Dissenting economists on competition: institutionalism versus the classics and Marx – comparing the fundamentals Today’s post continues the current series on capitalist competition, contrasting the competing visions of original institutional economics and classical and Marxist political economy. While b…

New post: Dissenting economists on competition: institutionalism versus the classics and Marx - comparing the fundamentals

Continuing the current series on capitalist competition, with an application to Big Tech.
peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/04/22/d...

Quote of the week: Michael Hudson on inflation Inflation is rising across the world, thanks to the impact of the conflict in Iran on energy prices. Central banks will respond by hiking interest rates, or keeping them higher than they would have…

New post: Quote of the week - Michael Hudson on inflation

At at a time of rising inflation around the world, an excerpt from a radical professor's iconoclastic dictionary of economics peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/04/20/q...

Quote of the week: Marx on creative labour This week’s quote is the second in a row from Karl Marx. Regular readers will know that I have plenty of time for his ideas, but not in toto. Nevertheless his writing is often powerful, which…

New post: Quote of the week - Marx on creative labour peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/04/13/q...

Dissenting economists on competition: from Marx to Anwar Shaikh and the theory of “real competition” Following last week’s introduction, this is the first part of a series on the views of some dissenting economists on competition under capitalism. This week, I consider Anwar Shaikh’s t…

New post: Dissenting economists on competition: from Marx to Anwar Shaikh and the theory of "real competition" peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/04/08/d...

Dissenting economists on competition: introduction to a new series Does big tech have too much market (and political) power? Or is it competing fiercely and reaping the rewards for continuous innovation? What role (if any) should governments play in encouraging a …

New post: Dissenting economists on competition - introduction to a new series peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/04/01/d...

Quote of the week: Geoffrey Hodgson on the power and limits of competition under capitalism Today’s quote comes from Geoffrey Hodgson’s comprehensive book Conceptualizing Capitalism. Hodgson is a prominent and distinguished economist in the tradition of original institutionali…

New post: Quote of the week - Geoffrey Hodgson on the power and limits of competition under capitalism peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/03/30/q...

Responses to rising inflation – workers, bosses and the state The third Gulf war is delivering a significant energy price shock to the world economy, as the prices of oil and gas on global markets soar. Even if it is not enough to provoke a global recession, …

New post: Responses to rising inflation - workers, bosses and the state

Drawing on Marxist theories of inflation, I explore the potential impact of the current energy price shock. peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/03/25/r...

Quote of the week: The “troubling” Marxian alternative Today’s quote is another from Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick’s Contending Economic Theories, their original, informative and provocative book which compares neoclassical, Keynesian a…

New post: Quote of the week - The "troubling" Marxian alternative peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/03/23/q...

Making history: Donald Trump as case study With the Trump presidency offering a dramatic practical illustration, I explore some key concepts in social science Donald Trump has made a habit of testing the limits of human agency. He cares lit…

New post: Making history - Donald Trump as case study

With the Trump presidency offering a dramatic practical illustration, I explore some key concepts in social science
peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/03/18/m...

Quote of the week: The dysfunctions of modern economics Today’s quote comes from a recent issue of the generally leftist, heterodox Cambridge Journal of Economics, and is a critical attack on both the mainstream and non-mainstream economics commun…

New post: Quote of the week - The dysfunctions of modern economics peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/03/16/q...

Moving beyond capitalism, part 3: possible futures Following the last two weeks’ posts on the USSR and Richard Wolff’s proposals for a ‘genuine’ communism, this is the third and final part in this short series on moving beyo…

New post: Moving beyond capitalism, part 3 - possible futures

Drawing on ideas from Geoffrey Hodgson's comprehensive work "Conceptualizing Capitalism", I outline some possible futures beyond our current economic system. peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/03/11/m...

Quote of the week: The impossibility of value-free social science Today’s quote comes, for once, not from an economist, but from a philosophically- and ecologically-minded physicist, Fritjof Capra, in his book The Turning Point. The latter contains an extra…

New post: Quote of the week - The impossibility of value-free social science peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/03/09/q...

Moving beyond capitalism, part 2: Richard Wolff’s micro-founded communism Following last week’s post on an alternative view of the ‘communist’ experience of the Soviet Union, today I continue this three-part series, which considers aspects of a potentia…

New post: Moving beyond capitalism, part 2: Richard Wolff's micro-founded communism

A continuation of this three-part series, which considers aspects of a potential future beyond capitalism. peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/03/04/m...

Quote of the week: The myriad problems with central planning Today’s quote comes from Geoffrey Hodgson’s 2025 intellectual biography From Marx to Markets. A one-time socialist, he is now a prominent institutionalist economist, and the book recoun…

New post: Quote of the week - The myriad problems with central planning

A critique of this major aspect of many socialist programmes from institutionalist economist Geoffrey Hodgson's 2025 intellectual biography "From Marx to Markets".
peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/03/02/q...

