Economic policy in the EU faces a trilemma of solving three challenges simultaneously - growth, distribution, and the environment. In order to assess policies that address these issues simultaneously, economic models need to account for both sector-sector and sector-environment feedbacks within a single framework.This paper presents a multi-sectoral stock-flow consistent (SFC) macro model where a demand-driven economy consisting of multiple institutional sectors - firms, energy, households, government, and financial - interacts with the environment. The model is calibrated for the EU region and five policy scenarios are evaluated; low consumption, a capital stock damage function, carbon taxes, higher share of renewable energy, and technological shocks to productivity. Policy outcomes are tracked on overall output, unemployment, income and income distributions, energy, and emission levels. Results show that investment in mitigation technologies allows for absolute decoupling and ensures that the above three issues can be solved simultaneously. (author's abstract) / Series: Ecological Economic Papers

In this study, a Kaleckian-Post-Keynesian macroeconomic model, which is an extended version of the Bhaduri and Marglin (1990) model, serves as the starting point. The merit of a Kaleckian model for our purposes is that it highlights the dual function of wages as a component of aggregate demand as well as a cost item as opposed to the mainstream economics, which perceive wages merely as a cost item. Depending on the relative magnitude of these two effects, Kaleckian models distinguish between profit-led and wage-led regimes, where the latter is defined as a low rate of accumulation being caused by a high profit share. Are actual economies wage-led or profit-led? Current orthodoxy implicitly assumes that they are profit-led, and thus supports the neoliberal policy agenda. The purpose of the paper is to carry this discussion into the empirical terrain, and to test whether accumulation and employment are profit-led in two groups of countries. We do so by means of a structural vector autoregression (VAR) model. The model is estimated for USA, UK and France to represent the major developed countries, and for Turkey and Korea to represent developing countries. The latter are chosen since they represent two different export-oriented growth experiences. The results of the adjustment experiences of both countries are in striking contrast to orthodox theory, however they also present counter-examples to each other in terms of their ways of integrating into the world economy. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers Series "Growth and Employment in Europe: Sustainability and Competitiveness"

The NAIRU theory has become the mainstream theory in explaining unemployment in Europe and is often used to justify demands for a cutback of the welfare state, reducing unemployment benefits, reducing minimum wages, decentralizing collective bargaining etc. Close inspection reveals that it nonetheless shares some arguments with Post Keynesian and even Marxist theory. The paper proposes an underdetermined, encompassing NAIRU model, which is consistent with several theoretical tradtions. Depending on the closure with respect to demand formation and determination of the NAIRU itself, the model allows for New Keynesian, Post Keynesian and Marxist results. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

The aim of this paper is to analyze the fragility of the New Member States and accession countries in the Central Eastern and South Eastern European countries (henceforth Eastern Europe) to the turbulences in the global economy and the changes in the direction of the international capital flows. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

An increase in the wage share has contradictory effects on the subaggregates of aggregate demand. Private consumption expenditures ought to increase because wage incomes typically are associated with higher consumption propensities than capital incomes. Investment expenditures ought to be negatively affected because investment will positively depend on profits. Net exports will be negatively affected because an increase in the wage share corresponds to an increase in unit labor costs and thus a loss in competitiveness. Theoretically aggregate demand can therefore be either wage led or profit led depending on how these effects add up. The results will crucially depend on how open the economy is internationally. The paper estimates a Post-Kaleckian macro model incorporating these effects for the Euro area and finds that the Euro area is presently in a wage-led demand regime. Implications for wage policies are discussed. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

A demand-driven growth model involving capital accumulation and the dynamics of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentration is set up to examine macroeconomic issues raised by global warming, e.g. effects on output and employment of rising levels of GHG; offsets by mitigation; relationships among energy use and labor productivity, income distribution, and growth; the economic significance of the Jevons and other paradoxes; sustainable consumption and possible reductions in employment; and sources of instability and cyclicality implicit in the twodimensional dynamical system. The emphasis is on the combination of biophysical limits and Post- Keynesian growth theory and the qualitative patterns of system adjustment and the dynamics that emerge. / Series: Ecological Economic Papers

The paper investigates net lending and net borrowing flows of the institutional sectors in Europe since the introduction of the Euro in 1999. Applying a simple statistical apparatus, this paper is novel in describing the sectoral behavior leading up to and during the crisis. We find that (1) many countries of the Northern group were characterized by low public deficits or even budget surpluses, current account surpluses and a private sector in a net lending position. In countries of the Southern periphery, in the Anglo-Saxon countries as well as in many Eastern European Economies private sector net borrowing coincided with a budget deficit and substantial current account deficits. (2) With the onset of the crisis private net lending soared in all countries while all governments incurred deficits, consistent with the notion of a balance sheet recession. (3) Private net lending is pro-cyclical, reinforcing the economic downturn, while public net lending is countercyclical in all countries. (4) Household net lending tends to lead the business cycle, while corporate net lending tends to lag it especially in the Northern group. (5) Prominent concepts asserting causal relationships in sectoral net lending, such as Ricardian equivalence and the twin deficit hypothesis are not supported by the data. (authors' abstract) / Series: Ecological Economic Papers

This paper explores the nexus between uncertainty and credit restrictions. A Post Keynesian approach to an explanation of access rationing to credit is developed and contrasted with the dominant relationship lending school. It is argued that access rationing to credit has be understood in terms of uncertainty and power. Differences in systemic uncertainty to which hetrogenous market participants are exposed can explain the reluctance of banks to lend to certain applicants. Monopsonistic power and uncertainty further help to understand why banks of a different size show differences in their lending behavior. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

This paper estimates rates of return across the gross wealth distribution in eight European countries. Like differential saving rates, differential rates of return matter for Post Keynesian theory, because they impact the income and wealth distribution and add an explosive element to growth models. We show that differential rates of return matter empirically by merging data on household balance sheets with long-run returns for individual asset categories. We find that (1) the composition of wealth differentiates between three socioeconomic groups: 30% are asset-poor, 65% are middle-class home owners, and the top 5% are business-owning capitalists; (2) rates of return rise across all groups; and (3) rates of return broadly follow a log-shaped function across the distribution, where inequality in the lower half of the distribution is higher than in the upper half. If socioeconomic groups are collapsed into the bottom 95% workers and top 5% capitalists, then rates of return are 5.6% for the former and 7.2% for the latter. / Series: Ecological Economic Papers

This paper estimates rates of return across the gross wealth distribution in eight European countries. Like differential saving rates, differential rates of return matter for Post Keynesian theory, because they impact the income and wealth distribution and add an explosive element to growth models. We show that differential rates of return matter empirically by merging data on household balance sheets with long-run returns for individual asset categories. We find that (1) the composition of wealth differentiates between three socioeconomic groups: 30% are asset-poor, 65% are middle-class home owners, and the top 5% are business-owning capitalists; (2) rates of return rise across all groups; and (3) rates of return broadly follow a log-shaped function across the distribution, where inequality in the lower half of the distribution is higher than in the upper half. If socioeconomic groups are collapsed into the bottom 95% workers and top 5% capitalists, then rates of return are 5.6% for the former and 7.2% for the latter. / Series: Ecological Economic Papers