Maynard's Revenge: The Collapse of Free Market Macroeconomics

Gerald Epstein

摘要

So, will Maynard ever get his revenge? To be sure, Keynesian thinking has not yet been completely pushed aside in the realm of policy or economic analysis. For one thing, there is a raging debate in Europe and the United States about the road out of the crisis: more austerity or more "stimulus"? And in the realm of economic analysis, it is true that models of leverage cycles with Keynesian/Minskyian touches are making a reappearance (see, for example, Adrian and Shin 2010). As Taylor notes: "To this day, mainstream macroeconomics remains conflicted about the reintro-duction of Say's Law ... to counter the principle of effective demand. The mainstream believes in the natural rate as an article of faith but cannot deny that the macro system almost always follows the directions initially charted by Keynes" (234). Yet, so far, these elements offer meager crumbs to Keynes and the Keynesians, as austerity forces have the upper hand in Europe and have stymied more fiscal expansion in the United States; meanwhile the Keynesian ideas of fundamental uncertainty, financial instability, the role of aggregate demand in the long term, income distribution, and the role of social actors has not made a dent in the advanced undergraduate or graduate curricula in most economics departments. Nor are Keynesian policy ideas such as the broader socialization of investment, or industrial policy being seriously considered (353-56). The reasons for the staying power of austerity ideas and Say's Law oriented economics in a time of economic crisis are surely complex. Keynes himself emphasized cognitive capture of the profession ("the academic scribblers") and political and policy capture by economic elites (the rentier interests). Confronting at least the "academic scribblers," Taylor has written a long, complex but engaging and masterful book to try to make a dent in the academic and policy fortress that protect mainstream macroeconomic and financial ideas, to help rein-troduce students and the profession to the ideas of Keynes and the broad Keynesian tradition. With respect to the current crisis, Maynard's Revenge provides a strong counter-point, for example, to the revealing admission made in Gary Gorton and Andrew Metrick's recent survey of academic literature on the financial crisis. "Getting Up to Speed on the Financial Crisis: A One-Weekend-Reader's Guide" (2012) introduces the survey this way: "Many professional economists now find themselves answering questions from their students, friends, and relatives on topics that did not seem at all central until a few years ago, and we are collectively scrambling to catch up" (1, emphasis added). Maynard's Revenge shows that, for economists working in the Keynesian tradition, the topics of credit and asset bubbles, leverage and financial cycles, aggregate demand driven economic dynamics, failures of "efficient" financial markets theory, and divergent movement of key economic variables far away from steady-states, have, for decades, all seemed central to doing macroeconomics. Had the profession been paying attention to the writings of Keynes and his "disciples"—including Goodwin, Kaldor, Kindleberger, Minsky, Crotty, and, notably, Taylor himself—and reading the journals that publish related work, such as the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Metroeconomica, and the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, the profession would not have to scramble so much now to catch up. And looking forward, i£ many more professors integrate Maynard's Revenge into their advanced undergraduate and graduate macroeconomics curricula, perhaps it won't have to scramble so much the next time around.

机译：那么，梅纳德会不会报仇？可以肯定的是，凯恩斯主义的思想在政策或经济分析领域还没有被完全抛弃。一方面，在欧洲和美国，关于摆脱危机之路的争论是激烈的：更加紧缩还是更多的“刺激”？在经济分析领域，确实具有凯恩斯主义/明斯基主义触动的杠杆周期模型正在重新出现（例如，参见Adrian和Shin 2010）。正如泰勒所言：“直到今天，主流宏观经济学仍然对重新引入萨伊定律...以抵制有效需求的原则感到矛盾。主流主义者相信自然利率是一种信念，但不能否认宏观系统几乎总是遵循凯恩斯最初制定的指示”（234）。然而，到目前为止，由于紧缩势力在欧洲占上风，并在美国阻碍了更多的财政扩张，这些因素给凯恩斯和凯恩斯主义者提供了微薄的面包屑。同时，凯恩斯主义的基本不确定性，金融不稳定，长期总需求的作用，收入分配以及社会行为者的作用等思想并未影响大多数经济学系的高级本科或研究生课程。也没有认真考虑凯恩斯主义的政策思想，例如更广泛的投资社会化或产业政策（353-56）。在经济危机时期，紧缩观念和萨伊法则的经济学具有持久力的原因肯定很复杂。凯恩斯本人也强调了对职业的认知性捕获（“学术涂鸦者”）以及经济精英对政治和政策的捕获性（食利者利益）。泰勒至少面对“学术涂鸦家”，写了一本长而复杂却又引人入胜的书，试图在保护主流宏观经济和金融思想的学术和政策要塞上有所作为，以帮助重新引入学生和专业凯恩斯的思想和广泛的凯恩斯主义传统。对于当前的危机，梅纳德的《复仇》提供了强有力的反驳，例如，加里·戈顿和安德鲁·米特里克对金融危机的学术文献所做的最新调查就揭示了这一点。《快速应对金融危机：单周末读者指南》（2012年）以这种方式介绍了这项调查：“许多专业经济学家现在发现自己正在回答来自学生，朋友和亲戚的问题，这些问题似乎并不多见。直到几年前，在所有中央地区，我们都在集体追赶”（1，重点增加了）。梅纳德的《复仇》表明，对于从事凯恩斯主义传统的经济学家来说，信贷和资产泡沫，杠杆和金融周期，总需求驱动的经济动力，“有效”的金融市场理论的失败以及关键经济变量的分散运动等主题几十年来，来自稳态的人们似乎都在进行宏观经济学研究。如果该专业一直关注凯恩斯及其“门徒”（包括古德温，卡尔多，金德伯格，明斯基，克罗蒂，尤其是泰勒本人）的著作，并阅读出版相关著作的期刊，例如《剑桥杂志》经济学，大都会经济学和后凯恩斯主义经济学杂志，该专业现在不必为争先恐后而费劲。展望未来，我将有更多的教授将梅纳德的《复仇》纳入他们先进的本科和研究生宏观经济学课程中，也许下次不必再费劲了。

Maynard's Revenge: The Collapse of Free Market Macroeconomics

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