The Eurozone in Crisis — A Kaleckian Macroeconomic Regime and Policy Perspective

Eckhard Hein and Judith Martschin

Review of Political Economy, 2020, vol. 32, issue 4, 563-588

Abstract: The current Covid-19 Crisis 2020 has hit the Eurozone in a highly fragile situation, with a weak and asymmetric recovery from the Great Financial Crisis, the Great Recession and the following Eurozone Crisis. These crises have revealed the weaknesses of the macroeconomic policy institutions and strategies of the Eurozone based on New Consensus Macroeconomics (NCM). Applying a Kaleckian/post-Keynesian analysis of the demand and growth regimes to the EA-12 countries, we show that the internal imbalances within the EA-12 before the Eurozone have been externalised since then. Most of the countries and the EA-12 as a whole have now turned export-led mercantilist and thus highly vulnerable to fluctuations in world demand. For an economic policy alternative we turn towards Kalecki’s macroeconomic policy proposals for achieving and maintaining full employment in a capitalist economy by government deficit expenditures, in combination with re-distribution policies in favour of labour and low-income households, assisted by central banks targeting low interest rates. This approach is then applied to the Eurozone, in order to derive a policy mix which should contribute to a more rapid recovery from the Covid-19 Crisis and to a medium- to long-run non-inflationary full employment domestic demand-led regime.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1080/09538259.2020.1831202

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