Author Description

The defining characteristic of the monetary and financial systems of the capitalist economies since the 1960s has been persistent and fundamental change. Some indicators of this change include the patterns toward financial deregulation, historically high interest rates, and increasingly frequent and severe bouts of financial instability. The essays in this book build from the contributions of Hyman P. Minsky, whose theories in the areas of monetary macroeconomics, unlike those of nearly all practitioners in this field, have sought to understand the processes of structural change and instabilities as inherent features of capitalist economies. New Perspectives in Monetary Macroeconomics includes essays that explore the nature of Keynesian uncertainty and the systematic sources of financial instability; empirical essays that consider, among other topics, instability in the contemporary international economy, the Latin American debt crisis, the Great Depression, and the political forces influencing central banks; and essays in analytic history that consider the connections between Minsky's work and that of Schumpeter, Marx, and the Sraffian school. The book's overall contribution advances thinking in four interrelated areas: how financial factors play a central role in establishing the pace and direction of real investment; how financial fragility emerges through endogenous market practices; how money and credit are generated endogenously through financial market activity rather than simply through prior saving and central bank interventions; and how financial markets are an important site of inter- and intra-class conflict, especially as manifested through the policies of central banks and other important governmental institutions.