrepreneurship. Similarly, entrepreneurship is not only about low start-up costs and favorable tax rates. Hence, a consistent and coordinated policy environment conducive to innovation and entrepreneurship is required to translate innovation into high-growth firms and macro-level growth. This book presents the basic cornerstones required to provide a policy regime that can nurture such dynamics. The authors draw extensively on empirical analysis of the development of the Swedish economy, which has been transformed from a so-called "sclerosis" state in the 1980s until the early 1990s to an economy characterized by successful entrepreneurship and innovation. This transformation resulted from a reform agenda that has been gradually rolled out, beginning in the mid-1980s. The authors argue that the Swedish experience provides useful lessons for other nations as well.
Ô. . . the book is an important reading in the field of entrepreneurship. One of its main contributions is that it clearly shows that the process of new firm formation is a regional event. The chapters are rich in theoretical insights and data, and are valuable readings for students, academics, and policy-makers interested in entrepreneurship and regional growth.Õ Ð Christine Tam‡sy, Regional Studies ÔEntrepreneurship can have powerful effects on local as well as national economies. The chapters in this edited volume, authored by well-known experts in their fields, explore various aspects of entrepreneurship and regional development. The book provides an illuminating overview of the current state of knowledge while also sharing with the reader several new findings and insights on issues as diverse as globalization, regional employment growth, nascent entrepreneurs, gazelles, labor productivity, government regulations, and university entrepreneurship. It is recommended reading for anyone interested in these topics.Õ Ð Simon C. Parker, The University of Western Ontario, Canada ÔThere is substantial evidence regarding the considerable regional variation in business creation. Michael Fritsch has done a fine job of assembling the most recent analyses of the best scholars on the regional factors affecting firm creation and the consequences. It is essential reading for any scholar or policy analyst seeking a state-of-the-art overview of the current empirical status of research on this important topic.Õ Ð Paul D. Reynolds, George Washington University, US ÔThis Handbook examines the contribution of the entrepreneur and related processes to regional economic development. The recognition that the indirect entrepreneurial effects on development are more significant than the direct is an important and under-girding conclusion. And further, that entrepreneurial driven effects are often not felt immediately but in some cases only across decades, as illustrated by the over-two-decade incubation of the entrepreneurial culture in Silicon Valley which only later resulted in it becoming the dominant icon of scientific and technology regional development that it is today.Õ Ð Roger Stough, George Mason University, US ÔThis volume fills an important gap in the research literature on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is a localized phenomenon and all too many studies disregard this fact. Thus, the regional economic milieu is a critical factor determining not only the volume and type of entrepreneurship but also the effects of entrepreneurship in terms of value-added growth, employment growth, etc. The contributions in this book by a number of leading scientists in the field provide an excellent overview and understanding of the prerequisites for and the role of entrepreneurship in regional growth and development.Õ Ð Charlie Karlsson, Jšnkšping University, Sweden Recent research has found pronounced differences in the level of entrepreneurship and new business formation across various regions and nations. This timely Handbook reveals that the development of new ventures as well as their effects on overall economic growth are strongly shaped by their regional and national environment. The expert group of contributors gives an overview on the current state of the art in this field, and proposes avenues for further investigation. Topics include the regional determinants of new business formation, the effects of start-ups on growth, the role of globalization for regional entrepreneurship, the effect of national and regional framework conditions, as well as the role of universities as incubators of innovative new firms.
A distinguished Yale economist and legal scholar’s argument that law, of all things, has the potential to rescue us from the next economic crisis. After the economic crisis of 2008, private-sector spending took nearly a decade to recover. Yair Listokin thinks we can respond more quickly to the next meltdown by reviving and refashioning a policy approach whose proven success is too rarely acknowledged. Harking back to New Deal regulatory agencies, Listokin proposes that we take seriously law’s ability to function as a macroeconomic tool, capable of stimulating demand when needed and relieving demand when it threatens to overheat economies. Listokin makes his case by looking at both positive and cautionary examples, going back to the New Deal and including the Keystone Pipeline, the constitutionally fraught bond-buying program unveiled by the European Central Bank at the nadir of the Eurozone crisis, the ongoing Greek crisis, and the experience of U.S. price controls in the 1970s. History has taught us that law is an unwieldy instrument of macroeconomic policy, but Listokin argues that under certain conditions it offers a vital alternative to the monetary and fiscal policy tools that stretch the legitimacy of technocratic central banks near their breaking point while leaving the rest of us waiting and wallowing.
Leading world scholars analyze a range of specific departures from general equilibrium theory which have significant implications for the macroeconomic analysis of both developed and developing economies. Jacques Drèze considers uncertainty and incomplete markets and Nobel Laureate Robert Solow relates growth theory to the macroeconomic framework. Other issues examined are the implications for macro-policy of new research, including Joseph Stiglitz's warning on the misplaced zeal for financial market liberalization which partly engendered the East Asian and Russian crises.
