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Was Hyman Minsky a post-Keynesian economist?

Author

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  • Marc Lavoie

    (University of Ottawa
    University of Paris 13 (CEPN))

Abstract

As the subprime financial crisis erupted in 2008, Wall Street analysts started talking of the Minsky moment. Hyman Minsky’s out-of-print 1986 book, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, would then sell for hundreds of dollars on the internet, until it was reprinted. The paper recollects the main features of Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis that became so popular in the aftermath of the failure of Lehman’s Brothers despite having been totally ignored by mainstream economists until then. It also recalls other important contributions of Minsky to our understanding of a monetized production economy, some of which were quite premonitory. In the second part of the paper, the author mentions what can be considered as weaknesses of Minsky’s theoretical framework, which should be avoided in future work. The third part deals with the controversial issue of whether or not Minsky was a post-Keynesian, or considered himself to be part of the post-Keynesian school of thought. The author concludes that indeed Minsky clearly stood in the post-Keynesian camp.

Suggested Citation

  • Marc Lavoie, 2020. "Was Hyman Minsky a post-Keynesian economist?," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 85-101, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:revepe:v:1:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s43253-020-00002-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s43253-020-00002-7
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Mark Setterfield & Y.K. Kim, 2024. "How financially fragile can households become? Household borrowing, the welfare state, and macroeconomic resilience," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 121-151, June.
    2. Simon Schairer, 2024. "The contradictions of unconventional monetary policy as a post-2008 thwarting mechanism: financial dominance, shadow banking, and inequality," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-29, June.
    3. Ítalo Pedrosa & Dany Lang, 2021. "To what extent does aggregate leverage determine financial fragility? New insights from an agent-based stock-flow consistent model," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 31(4), pages 1221-1275, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Post-Keynesian economics; Financial fragility hypothesis; Endogenous business cycles; Fallacy of composition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B31 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought: Individuals - - - Individuals
    • B52 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Modern Monetary Theory;
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

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