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The paper offers a post-Keynesian explanation of the soaring inflation experienced during the post-COVID recovery, coherent both at the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. The microeconomic argument is rooted on the premise that price-making firms consider both their costs and their desired share of profits when setting prices. To defend profit margins in the aftermath of the pandemic, the initial cost-push shock was passed to consumers through higher prices; in a second phase, some firms, particularly in more highly concentrated and systemically significant sectors, benefited from the post-pandemic permissive pricing environment to increase their price mark-ups, leading to temporary profit-fueled inflation following the cost-push shock. This microeconomic explanation is compatible with the macroeconomic notion of a stable inflation barrier. For a given quantity of real output, it is shown that if profit earners defend their share of income following a cost-push, this will produce a one-time price increase, with inflation becoming more persistent if the target adapts endogenously — i.e., if the aggregate mark-up changes. The paper contrasts the notion of a wage-price spiral with that of a profit-price sink, arguing that sellers' inflation is a real — albeit temporary phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the relationship between monetary policy and income distribution. It highlights the recent resurgence of inflation and the reliance on monetary policy as the primary solution to combat inflation. The article explores the impact of interest rate changes on income distribution and questions the effectiveness of incremental increases in interest rates. It also examines the mainstream and post-Keynesian perspectives on the topic and emphasizes the need for post-Keynesians to engage with the mainstream to influence the debate. The article concludes by introducing a symposium that focuses on the relationship between monetary policy and income distribution, featuring articles from various scholars. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines the post-Keynesian and Sraffian perspectives on the relationship between monetary policy and income distribution, highlighting their endogenous demand-led money approach and rejection of the neutrality of interest rates, and monetary policy as tool of redistribution among social classes. Both approaches acknowledge that the central bank can influence interest rates and hence, the functional distribution of income. These shared ideas recognize the political nature of interest rates and the distributive impacts of monetary policy. Although all are crucial common points, some differences persist; PK theory often emphasizes the impact of monetary policy on rentiers vs. non-rentier classes, while Sraffians focus more on wage earners vs. non-wage earners. Further, while PK theorists advocate for alternative monetary policy rules, Sraffians favor discretionary policy tailored to each economy's unique institutional framework. The paper concludes by suggesting that these shared critical conceptions, despite minor differences, should stimulate collaborative efforts to further develop heterodox theories of monetary policy and income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the topic of inflation and its recent surge in global economies. It highlights the historical stability of inflation over the past four decades and the lack of inflationary forces during this period. The article also explores different perspectives on the causes of inflation, with mainstream economists viewing it as a demand phenomenon and post-Keynesians attributing it to conflict and cost-push factors. The recent surge in inflation is attributed to factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, disruptions in global supply chains, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the climate emergency. The symposium presented in the article focuses on the post-Keynesian conflictual view of inflation and offers interpretations and theoretical advancements related to the recent surge in prices. [Extracted from the article]

Many archaeologists do not realize that their commonsense assumptions about what constitutes money naturalize orthodox (neoclassical) economic theory. Rather than the orthodox view of money as primarily a medium of exchange, this paper presents the heterodox claim of money as primarily a unit of account imposed by those with political power. This heterodox understanding casts money as the mechanism at the heart of ancient states' political economies. A brief history of heterodox chartalist macroeconomics is followed by eight starting points from which archaeologists can explore the operation of state money using the material remains of past societies. Ancient Mesoamerica provides a case study that developed independently of better-known monetary histories from ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Indus, and Chinese civilizations. Monetized state economies date back to at least AD 600 in Mesoamerica and possibly as early as 300 BC. Cacao beans, standard lengths of cotton cloth, and shell and greenstone beads functioned as the currencies of taxation that underwrote political economies across ancient Mexico and Central America. I conclude that similar organizing principles, by which elites in hierarchical pluralities have extracted and deployed surplus production, resulted in the independent invention of money as an accounting system among unrelated ancient societies the world over. My primary argument is that money—understood as a politically controlled system of accounting—is largely missing from our analysis of ancient complex societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]