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Issues related to the level of consumption by the population of the USSR in the “perestroika” period of its history are considered. In order to conduct an objective historical analysis of the problem, the authors used materials from the funds of three archives, some of which are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. It is emphasized that the second half of the 1980s was crucial for the Soviet Union, becoming the last five years in its difficult history. The results of a comparative analysis of food consumption by the population of the Sverdlovsk region in the study period are presented. A clear discrepancy between the level of consumption of a number of food products by the population of the Middle Urals and the norms of their scientifically grounded rational consumption is determined. The emphasis is made on the fact that in the diet of Soviet citizens there was always a very shortage of vegetables, melons, fruits and, to some extent, fish products. It is proved that the chronic underconsumption of these products was to a certain extent “compensated” by the increased consumption of sugar, confectionery and dairy products, and in the difficult 1940s–1950s — bakery products and potatoes. It is concluded that it is not necessary to overly dramatize the “material” factor in the development of disintegration processes that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A careful reading of the quotations that Hayek left us upon his death on hundreds of cards explains what is, in his opinion, the ultimate and definitive test of whether or not someone is a true economist. It is curious to draw attention to the fact that Hayek had already referred to this matter in Appendix III to his Pure Theory of Capital, which he wrote in 1941 and which ends with the following words: «More than ever it seems to me to be true that the complete apprehension of the doctrine that ‘de-mand of commodities is not demand for labour’ is ‘the best test of an economist’» (Hayek 1976, p. 439). Here, Hayek wishes to highlight one of the key points of the theory of capital: the real productive structure is very complex and is formed by many stages, in such a way that an increase in the demand for con-sumer commodities will always be detrimental to employment in the stages furthest away from consumption (which is precisely where most of the workers are employed). Or, in other words, the employers can perfectly well earn money, even if their rev-enue (or «aggregate demand») drops, if they reduce their costs by replacing labour by capital equipment, thus indirectly gen-erating a significant demand for employment in the stages of capital goods production furthest away from consumption (Huerta de Soto 1998, pp. 213-313). It is more than illustrative how Hayek, in the select group of quotations on economic theory that he has left us in hundreds of his handwriting cards, wished to refer, once again, to these key ideas of the theory of capital. Effectively, Hayek now tells us that «Investment is more discouraged than stimulated by a high de-mand for consumer goods, and so is employment because in an ad-vancing economy more workers are employed to work for the distant fu-ture than for the present»(emphasis added). And he also says that «In the end is the decrease of final demand at current prices that leads to new investment to reduce costs». Therefore, Hayek con-cludes that «employment is not determined by aggregate demand». In short, for Hayek, the best test for an economist is to understand the implicit fallacy contained in the underconsumption theories and in what is called the shrift paradox or paradox of saving: «It is not consumer’s demand that secures the generation of incomes. It is investment of the excess of incomes over consumer’s expendi-tures which keeps incomes up». A large number of economists are unable to understand these principles because they adopt the macroeconomic aggregate approach that Hayek considers to be a serious error that leads, in the final analysis, to social engineering and socialism («Socialism is based on macroeconomics —a scien-tific error»). The only way of understanding what happens at «macro» level is by using microeconomics: «We can understand the macrosociety only by microeconomics». Furthermore, even the Chicago School monetarists are victims of this error: «Even Milton Friedman is reported to have once said ‘we are all Keynesians now’». The approach based on the model of equilibrium and mac-roeconomics is erroneous because «a science which starts with the conceit that it posses information which it cannot obtain is not a science». The same may be said of Welfare Economics, which, for Hayek, is «the spurious scientific foundation of socialist policies».

In 2018, Professor David Harvey, the human geographer and the eminent scholar of Marx’s works and their modern relevance, wrote a short paper entitled ‘Marx’s refusal of the labour theory of value’. In this paper, Harvey presents a series of theoretical confusions. The dual nature of value in a commodity is ignored by him. So Marx’s theory of crisis (based on insufficient surplus value) is replaced with insufficient use values for workers as consumers. The class struggle becomes not workers versus capitalists, but consumers versus capitalists or taxpayers versus governments. This is confusing to a class analysis and strategy for the working-class struggle.

