Zmiany w nowoczesnej makroekonomii

Stabilities and instabilities in the macroeconomy, by Axel Leijonhufvud
"Fifty-some years ago, students were taught that the private sector had no tendency to gravitate to full employment, that it was prone to undesirable fluctuations amplified by multiplier and accelerator effects, and that it was riddled with market failures of various sorts. But it was also believed that a benevolent, competent, democratic government could stabilize the macroeconomy and reduce the welfare consequences of most market failures to relative insignificance.

Fifty years later, around the beginning years of this century, students were taught that representative governments produce pointless fluctuations in prices and output but, if they can be constrained from doing so – by an independent central bank, for example – free markets are sure to produce full employment and, of course, many other blessings besides. Macroeconomic policy doctrine had shifted from stabilizing the private to constraining the public sector.

This long swing in our understanding of the economy spans a half-century of prolific technical accomplishments in economics. But what the story shows is that, ontologically, economics has been completely at sea, drifting on the surface in currents of our own making. We lack an anchored understanding of the nature of the reality that economics is supposed to illuminate..."