Moving beyond capitalism, part 1: The Soviet experience and the neglect of class Transcending capitalism need not mean a return to the deeply flawed experiments of the past. Today’s post is part 1 of 3 in a new series drawing critically on some novel analyses of economic …

New post: Moving beyond capitalism, part 1: The Soviet experience and the neglect of class

Transcending capitalism need not mean a return to the deeply flawed experiments of the past.
peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/02/25/m...

Quote of the week: Choosing between contending economic theories Today’s quote is one more from American Marxists Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff’s accessible, informative and in many ways provocative book Contending Economic Theories. While the au…

New post: Quote of the week - Choosing between contending economic theories peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/02/23/q...

From Newton to Quantum Heterodox economics offers many striking parallels with aspects of modern physics. The neoclassical mainstream has yet to catch up For much of its history, economics has aspired to the status of a …

New post: From Newton to Quantum

Heterodox economics offers many striking parallels with aspects of modern physics. The neoclassical mainstream has yet to catch up. peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/02/18/f...

Quote of the week: Training the new economic mandarins This week’s quote comes from A Critique of Economic Theory, a book I picked up recently in a local charity shop. It contains a collection of papers by a range of radical, progressive economis…

New post: Quote of the week - Training the new economic mandarins

A comment on the remarkably uncontroversial nature of a university economics education peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/q...

Japan’s stagnation problem isn’t just about “zombie firms” It’s about weak demand, excess saving, and the failure of creative destruction. A new election mandate tests whether real reform is possible Japan’s recent general election on 8 February delivered …

New post: Japan’s stagnation problem isn’t just about “zombie firms”

It’s about weak demand, excess saving, and the failure of creative destruction. A new election mandate tests whether real reform is possible. peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/02/11/j...

Quote of the week: Geoffrey Hodgson questions the nature of a socialist future Geoffrey Hodgson is a distinguished economist working in the (old) institutional and evolutionary economics traditions. His recent autobiography, From Marx to Markets: An Intellectual Odyssey, deta…

New post: Quote of the week - Geoffrey Hodgson questions the nature of a socialist future peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/q...

Some takeaways from the ‘Rethinking Marxism’ project Marx’s writings, and those of many of the thinkers he has inspired, can be a rich source of ideas for understanding capitalism as a historically specific system. But they are not the final wo…

New post: Some takeaways from the 'Rethinking Marxism' project peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/s...

Quote of the week: Michael Hudson on individualism This week’s extract continues my occasional posts in a series drawing on Michael Hudson’s excellent, iconoclastic “dictionary” J is for Junk Economics. “Individualism:…

New post: Quote of the week - Michael Hudson on individualism peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/02/02/q...

A Bad Heir Day at the Fed No, Kevin Warsh isn’t qualified

I wrote yesterday about Kevin Warsh, saying what everyone who really follows monetary debates knows: he's a bullshitter who uses big words to make incoherent arguments that always amount to stimulus for Republicans, austerity for Dems 1/

paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-bad-heir...

Some reflections on financial imbalances and global economic performance Basic economic data and Godley’s sectoral balances approach can yield key insights into the health of national and international capitalisms and point to ways in which it could be improved. T…

New post: Some reflections on financial imbalances and global economic performance

Basic economic data and Godley's sectoral balances approach can yield key insights into the health of national and international capitalisms. peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/01/31/s...

Quote of the week: Responding to Marxism Following on from last week’s quote, here is another from Marxists Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick’s excellent, provocative and accessible book, Contending Economic Theories. “M…

New post: Quote of the week - Responding to Marxism peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/01/26/q...

The perils and promise of a holistic approach First of all, my apologies to regular readers of this blog for the delay in publishing this week’s longer post, which is normally out on Wednesdays. I have been a bit under the weather, so th…

New post: The perils and promise of a holistic approach peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/01/23/t...

Quote of the week: The peculiarity of an intolerant economics Richard Wolff is possibly the best known Marxist economist in the US. Together with his late colleague Stephen Resnick, he has developed a unique form of Marxism which incorporates ideas and insigh…

New post: Quote of the week - The peculiarity of an intolerant economics peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/01/19/q...

Keynesians versus Marxists on saving capitalism from itself (or not) Today’s post explores some of the ideas and attitudes of two significant economic approaches to what they see as a flawed capitalism. In following their intellectual standard-bearers, both se…

New post: Keynesians versus Marxists on saving capitalism from itself (or not) peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/01/14/k...

Quote of the week: The promise of quantum economics This week’s quote comes from David Orrell’s 2018 book Quantum Economics: The New Science of Money, which explores recent advances in economics that employ insights from quantum theory. …

New post: Quote of the week - The promise of quantum economics peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/01/12/q...

Quote of the week: Kaldor on the use of maths in economics Nicholas Kaldor was a colleague and follower of Keynes at Cambridge University, a brilliantly original theoretician and applied economist, and an advisor to governments during the post-war period. …

New post: Quote of the week - Kaldor on the use of maths in economics

The eminent post-Keynesian critiques the modern approach to economic theory in one of his final lectures.

peofdev.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/q...