CFEPS BOOKS

     This volume presents the latest research into money, financial markets, and financial stability—areas that have long been of interest to Post Keynesians and to which they have made significant contributions.
     The papers were presented at the 8th International Post Keynesian Workshop in 2004 and illustrate the broad scope of Post Keynesian interests and research. Topics include: the evolution of the international financial system since the breakdown of Bretton Woods; the deficiencies of macroeconomic models in their treatment of money and the role of government; a critique of the standard policy of raising interest rates to contain inflation; the ‘confidence’ strategy versus the ‘credibility’ strategy of post-war monetary policy; the links between Post Keynesian research and the original Institutional economics associated with Veblen; today’s capitalist economy as a financial bubble, where much of savings and debt is used to purchase financial assets rather than invest in productive capacity; the existence of unit roots as supportive of Keynesian theory; the oligopsonistic power possessed by Mexican commercial banks in their domestic-deposit market; a critique of the Washington Consensus approach to macroeconomic policy and development; the role of equity finance in the ‘Tequila’ crisis recovery of the 1990s; and the evolution of the financial system in new EU member states such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the Baltic states.
      Hardback, 269 pages; published 2006

     Professor Wray explains why full employment and price stability are not mutually exclusive goals—contrary to prevailing economic theory and policy—and proposes a plan that would achieve both objectives: a government employer-of-last-resort program that would employ the otherwise unemployed, increase labor productivity and economic growth, and, at the same time, stabilize the wage scale and thus act as a brake on inflation.
    The author brings powerful new ideas to a critical economic issue. He demonstrates that, for policy makers who ordinarily are forced to choose between unemployment and inflation, there is a very positive alternative.
    Paperback, 198 pages; published 1998, reprinted 2003

     Innes was neither an economist nor a prolific writer, but his 1913 article in the Banking Law Journal can be considered a signpost on the road not taken in monetary theory.
     Innes argued that coins are tokens (their exchange value is different from that of the precious metals comprising them) and that money, by its very nature, is credit. Keynes agreed; ultimately, the ideas of Innes showed up—along with those of Frederick Knapp’s state money approach—in his Treatise on Money.
     In the ensuing decades, this promising integration was largely forgotten, as serious money research was shoved to the fringes of economics. This book examines the early contributions of Innes, the resulting debate, and the consequences of economists’ adoption of an erroneous conception of money.
     Hardback, 271 pages; published 2004

      The centerpiece of this book is an article by Charles Goodhart that criticizes the theoretical basis for the European Monetary Union. Goodhart characterizes the theory as Metallism and presents an alternative theory—Chartalism—as a more compelling and historically accurate view of money.
      According to M theory, money is a ‘creature of the market,’ where markets are made up of rational agents, making optimal choices, subject to various constraints—an individualist approach. According to C theory, money is a ‘creature of the state,’ and it emphasizes the relationship between the state’s power to tax and the demand for money (to settle these obligations)—an institutionalist approach. The former has dominated research and policy formulation, but the latter leads to a radically different interpretation of the ramifications of the euro’s introduction.
     This book adds a historical perspective, expands the argument, and comments on the central themes of the debate; it concludes with Goodhart’s responses to the critique.
     Hardback, 202 pages; published 2003

De L. Randall Wray

     Professor Wray explica por que o pleno emprego e a estabilidade de preços não são objetivos incompatíveis - ao contrário do que afirmam as teoria e política econômicas atuais - e propõe um plano capaz de obter os dois objetivos: um programa em que o governo atua como empregador-de-última-instânca e é responsável por empregar a população desempregada, aumentando a produtividade do trabalho e o crescimento econômico, além de, ao mesmo tempo, estabilizar o nível dos salários e assim agir como um freio para a taxa de inflação.
    O autor apresenta idéias novas e poderosas a uma questão econômica crítica. Ele demonstra que, para os formuladores de política que são forçados cotidianamente a escolher entre o desemprego e a inflação, há uma alternativa muito positiva.
    Paperback, 198 páginas; publicado 1998, reimpresso 2003

Edited by L. Randall Wray and Mathew Forstater

    This volume contains papers presented at the 7th International Post Keynesian Summer School and Workshop in 2002. The event was part of a series dating from the late 1970s, when the conferences were initiated to expose graduate students around the world to Keynes’s general theory and 60-plus years of critique and development.
      Leading Post Keynesian scholars examine prevailing issues in the areas of: current economic policy; monetary theory and policy; development, growth, and inflation; growth, inflation, and distribution; methodology; and history of thought. Topics include wage bargaining and monetary policy in the EMU, electronic money and its effects, money as a social convention, currency boards and unions, economic policy in transitioning countries, inflation dynamics in Australia, ‘demi-regularities’ of pricing behavior, and Allied, German, and Latin perspectives on inflation.
      Hardback, 356 pages; published 2004