Talks in Germany

Flattr this!

I gave talks to stu­dents in Berlin and Ham­burg last week at the invi­ta­tion of of Rethink­ing Eco­nom­ics groups at Berlin Free Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ham­burg. Both groups asked me to cov­er some of the cri­tiques of main­stream eco­nom­ics that I pro­vide in Debunk­ing Eco­nom­ics, as well as cov­er­ing the mon­e­tary approach to Post Key­ne­sian eco­nom­ics that has been the focus of most of my more recent pub­lic lec­tures.

I includ­ed a large num­ber of ref­er­ences to Post Key­ne­sian literature–both to ful­fil the stu­dents’ requests, and to counter Diane Coyle’s claim in the recent BBC Radio 4 doc­u­men­tary Teach­ing Eco­nom­ics After The Crash that the stu­dents’ call to be taught Post Key­ne­sian eco­nom­ics rep­re­sents “going back to the eco­nom­ics of the 1930s and these almost Medieval Scholas­tic debates about what your world view was.” In fact, it’s a call to recog­nise an alter­na­tive research par­a­digm in eco­nom­ics that began 80 years ago and has been ignored by the Neo­clas­si­cal main­stream since the 1970s.

The ref­er­ences are in the last 8 slides of the Ham­burg lec­ture. As I note in that lec­ture, what I cov­er here is only a tiny frac­tion of the Post Key­ne­sian lit­er­a­ture. If you want a far more thor­ough overview, I rec­om­mend two books by John King:

The for­mer is a com­pre­hen­sive study of the his­to­ry of Post Key­ne­sian eco­nom­ic thought; the lat­ter is a guide to numer­ous issues seen from the Post Key­ne­sian per­spec­tive, with con­tri­bu­tions from a large num­ber of cur­rent Post Key­ne­sian econ­o­mists, includ­ing me.

Berlin Lec­ture Pow­er­point Slides: Why Neo­clas­si­cal Eco­nom­ics can’t explain mar­ket demand or sup­ply

Ham­burg Lec­ture Pow­er­point Slides: Why the Neo­clas­si­cal assump­tion of ris­ing mar­gin­al cost is a fal­la­cy

The Berlin Lecture

The Hamburg Lecture

Bookmark the permalink.

About Steve Keen

I am Professor of Economics and Head of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University London, and a long time critic of conventional economic thought. As well as attacking mainstream thought in Debunking Economics, I am also developing an alternative dynamic approach to economic modelling. The key issue I am tackling here is the prospect for a debt-deflation on the back of the enormous private debts accumulated globally, and our very low rate of inflation.