The secular stagnation of productivity growth

The concern that an economy could experience persistent stagnation, caused by a structural weakness of aggregate demand, goes back to Alvin Hansen's thesis of “secular stagnation.” Hansen's thesis has been revived in recent times, when it became clear that productivity and potential growth in the OECD countries have been declining for decades....

Cordon of Conformity: Why DSGE Models Are Not the Future of Macroeconomics

The Rebuilding Macroeconomic Theory Project, led by David Vines and Samuel Wills (2020), is an important, albeit long overdue, initiative to rethink a failing mainstream macroeconomics. Professors Vines and Wills, who must be congratulated for stepping up to the challenge of trying to make mainstream macroeconomics relevant again, call for a new...

Lost in deflation: Why Italy’s woes are a warning to the whole Eurozone

Using macroeconomic data for 1960-2018, this paper analyzes the origins of the crisis of the ‘post-Maastricht Treaty order of Italian capitalism’. After 1992, Italy did more than most other Eurozone members to satisfy EMU conditions in terms of self-imposed fiscal consolidation, structural reform and real wage restraint — and the country was...

Lost in Deflation: Why Italy’s Woes Are a Warning to the Whole Eurozone

Using macroeconomic data for 1960–2018, this article analyzes the origins of the crisis of the “post-Maastricht Treaty order of Italian capitalism.” After 1992, Italy did more than most other Eurozone members to satisfy EMU conditions in terms of self-imposed fiscal consolidation, structural reform, and real wage restraint—and the country was...

The New Normal: Demand, Secular Stagnation, and the Vanishing Middle Class

The U.S. economy is widely diagnosed with two “diseases”: a secular stagnation of potential U.S. growth and rising income and job polarization. The two diseases have a common root in the demand shortfall, originating from the “unbalanced” growth between technologically “dynamic” and “stagnant” sectors. To understand how the short-run demand...