Thursday, August 18, 2016

Dirk Bezemer and Michael Hudson — Finance is Not the Economy

Abstract: Conflation of real capital with finance capital is at the heart of current misunderstandings of economic crisis and recession. We ground this distinction in the classical analysis of rent and the difference between productive and unproductive credit. We then apply it to current conditions, in which household credit — especially mortgage credit — is the premier form of unproductive credit. This is supported by an institutional analysis of postwar U.S. development and a review of quantitative empirical research across many countries. Finally, we discuss contemporary consequences of the financial sector’s malformation and overdevelopment.
Michael Hudson
Finance is Not the Economy
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ISSUES Vol. L No. 3 September 2016
DOI 10.1080/00213624.2016.1210384
Dirk Bezemer, professor of economics at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and Michael Hudson, distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a professor at Peking University.

2 comments:

Kaivey said...

Superb article. I read the whole thing. It was like a chapter out of Micheal Hudson's books. Very long but fairly easy to understand. I've posted it to my desktop.

The Arthurian said...

A response to Bezemer & Hudson's "Finance is Not the Economy"

http://newarthurianeconomics.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-response-to-bezemer-hudsons-finance.html

If you figure nominal debt to nominal GDP, or if you use the wrong "real" calculation, you can expect debt to look flat before the 1980s. I've been reading Finance is Not the Economy and I'm worried that Bezemer and Hudson find debt growing in proportion to GDP before the 1980s because they are using nominal values for debt...