%0 Journal Article
%T Limits of policy intervention in a world of neoliberal mechanism designs: Paradoxes of the global crisis
%A Dymski Gary A.
%J Panoeconomicus
%D 2011
%I Economists' Association of Vojvodina
%R 10.2298/pan1103285d
%X The current global context poses several paradoxes: the recovery from the 2009 recession was not a recovery; investment, normally driven by profit rates, is lagging and not leading economic activity; the crisis is global but debate involves sub-global levels; and public safety-nets, which have helped to stabilize national income, are being cut. These paradoxes can be traced, in part, to the impact of the ¡°truce¡± that followed the Keynesian-Monetarist controversy on economists¡¯ ideas about policy activism. This implicit ¡°truce¡± has removed activist macro policy from discussion, and shifted attention toward institutions as mechanisms for solving game-theoretic coordination problems. Policy activism then centers on how the ¡°agents¡± (nations) can achieve optimal use of their available resources (or optimal access to resources) at the global level; and this involves creating and fine-tuning compacts - neoliberal mechanism designs - that can capture rents and attract globally mobile capital. This approach leads economists to see the key problem in the current global crisis as fixing broken neoliberal mechanisms. However, a global economy dominated by mechanisms that feed on aggregate demand without generating it faces the prospect of stagnation or collapse.
%K neoliberal mechanism design
%K policy activism
%K Keynesian-Monetarist controversy
%K globalization
%K Capital mobility
%K Hyman Minsky
%K Bradford De Long
%U http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/1452-595X/2011/1452-595X1103285D.pdf