Quelle

Wahrgenommen von Heinrichsgeist: 2025. Zitate auf dieser Seite beziehen sich auf diese Quelle, sofern nicht anders gekennzeichnet (Zitationszweck: Anschauliche Hervorhebung ausgewählter Passagen).

Interessant

Introduction

Chapter 1 (‘Predicting the “unpredictable”’)

The “Great Recession” (Keen meint die Große Finanzkrise) war vorhersehbar. Keen war einer der korrekt prognostizierte.

Part 1 ‘Foundations’

Wackelige Konzepte neoklassischer Ökonomie werden dargestellt: Theorie von Nachfrage, Supply, Einkommensverteilung

Chapter 3 (‘The caluclus of hedonism’)

reveals that economics has failed to derive a coherent theory of consumer demand from its premise that people are no more than self-interested hedonists. As a result, economic theory can’t justify a crucial and seemingly innocuous element of its analysis of markets – that demand for a product will fall smoothly as its price rises. Far from being innocuous, this failure cripples neoclassical theory, but neoclassical economists have both ignored this failure, and responded to it in ways that make a mockery of their claims to being scientific.

Chapter 4 (‘Size does matter’)

shows that the economic theory of ‘the firm’ is logically inconsistent. When the inconsistencies are removed, two of the central mantras of neoclassical economics – that ‘price is set by supply and demand’ and ‘equating marginal cost and marginal revenue maximizes profits’ are shown to be false. Economic theory also cannot distinguish between competitive firms and monopolies, despite its manifest preference for small competitive firms over large ones.

Chapter 5 (‘The price of everything and the value of nothing’)

argues that the theory of supply is also flawed, because the conditions which are needed to make the theory work are unlikely to apply in practice. The concept of diminishing marginal returns, which is essential to the theory, is unlikely to apply in practice, ‘supply curves’ are likely to be flat, or even downward-sloping, and the dynamic nature of actual economies means that the neoclassical rule for maximizing profit is even more incorrect than it was shown to be in the previous chapter.

Chapter 6 (‘To each according to his contribution’)

looks at the theory of the labor market. The theory essentially argues that wages in a market economy reflect workers’ contributions to production. Flaws in the underlying theory imply that wages are not in fact based on merit, and that measures which economists argue would reduce unemployment may in fact increase it.

Part 2 ‘Complexities’

Chapter 7 (‘The holy war over capital’)

complements Chapter 5 by showing that the theory of capital is logically inconsistent. Profit does not reflect capital’s contribution to output, and changing the price of capital relative to labor may have ‘perverse’ impacts on demand for these ‘factors of production.’

Chapter 8 (‘There is madness in their method’)

examines methodology and finds that, contrary to what economists tell their students, assumptions do matter. What’s more, the argument that they don’t is actually a smokescreen for neoclassical economists – and especially journal editors, since they routinely reject papers that don’t make the assumptions they insist upon.

Chapter 9 (‘Let’s do the Time Warp again’)

discusses the validity of applying static (timeless) analysis to economics when the economy is clearly dynamic itself. The chapter argues that static economic analysis is invalid when applied to a dynamic economy, so that economic policy derived from static economic reasoning is likely to harm rather than help an actual economy.

Chapter 10 (‘Why they didn’t see it coming’)

tracks the development of macroeconomics into its current sorry state, and argues that what has been derided as ‘Keynesian’ macroeconomics was in fact a travesty of Keynes’s views. It explains the otherwise bizarre fact that the people who had the least inkling that a serious economic crisis was imminent in 2007 were the world’s most respected economists, while only rebels and outsiders like myself raised the alarm.

Chapter 11 (‘The price is not right’)

deals with the economic theory of asset markets, known as the ‘Efficient Markets Hypothesis’. It argues that the conditions needed to ensure what economists call market efficiency – which include that investors have identical, accurate expectations of the future, and equal access to unlimited credit – cannot possibly apply in the real world. Finance markets cannot be efficient, and finance and debt do affect the real economy.

Chapter 12 (‘Misunderstanding the Great Depression and the Great Recession’)

returns to macroeconomics, and considers the dominant neoclassical explanation of the Great Depression – that it was all the fault of the Federal Reserve. The great irony of today’s crisis is that the person most responsible for promoting this view is himself now chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Part 3 ‘Alternatives’

Chapter 13 (‘Why I did see “It” coming’)

outlines Hyman Minsky’s ‘Financial Instability Hypothesis,’ and my nonlinear and monetary models of it, which were the reason I anticipated this crisis, and why I went public with my warnings in late 2005.

Chapter 14 (‘A monetary model of capitalism’)

shows how a strictly monetary model of capitalism can be built remarkably simply, once all the factors that neoclassical theory ignores are incorporated: time and disequilibrium, and the institutional and social structure of capitalism.

Chapter 15 (‘Why stock markets crash’)

presents four non-equilibrium approaches to the analysis of asset markets, all of which indicate that finance destabilizes the real economy.

Chapter 16 (‘Don’t shoot me, I’m only the piano’)

examines the role of mathematics in economic theory. It argues that mathematics itself is not to blame for the state of economics today, but instead that bad and inappropriate mathematics by economists has resulted in them persisting with an inappropriate static equilibrium analysis of the economy. The dynamic, non-equilibrium social system that is a market economy should be analyzed with dynamic, non-equilibrium tools.

Chapter 17 (‘Nothing to lose but their minds’)

dissects Marxian economics, arguing that this potential alternative to conventional economics is seriously flawed. However, much of the problem stems from an inadequate understanding of Marx by not just his critics, but also his alleged friends.

Chapter 18 (‘There are alternatives’)

briefly presents several alternative schools in economics, and shows that viable if somewhat underdeveloped alternative ways to ‘think economically’ already exist.