Documents Blecker, Robert A. 2 results

"The US economy has experienced a slowdown in its long-term growth and job creation that predates the Great Recession. The stagnation of output growth stems mainly from the depressing effects of rising inequality on aggregate demand, while both increased inequality and the delinkage of employment from output have their roots in profound structural changes to the US industrial structure and international position. Stagnation tendencies were temporarily offset by debt-financed household spending before the financial crisis, after which households became more financially constrained. Meanwhile, fiscal policy has shifted toward austerity while business investment has failed to keep up with the boom in corporate profits in spite of low interest rates. Slower US growth in turn exacerbates the global slowdown as it implies smaller injections of demand into global export markets."

"This paper provides an institutional-analytical account of changes in the structure of the US Phillips curve (PC) during the post-war period. It does so by restoring conflict and power to the forefront of macro theory and, in particular, the wage- and price-setting behaviour of workers and firms. The resulting account is consistent with the main stylized facts that characterize the evolution of the US PC since 1948: the disappearance and subsequent reappearance of a 'standard' PC (relating the level of the inflation rate, not the change in this rate, to the rate of unemployment); and the flattening of the PC since the 1990s."