Uncorrected Proof. Alvarez & Perez-Montiel (2023).pdf

Álvarez & Pérez-Montiel (2024): On the Capital Controversies as a Choice of Paradigms, in: Science, Technology and Innovation in the History of Economic Thought, 207-228

Abstract: In economics, the conventional (also called neoclassical or marginalist) theory is characterized as a framework based on demand and supply functions to explain prices, exchanged/produced quantities and remuneration rates of productive factors. This theory had to face a huge opposition during the 1950s and 1960s, during the Capital Debates or Cambridge-Cambridge Controversies (CCC). This chapter studies how the CCC arose and evolved, as well as how they apparently came to an end in the 1960s and have now been forgotten. To this end, our research makes use of Thomas S. Kuhn’s characterisation of the history of scientific thought, by presenting the debate as a real choice between paradigms. We shall see how answers to the question of why the CCC did not lead to a Scientific Revolution that would bring about the demise of the neoclassical hegemony in economic theory fall outside the logical rigor of the competing theories and reflect the inherent circularity of the communication between different economic paradigms.

Perez-Montiel & Sansó (2024).pdf

Pérez-Montiel & Sansó (2024): Different specifications (and their implications) of the Supermultiplier model. Under review in Structural Change & Economic Dynamics

Abstract: We compare and discuss two different specifications of the Supermultiplier model. On the one hand, we analyze the relationship between output and autonomous demand, which is commonly used in the empirical literature on the topic. On the other hand, we address the relationship between induced demand and autonomous demand , proposed by Pérez-Montiel et al (2023). We analytically demonstrate that there may be relevant differences in terms of cointegration and causality between these two specifications. This paper does not necessarily undermine the results of the existing empirical research on the Supermultiplier model, based on the output-autonomous demand nexus; however, the results of this empirical research must be taken with caution, especially those regarding Granger causality running unidirectionally from autonomous demand to output.

Perez-Montiel et al (2024).pdf

Pérez-Montiel et al. (2024): Critical globalisation: productive capacity and capital productivity in the United States, 1945-2020. Economic & Labour Relations Review, 35(1), 66–78

Abstract: We study the dynamics of the profit rate of United States (US) non-financial resident firms between 1945 and 2020. The 1970s entailed the abandonment of industrial policy and the liberalisation and globalisation of markets. This left the US-resident productive sector at the mercy of an unstoppable growth of imports. These imports helped to contain inflation but cornered the US domestic market, which negatively affected the profit rate of non-financial resident firms. The increasing foreign competition forced US-resident firms to invest and increase their productive capacity. Such increasing productive capacity demanded higher market shares; however, US-resident firms continued to lose domestic and foreign markets. This explains the fall in the degree of productive capacity utilisation, capital productivity, and ultimately, the rate of profit since the 1980s.