Post-Keynesian Economics meets International and Comparative Political Economy

The workshop explores the mutual relevance of post-Keynesian economics (PKE) and Comparative Political Economy (which prominently includes Varieties of Capitalism, VoC) and International Political Economy (IPE). Several authors have recently highlighted potential synergies. Baccaro and Pontussen (2016) have argued that existing VoC analyses lack an adequate treatment of demand formation and proposed a to ground VoC analysis on the PKE analysis of demand regimes. In response Soskice and Hope (2016) sympathise with the need for stronger demand side analysis, but advocate a foundation in the New Keynesian three equation model (as in Carlin and Soskice’s textbook) as preferable to PKE. Blyth and Matthijs (2017) argue that IPE lacks in its treatment of the macroeconomy and highlight the distinction of Keynesian (full employment) and neoliberal (price stability) policy goals in two different macroeconomic policy regimes. Stockhammer (2016) argues that PKE analysis differs from VoC in its analysis of demand regimes and its analysis of finance, which includes endogenous money creation and financial instability.

The workshop has a mix of speakers with PKE and an IPE/CPE background. The aim is to explore the possible areas of synergy, overlap and tension between PKE, CPE and IPE. We expect the debate will focus on the Euro crisis, differences in demand regimes and the impact of financialisation.

 

10.00: Opening

10.30 – 12.30: Panel 1 (Chair: Joseph Baines)

Cedric Durand, Univ Paris 13: Political economy of international imbalances in the XXIst century: a perspective on flows and stocks

Waltraud Schelkle, LSE: What does political economy add to our understanding of the European financial crisis?

Simona Talani, KCL: The political economy of Italy in the EMU: A neo-Gramscian approach

12.30-13.30: Lunch

13.30-15.30: Panel 2 (Chair: Engelbert Stockhammer)

Lucio Baccaro, Univ. Geneva and MPIfG Koln: The Politics of Growth Models as Social Blocs: An Analytical Framework

Inga Rademacher, KCL: The Institutional Foundations of Profit-Led Growth Models: The German Case since the 1980s

Ozlem Onaran, Univ of Greenwich (with Cem Oyvat, Greenwich): The demand and supply side effects of inequalities and the political aspects of equality-led development

15.30-16.00: Coffee break

16.00-18.00: Panel 3 (Chair: Inga Rademacher)

Engelbert Stockhammer, KCL (with James Wood, Cambridge): Finance, macroeconomics and CPE: how financialisation challenges VoC 

Jeremy Green, Cambridge: Kicking the can down a narrowing road: Shrinking domestic policy space and the waning of US monetary autonomy

Joseph Baines, KCL (with Sandy Hager, City): Corporate Taxation in and beyond the US Debt State

 ************************************************************************************************

The International Political Economy Research Group at King’s focuses on the examination of contemporary socioeconomic and political dynamics of crisis and limitations of European and global order. Our researcher and scholarship explores: the role of finance (or ‘financialisation’) in today’s political economy; the origin, functions and shortcomings of European Monetary and Economic Union; how globalisation influences statecraft and public policy choices; how power is configured at a global scale and how it materialises as flows of people (migration), money, goods and services.