Towards post-Keynesian ecological macroeconomics

By Giuseppe Fontana, Malcolm Sawyer. 2016

128 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The paper starts with a brief criticism of macroeconomic analyses of different schools of thought for their focus on economic growth and maximisation of output. This applies to the traditional Keynesian approach, which has focused on the achievement of sufficient aggregate demand to underpin full employment and full capacity utilisation, down-playing aggregate supply constraints. This also applies to the neoclassical approach, including the current New Consensus Macroeconomics approach, which asserts the dominant role of aggregate supply in the long run, and where growth is set by the so-called ‘natural rate of growth’, with no concerns over environmental and ecological issues. The paper then proposes a different approach to macroeconomic analysis. It explicitly acknowledges that economic growth is a double-edged sword. Growth can help to alleviate persistent levels of high unemployment, but it can also lead to potentially catastrophic environmental problems. Building on the Monetary Circuit theory and the Demand-led growth theory, the paper offers an analysis of the interconnections and interdependence of the economic, biophysical and social worlds and by doing it hopes to provide the building blocks for the establishment of post-Keynesian ecological macroeconomics.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/293be0c1faf56c0c1c814c3e7eeeb27db3c35c25

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Daniel W. O’Neill
2. L. Hardt
3. M. Nikolaidi
4. Óscar Carpintero
5. G. Galanis
6. Jaime Nieto
7. L. J. Miguel
8. Ignacio de Blas

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. L. Hardt
2. M. Nikolaidi
3. Óscar Carpintero
4. G. Galanis
5. Daniel W. O’Neill
6. L. J. Miguel
7. Yannis Dafermos

In Sociology and Political Science

1. M. Nikolaidi
2. G. Galanis
3. L. Hardt
4. Daniel W. O’Neill
5. Ignacio de Blas
6. Yannis Dafermos

Citations in the corpus

• Macroeconomic modelling under energy constraints: Global low carbon transition scenarios (2020, background): “Environmental constraints generally appear as natural capital depletion (Bernardo and D’Alessandro, 2014; Fontana and Sawyer, 2016).”
• A stock-flow-fund ecological macroeconomic model (2015, background): “It largely draws on the synthesis of ecological economics and post-Keynesianmacroeconomics which has been identified as a fruitful avenue for the combined examination of economic and ecological issues (Mearman, 2009; Kronenberg, 2010; Fontana and Sawyer, 2013, 2016).”
• Ecological Macroeconomic Models: Assessing Current Developments (2017, background): “Environmental impacts and feedbacks, as well as aspects of economic inequality, are addressed in most of the analytical models, but other aspects are also represented, such as the functioning of the monetary system (Fontana and Sawyer, 2016) or the dynamics of “green” sectors in the economy (Kemp-Be”