Macroeconomic assessment of possible Green Recovery scenarios in Visegrad countries

The article discusses how and why Green Recovery could be beneficial for the Visegrad countries based on a modelling exercise using the E3ME macroeconometric model. Green Recovery is defined as including policies in recovery plans that not only target economic recovery, but also contribute to environmental targets. The paper proposes that a Green Recovery could be valuable and suitable for the region contributing to both restoring employment and boosting economic activity as well as reaching climate goals. This is tested through a macroeconomic simulation, using the E3ME model. E3ME is built on Post-Keynesian economic theory and on econometric estimations of macroeconomic relationships. The results of the analysis focus on three dimensions: (1) social – employment, (2) environmental – level of CO2 emissions and (3) economic activity – gross domestic product (GDP). Outcomes indicate that a green recovery can shorten the time needed for employment and economic recovery as well as contributes to CO2 emission reductions. In Hungary, Czechia and Poland, the impact persists into the long-term; however, the paper also concludes that countries with high reliance on coal (e.g. Poland) could return to coal in the long term if no further policies are introduced.

Economic welfare as ethical concept and economic policy

Purpose – Paper argues that the proper approach to the topic of economic welfare should include an appreciation that markets are not characterized by an endogenous tendency towards equilibrium. The economists, Schumpeter, Keynes and Minsky are right in this regard as opposed to Adam Smith and contemporary economic orthodoxy. However, today’s liberal political theories largely assumes the tendency towards equilibrium and so are inadequate to deal with economic issues such as economic welfare which arise in conditions of non-equilibrium. The purpose of this paper is to propose Winfield’s reconstruction of Hegel’s social philosophy as more fitted to deal with market realities. Design/methodology/approach – Paper starts with a debate within economics and uses it as a basis to evaluate different schools of normative philosophy. Paper concludes by showing how the preferred philosophy is capable to rule between different economic policies responding to economic disequilibrium. Findings – Hegelian philosophy has capacity to adjudicate between economic policies to resolve market failure that contemporary liberal theory lacks. Practical implications – Paper provides the ethical justification for economic policies that have heretofore only been recommend by economists. Originality/value – Paper points to the largely overlooked fact that most contemporary political theory assumes market equilibrium. Paper argues that Hegelian philosophy provides the ethical justification for certain post-Keynesian economic policies, a position no one else is making.

Post-Keynesian Distribution of Personal Income and Pay

This chapter presents an approach to the analysis of the personal distribution of income and pay consistent with post-Keynesian economic analysis. Since the Keynesian tradition is macroeconomic, this raises the question: what is the relationship between inequality and macroeconomics? After a brief discussion of theory and review of recent work in related traditions, the chapter surveys empirical efforts to develop dense and consistent measures of economic inequality suitable for use in macroeconomic studies, using a method based on the between-groups component of Theil’s T statistic. A principal contribution is to show that dense and consistent inequality measures can be computed from many diverse and mundane sources of information, including regional tax collections, employment and earnings, census of manufacturing, and harmonized international industrial data sets. The rich data environment so constructed permits new analyses of patterns of economic change, by region, by sector, and by country, and broadly supports the idea that the movement of inequality is closely related to macroeconomic events at the national and the global level, including war, revolution, and financial crises. Indeed, there is strong evidence that the movement of inequality within countries is dominated by a single global pattern, closely related to changes in the international financial regime.

The Post Keynesian School

The article written by the prominent thinker in Post Keynesian economic theory examines the main contribution to macroeconomics made by the group of scientists aimed at resurrecting the forgotten aspects of J. M. Keynes’ legacy. The author considers interrelations between fundamental uncertainty, non-neutrality of money and the role of forward contracts in the economy, thus suggesting an original approach to macroeconomic analysis.