"Estabilidade e pleno emprego": as origens do esquema de Kaldor para a análise da flutuação e do crescimento econômicos

Nicholas Kaldor is known as an author who often changed his mind throughout his career. This is the case of his analyses of the process of economic growth, in which he proposed various models leading to quite different and, occasionally, conflicting conclusions. Specifically, Kaldor changed his position concerning the stability of the full employment situation. This paper shows that, in spite of those changes, Kaldor in fact used different versions of the same basic analytical framework and that this framework has its origin in his paper "Stability and Full Employment" published in the Economic Journal in December 1938.

A note on the Pazos-Simonsen mechanism and Kaldor's early research on Latin American inflation

In contrast with the inflationary finance story, inflation acceleration in Latin America has been explained as the result of the interaction of inflation dynamics and the frequency of wage adjustments. Accordingly, small inflation disturbances are connected with a shift from moderate to high inflation (or beyond to hyperinflation) though a mechanism that makes adjustment intervals in wage contracts endogenous. Rudiger Dornbusch (1986) labeled this process the "Pazos-Simonsen mechanism". In this note we summarize the basic contribution of both Felipe Pazos (1978) and Mario Henrique Simonsen (1983) and find crucial differences between their views on wage dynamics, specifically regarding the endogeneity of the time interval between wage readjustments. A remarkable affinity with Pazos's view on wage dynamics and inflation is found in an early and almost unknown essay written by Nicholas Kaldor in 1957 (inspired in his brief experience in Latin America).

Inconvenient glow: cliometrics and the "golden age" of capitalism

This paper aims to criticize the recent cliometrics literature on the so-called "golden age" of capitalism. The works of Nicholas Crafts, Gianni Toniolo, and Barry Eichengreen are reconstructed in order to reveal the main characteristics of this research program. Its narrow quantitative focus, its reliance on theoretical propositions borrowed from neoclassical economics, and its auspicious interpretation of the postwar reconstruction are the main focus of the criticism presented. Finally, the cliometricians' attempt to historicize the "golden age" and de-historicize the following decades is related to the ideological understanding of the recent decades as a period of "great moderation."