In this book on disequilibrium, growth and labor market dynamics we take predominantly a macroeconomic perspective. We present a working model that can easily be varied in different directions in order to subsume innovations in the literature on macroeconomics, old and new, and to contribute to important currently discussed macroeconomic issues. Our working model is set up in a way that there is a close relationship between our presented dynamic models and modern macro econometric models with disequilibrium both in the labor and the goods markets. One of our objectives is, therefore, to narrow the gap between theoretical and applied structural macrodynamic model building. We hope that the book will be a useful reference for all researchers, academic teachers and practitioners of macroeconomic and macro econometric model building who are interested in economic dynamics, independently of whether they use equilibrium or disequilibrium methods in their own research. We base this hope on the fact that our approach contains a number of unique features. The emphasis on the identification and analysis of the basic feedback mechanisms at work in modern macro economies. A detailed study of the partial as well as integrated dynamic interaction between these feedback mechanisms that consti tute the interdependence of markets and sectors of the modern macro economy. The rela tionship between the macroeconomic framework of our working model and the Walrasian, Non-Walrasian and New-Keynesian reformulations of macroeconomics.

Building on The Dynamics of Keynesian Monetary Growth by Chiarella and Flaschel (2000), this book is a key contribution to business cycle theory, setting out a disequilibrium approach with gradual adjustments of the key macroeconomic variables. Its analytic study of a deterministic model of economic activity, inflation and income distribution integrates elements in the tradition of Keynes, Metzler and Goodwin (KMG). After a qualitative analysis of the basic feedback mechanisms, the authors calibrate the KMG model to the stylized facts of the business cycle in the U.S. economy, and then undertake a detailed numerical investigation of the local and global dynamics generated by the model. Finally, topical issues in monetary policy are studied in small macromodels as well as for the KMG model by incorporating an estimated Taylor-type interest rate reaction function. The stability features of this enhanced model are also compared to those of the original KMG model.

Originally published in 2000, this book is in the tradition of non-market-clearing approaches to macrodynamic approaches. It builds a series of integrated disequilibrium growth models of increasing complexity, which display the economic interaction between households, firms and government across labour, goods, money, bonds and equities markets. Chiarella and Flaschel demonstrate how macrodynamics can be developed in a hierarchical way from economically simple structures to more advanced ones. In addition it investigates complex macrodynamic feedback mechanisms.

This book represents the first of three volumes offering a complete reinterpretation and restructuring of Keynesian macroeconomics and a detailed investigation of the disequilibrium adjustment processes characterizing the financial, the goods and the labour markets and their interaction. It questions in a radical way the evolution of Keynesian macroeconomics after World War II and focuses on the limitations of the traditional Keynesian approach until it fell apart in the early 1970s, as well as the inadequacy of the new consensus in macroeconomics that emerged from the Monetarist critique of Keynesianism. Professors Chiarella, Flaschel and Semmler investigate basic methodological issues, the pitfalls of the Rational Expectations School, important feedback channels in the tradition of Tobin’s work, and theories of the wage-price spiral and the evidences for them. The book uses primarily partial approaches, the integration of which will be the subject of subsequent volumes. With its focus on Keynesian propagation mechanisms, the research in this book provides a unique alternative to the black-box shock-absorber approaches that dominate modern macroeconomics. Reconstructing Keynesian Macroeconomics should be of interest to students and researchers who want to look at alternatives to the mainstream macrodynamics that emerged from the Monetarist critique of Keynesianism.

The macroeconomic development of most major industrial economies is characterised by boom-bust cycles. Normally such boom-bust cycles are driven by specific sectors of the economy. In the financial meltdown of the years 2007–9 it was the credit sector and the real-estate sector that were the main driving forces. This book takes on the challenge of interpreting and modelling this meltdown. In doing so it revives the traditional Keynesian approach to the financial-real economy interaction and the business cycle, extending it in several important ways. In particular, it adopts the Keynesian view of a hierarchy of markets and introduces a detailed financial sector into the traditional Keynesian framework. The approach of the book goes beyond the currently dominant paradigm based on the representative agent, market clearing and rational economic agents. Instead it proposes an economy populated with heterogeneous, rationally bounded agents attempting to cope with disequilibria in various markets.

Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.