On capital, saving, and investment in the twenty-first century: a reply to Hein

With our book Saving and Investment in the Twenty-First Century: The Great Divergence (published as open access), we present a comprehensive theoretical explanation as well as empirical evidence for the phenomenon of low interest rates observed in the OECD countries and China and make various economic policy recommendations based on it. We have developed a new capital-theoretical approach to address these important issues. In what follows, we will discuss some of the more critical parts of Eckhard Hein’s otherwise very sympathetic review of our book.

Download Full-text

Saving and Investment in the Twenty-First Century: The Great Divergence – some comments from a post-Keynesian perspective*

European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies Intervention ◽

10.4337/ejeep.2021.03.04 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 293-302

Author(s):

Eckhard Hein

Keyword(s):

Economic Policy ◽

Full Employment ◽

National Income ◽

Private Investment ◽

Policy Coordination ◽

First Century ◽

Government Deficits ◽

Long Run ◽

Great Divergence ◽

Twenty First Century

This contribution discusses the book Saving and Investment in the Twenty-First Century: The Great Divergence by von Weizsäcker/Krämer (2021). It touches upon the underlying theoretical perspectives, von Weizsäcker’s neo-Austrian view and Krämer’s short-run Keynesian theory, and it proposes an alternative based on post-Keynesian distribution and growth theory. It also reviews the economic policy proposals of the book with respect to government deficits and debt, as well as international coordination of current-account balances, and finds broad agreement with modern post-Keynesian proposals, with some deviation when it comes to macroeconomic policy coordination among monetary, fiscal and wage/incomes policies. It concludes that these economic policy agreements should not be taken as a surprise. The requirements of stabilising government deficits and debt, in the face of an excess of private saving over private investment at full employment, and an excess of the private desire to hold net financial assets over the private-sector supply of financial liabilities, are based on solid national income and financial accounting. They are thus compatible with different macroeconomic theories regarding long-run equilibrium and adjustments towards it.

Download Full-text

Twenty-First-Century Economic Policy

10.2307/j.ctv1kbgt01.13 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 182-210

Keyword(s):

Economic Policy ◽

First Century ◽

Twenty First Century

Download Full-text

Introduction: Private Wealth and Public Debt

Saving and Investment in the Twenty-First Century ◽

10.1007/978-3-030-75031-2_1 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-13

Author(s):

Carl Christian von Weizsäcker ◽

Hagen M. Krämer

Keyword(s):

Fiscal Policy ◽

Interest Rate ◽

Life Expectancy ◽

Interest Rates ◽

Public Debt ◽

Real Interest Rate ◽

Retirement Planning ◽

First Century ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Real Assets

AbstractIn the economic area comprising the OECD countries plus China, almost half of private wealth consists of net public debt. Private wealth is nearly twice the size of private real assets. Due to the continuing rise in life expectancy, the share of public debt in private wealth is growing. As long as public debt does not become too great, real interest rates can be low, but positive in the twenty-first century. The main reason for this is private retirement planning in light of high life expectancy. Investment cannot keep up with increasing private saving. In the twenty-first century, public debt is a macroeconomic steering instrument. Fiscal policy uses it to ensure that a positive, but low real interest rate level continues to prevail.

Download Full-text

Embodied nations: Masculinities, nationhood and (homo)sexual desire. From Borstal Boy (2000) to God’s Own Country (2017)

Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture ◽

10.1386/qsmpc_00022_1 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 7-25 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Guillermo Severiche

Keyword(s):

Sexual Desire ◽

Theoretical Approach ◽

The Body ◽

First Century ◽

British Cinema ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Valid Form

This article proposes a comparison between Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country (UK, 2017) and Peter Sheridan’s Borstal Boy (Ireland, 2000) to examine the role that masculinities and sexual desire play in the construction, (re)configuration and (re)affirmation of nation-ness. These films depict bodies and their sensations as being able to break down and re-shape a strict and embodied notion of nationhood strongly tied by patriarchal norms. However, they also rely on rigid representations of masculinities and do not attempt to dissolve nation-ness as a corporeal entity, but to re-shape it and re-install it as a valid form of existence. Notions by Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain and Jasbir Puar’s Terrorist Assemblages provide the theoretical approach to observe possible changes and continuities regarding the domestication of male bodies in twenty-first-century Irish and British cinema.

Download Full-text

Book Review: South-South Trade and Finance in the Twenty-First Century: Rise of the South or a Second Great Divergence

Review of Radical Political Economics ◽

10.1177/0486613418782775 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 51 (2) ◽

pp. 336-339

Author(s):

Yasemin Dildar

Keyword(s):

First Century ◽

The South ◽

Great Divergence ◽

Twenty First Century

Download Full-text

On Taking India into the Twenty-First Century (New Economic Policy in India)

Modern Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0026749x00013780 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 209-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

I. G. Patel

Keyword(s):

Economic Policy ◽

Western Europe ◽

Prime Minister ◽

First Century ◽

Indian Society ◽

New Economic Policy ◽

Very Old ◽

National Leadership ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Large Sections

On one of his many visits to India Kingsley Martin was once asked how he saw the prospects for Western Europe. His reply was that he was very optimistic as most of the leaders of Western Europe then were very old. If the transition from age to youth in national leadership is a sufficient basis for hope, we certainly have much to be grateful for in India. And our young Prime Minister has already struck a very responsive chord among large sections of Indian society by his promise of change. His mother had won the 1980 election on the promise of a ‘Government that works’. Mr Gandhi promised in 1984 a ‘Government that works faster’—thus heralding a promise of greater efficiency in general. When asked about the objective of his new Government, he used the now famous phrase that his objective was to take India into the twenty-first century. Taken at its face value, this was a rather vacuous phrase. It is not necessary for anyone to carry India, Atlas-like, into the twenty-first century. It would arrive at our doorstep in due course, as it will at everyone else's, and most probably without even a whimper.

Download Full-text