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Post Keynesian Economics (PKE) is at a cross road. The academic climate at universities has become more hostile to survival and the mainstream has become more diverse internally. Moreover, a heterodox camp of diverse groups of non-mainstream economists is forming. The debate on the future of PKE has so far focussed on the relation to the mainstream. This paper argues that this is not an important issue for the future of PKE. The debate has overlooked the dialectics between academic hegemony and economic (and social) stability. The important question is, whether PKE offers useful explanations of the ongoing socio-economic transformation. PKE has generated valuable insights but it offers little on important real world phenomena such as supply-side phenomena like the increasing use of ICT and the globalisation of production, social issues like precarisation and the polarization of income distribution or ecological challenges like climate change. It is these issues that will decide the future of PKE. (author´s abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

The notion of an "orthodox core-heterodox periphery" structure and the extent of interdisciplinary links have been widely discussed, and partially investigated bibliometrically, within economic discourse. We extend this research by applying tools from social network analysis to citation data of three economics departments located in Vienna, two mainstream and one non-mainstream, to assess their relative citation patterns. We show that both mainstream economics departments follow the asserted core-periphery pattern and have a mono-disciplinary research focus, while the citation network of the non-mainstream department has a polycentric structure and is both more heterodox and interdisciplinary. These findings suggest that discussions about the future of heterodox economics should pay more attention to the organizational level and seek allies from other disciplines.

The paper builds on the Marxist concept of exploitation to explore the meaning of the Post Keynesian notion of uncertainty. Uncertainty is mediated by institutions and is distributed unevenly among different social groups. As different historical social formations entail different institutional structures, the distribution and nature of uncertainty also differ. The configurations between class relations and uncertainty are analyzed for the capitalist, feudal and slave modes of production. It is demonstrated that modes of production do not only imply specific exploitative relations but also different relative distributions of uncertainty amongst classes. Joining Marxian and Post Keynesian approaches allows a richer understanding of exploitive relations and illuminates the full societal impact of uncertainty. It is shown that only in capitalism is the exploited class exposed to a substantial degree of economic uncertainty. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

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 paper discusses the interactions of changes in income distribution and the accumulation dynamics in the post-Fordist accumulation regime in OECD countries, which is characterized by deregulated financial markets. The neoliberal mode of regulation came with a decisive shift in power relations at the expense of labor, which is clearly reflected in the fall of wage shares across OECD economies. The notion of a "finance-dominated" accumulation regime is proposed to highlight that financial developments crucially shape the pattern and the pace of accumulation. Financial globalization has relaxed balance of payment constraints and thereby allowed the build up of big international imbalances. The combination of real wage moderation and financial liberalization has led to different strategies (or at least outcomes) in different countries. While some countries (like the USA) exhibit a credit-fuelled consumption-driven growth model that comes with large current account deficits, others (like Germany and Japan) show an export-driven growth model with modest consumption growth and large current account surpluses. Overall the finance-dominated accumulation regime is characterized by a mediocre growth performance and by a high degree of fragility. (author´s abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series