The effects of income distribution and private wealth on consumption and investment, 1855-2010 (with J Rabinovich and N Reddy)

Abstract:

Most empirical macroeconomic research limited to the period since World War II. This paper analyse the effects of changes in income distribution and in private wealth on consumption and investment covering a period from as early as 1855 until 2010 for the UK, France, Germany and USA, based on the dataset of Piketty and Zucman (2014). We contribute to the post-Keynesian debate on the nature of demand regimes, mainstream analyses of wealth effects and the financialisation debate. We find that overall domestic demand has been wage-led in the USA, UK and Germany. Total investment responds positively to higher wage shares, which is driven by residential investment. For corporate investment alone, we find a negative relation. Wealth effects are found to be positive and significant for consumption in the USA and UK, but weaker in France and Germany. Investment is negatively affected by private wealth in the USA and the UK, but positively in France and Germany.

Speaker Info:

Engelbert Stockhammer is Professor of Economics at Kingston University and coordinator of the Political Economy Research Group (PERG). He obtained his PhD at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has worked at Vienna University of Economics and Business and joined Kingston in 2010. He is also research associate at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, council member of European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) and of the Post Keynesian Society (PKES). Engelbert is a leading post-Keynesian economist and has worked on financialisation, wage-led demand regimes and economic policy in Europe. He is ranked among the top 5% of economists worldwide by REPEC. His research areas include macroeconomics, applied econometrics, financial systems and heterodox economics.

Dates & times

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31 Jan 2018	4:30pm - 6:30pm	apple google outlook

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