Rethinking Macroeconomics

Does Macroeconomics Need Microeconomic Foundations?

I argue that it is microeconomics that needs foundations, not macroeconomics. Preferences need to be built on biology, and, in particular, on neuroscience. In contrast, macroeconomics could benefit from rationalizations of aggregate economic phenomena by non-equilibrium statistical physics. Special issue Reconstructing Macroeconomics JEL: B22, B41, C82, D87

Crises and paradigms in macroeconomics

Contrasts are drawn between mainstream macroeconomics (with the ›New Consensus in Macroeconomics‹ taken as the current manifestation) and heterodox macroeconomics and their abilities to comprehend the fi nancial crises and world wide recession of 2007 – 09 for macroeconomic paradigms is discussed. Specifi cally, the contrasting ways in which the two schools of thought treat unemployment, human ...

The Transformation of Macroeconomic Policy and Research

What I am going to describe for you is a revolution in macroeconomics, a transformation in methodology that has reshaped how we conduct our science. Prior to the transformation, macroeconomics was largely separate from the rest of economics. Indeed, some considered the study of macroeconomics fundamentally different and thought there was no hope of integrating macroeconomics with the rest of ec...

Rethinking Philosophy in an Oriental Way

Disequilibrium macroeconomics: an episode in the transformation of modern macroeconomics

ed from issues they could not handle but which enabled them to analyse the dynamics in which they were interested. However, a more common reaction was to focus on the formal models and to confine their theorizing to what could be said rigorously. Founding macroeconomics on rigorous utilitymaximizing microfoundations was important. This was, no doubt, the reason why Patinkin’s Chapter 13 was neg...