Mattias Vermeiren - Crisis and Inequality

Figure 1.10 Average annual contribution of private consumption and net exports to GDP growth, 1985–2007

Source: AMECO; OECD

AT = Austria; BE = Belgium; CA = Canada; DE = Germany; DM = Denmark; ES = Spain; FI = Finland; GR = Greece; JP = Japan; NL = Netherlands; PT = Portugal; SE = Sweden; UK = United Kingdom; US = United States.

The debt-led and export-led growth models became mutually dependent: buoyant domestic demand in the debt-led economies translated into higher imports from export-led economies and helped to sustain their growth model; trade surpluses in the latter economies translated into excess savings that were reinvested in the financial system of the debt-led economies and facilitated their growth. The key problem was that these interdependencies culminated in widening and unsustainable trade imbalances that many economists consider to be an important international cause of the global financial crisis and subsequent euro crisis: running persistent and rising trade deficits implied that the debt-led economies accumulated unsustainable amounts of foreign liabilities by borrowing in net terms from private banks in the export-led economies. In chapter 7we analyse the linkages between the formation of these two growth models and the widening of unsustainable imbalances, which has imposed a painful macroeconomic adjustment process on many industrialized countries since the eruption of the crisis – but particularly so on peripheral Eurozone countries.

The growth model perspective elaborated in the following chapters deviates from neoclassical models in three fundamental ways. First, it is based on heterodox economic theories that emphasize the role of aggregate demand dynamics not only in affecting the short-term fluctuations of economic activity (i.e. business cycles) but also in determining the long-term growth potential of the economy. Second, these dynamics are to a great extent determined by the distribution of national income and wealth in the economy, which is exogenously affected by social conditions and institutions that both reflect and shape the bargaining position of various classes and groups in capitalist societies. Third, these institutions reflect temporary and fragile attempts to resolve structural tensions and conflicts between these classes and groups, making the capitalist system intrinsically unstable and prone to crisis. These three features make a growth model perspective theoretically appropriate for understanding the rise and fall of egalitarian capitalism, as the following chapter sets out to argue.

1 1 Piketty 2014.

2 2 Ibid.

3 3 Kristal 2010.

4 4 Bengtsson and Ryner 2015: 411; Onaran 2012.

5 5 Bivens et al. 2014.

6 6 Piketty 2014.

7 7 OECD 2018: 52.

8 8 Goldin and Katz 2008: 7–8.

9 9 https://www.tutor2u.net/economics.

10 10 Heilbroner 1995: 57.

11 11 Autor et al. 2016.

12 12 OECD 2015a: 11.

13 13 Mankiw 2018: 5, 418.

14 14 For a review of the neoclassical literature on the relationship between inequality and growth and an empirical assessment of that relationship, see Barro 1999. In his study, Barro finds that, at least for the advanced countries, ‘active income redistribution appears to involve a trade-off between the benefits of greater equality and a reduction in overall economic growth’ (1999: 32).

15 15 Piketty 2014: 314.

16 16 Hager 2018: 7.

17 17 An underlying assumption is that labour and capital shares are determined entirely by production technology, which increases the marginal product of capital and labour by the same amount. See Kristal 2010: 736–7 and Piketty 2014: 217–20 for a discussion.

18 18 Marsh 1983: 4.

19 19 Lindblom 1977.

20 20 Gill and Law 1989: 481; see also Cox 1987; Gill 1998; van Apeldoorn 2002; Overbeek and Jessop 2018.

21 21 Hacker and Pierson 2002: 282.

22 22 Korpi 1983; Esping-Andersen 1990; Huber and Stephens 2001; Stephens 1979.

23 23 Hall and Soskice 2001; Hancké et al. 2007.

24 24 Korpi 1983; Esping-Andersen 1990; Huber and Stephens 2001; Stephens 1979; Baccaro and Howell 2017.

25 25 Galbraith 2012; Onaran et al. 2011; Ostry et al. 2014; Stiglitz 2015; Stockhammer 2015. See Michell 2015 for a review.

26 26 Cingano 2014.

27 27 Cynamon and Fazzari 2016; Kumhof and Rancière 2010; Rajan 2010; Onaran et al. 2011; Stockhammer 2015; Stockhammer and Onaran 2013.

28 28 Mian et al. 2020; see also Goda and Lysandrou 2014; Goda et al. 2017.

29 29 Sweezy 1942. See Clarke 1994 for an overview of Marxist theories of crisis.

30 30 Marx 1967: 484.

31 31 Baccaro and Pontusson 2016; Behringer and van Treeck 2019; Onaran 2015; Stockhammer and Onaran 2013; Stochammer 2018; Stockhammer and Kohler 2019.

32 32 Ahlquist and Ansell 2017; Montgomerie and Büdenbender 2015; Schwartz 2012; Watson 2009.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.