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RESEARCH PRODUCT
economics in the mirror of the financial crisis
Rodolfo Signorinosubject
rival interpretations of the financial crisis orthodox and heterodox economic theories symmetry thesisLiabilityFinancial crisisFinancial marketMainstream economicsSubject (philosophy)EconomicsSign (semiotics)MainstreamInternational economicsPost-Keynesian economicsPositive economicsSettore SECS-P/01 - Economia Politicadescription
The structure of the Chapter is as follows. In Section 2 I discuss some of the factors that may have played a role in causing the crisis and emphasise that supporters of different economic theories will assign different weights to each factor in their analyses. As a consequence, suggested economic policies are highly sensitive to the economic theory employed in evaluating the set of causes. In Section 3 I seek to defend economists from the common charge that their inability to foresee the crisis is a clear sign of the lack of scientific status of their discipline. In my view, the main liability of mainstream economics lies elsewhere, in its excessive trust on the self-equilibrating mechanisms of free-market economies. Mainstream macroeconomists, enamoured of the efficient financial markets hypothesis, may have been too hasty in dismissing the financial instability hypothesis proposed by Keynes and developed by Minsky. Section 4 briefly outlines Keynes’s and Minsky’s contribution on this subject while Section 5 concludes.
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-09-30 |