Ao longo de toda a história do pensamento econômico, foram feitas diversas tentativas para identificar os motivos e as maneiras pelas quais o modo de produção capitalista se movimenta em ciclos, com fases de expansão e de crise. Um ramo desse pensamento observa as crises como consequências de modificações exógenas à acumulação capitalista. Enquanto as teorias marxistas consideram a crise a partir do próprio dinamismo interno do modo de produção capitalista. Entre estas últimas teorias, existem três vertentes: a) superacumulação de capital, b) subconsumo e c) compressão dos lucros (profit-squeeze). Desse modo, o objetivo é identificar as causas da crise da economia capitalista no Brasil entre 2014 e 2016, de acordo com as teorias marxistas de crise. Para a execução deste trabalho, são expostas no segundo capítulo as considerações teóricas dos autores representativos de cada uma dessas vertentes. No capítulo seguinte, para mostrar como as crises são expressas empiricamente, a categoria taxa de lucro é analisada, desde os argumentos de Marx sobre a transformação da taxa de mais-valor em taxa de lucro até as suas diferentes formas e métodos de cálculo. No quarto e último capítulo, ocorre uma análise da economia capitalista no Brasil, com ênfase nos elementos que compõem a taxa de lucro brasileira. Como resultado, notou-se que a taxa de lucro desse país já estava decrescendo, mesmo antes do início da crise brasileira, o que levou a valorização imperfeita do capital e contribuiu para os conflitos políticos entre as diferentes classes e no interior delas. Throughout the history of economic thought, several attempts have been made to identify the reasons and the ways in which the capitalist mode of production moves in cycles, both of expansion and of crisis. One branch of this thinking sees crises as consequences of exogenous changes to capitalist accumulation. While Marxist theories consider the crisis from the very internal dynamism of the capitalist mode of production. Among these last theories, there are three aspects: a) overaccumulation of capital, b) underconsumption and c) profit-squeeze. Thus, the objective is to identify the causes of the crisis of the capitalist economy in Brazil between 2014 and 2016, according to Marxist theories of crisis. For the execution of this work, the theoretical considerations of the representative authors of each of these aspects are exposed in the first chapter. In the following chapter, in order to show how crises are empirically expressed, the category of profit rate is analyzed, from Marx's arguments about the transformation of the rate of surplus value into a rate of profit to its different forms and methods of calculation. In the third and final chapter, there is an analysis of the capitalist economy in Brazil, with emphasis on the elements that make up the Brazilian rate of profit. As a result, it was noted that the rate of profit in that country was already decreasing, even before the beginning of the Brazilian crisis, which led to an imperfect valorization of capital and contributed to the political conflicts between and within the different classes.

The aim of this paper is to acknowledge the reflections of Portuguese Marxist economists on the theory of economic crisis. Although references to Marx in Portugal date back to the 1850s, both the theoretical approaches adopted and the applied studies undertaken from this perspective were fairly superficial and belated in their appearance in this country. The relative backwardness of the Portuguese economy and other specificities of Portuguese society at that time were detrimental to an intellectual interest in the theory of economic crisis. Nonetheless, the approach adopted to this subject by some economists reveals the existence of a Marxist theoretical tradition in this semi-peripheral country especially in three main types of theories: the theory of crises in the business cycle, addressed from three different perspectives (underconsumption theories, disproportionality theories and theories based on the fall of the rate of profit); the theory of the crisis over the long cycle; and the theory of the systemic crisis. Only after World War II did the first relevant studies begin to emerge, and only after the 1970s did the academic world appear to become sensitive to the subject. Meanwhile, the context of the most recent economic and financial crisis, which began to set in after 2007–08, has revived the topicality of the theory of economic crisis, also viewed from this heterodox perspective.

Series Acknowledgments Series Introduction: From the Current Crisis to Possible Futures Craig Calhoun Introduction Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian1 The End of the Long Twentieth Century Beverly J. Silver and Giovanni Arrighi2 Dynamics of (Unresolved) Global Crisis Immanuel Wallerstein3 The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis This Time David Harvey4 A Turning Point or Business as Usual? Daniel Chirot5 Marketization, Social Protection, Emancipation: Toward a Neo-Polanyian Conception of Capitalist Crisis Nancy Fraser6 Crisis, Underconsumption, and Social Policy Caglar Keyder7 The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Toward a New Economic Culture? Manuel Castells 8 The Convolution of Capitalism Gopal Balakrishnan9 The Future in Question: History and Utopia in Latin America (1989-2010) Fernando Coronil Notes About the Contributors Index

The failure of exceptional monetary measures pursued in response to the financial crisis in advanced economies to achieve a strong recovery has created a widespread concern that these economies suffer from a chronic demand gap and face the prospect of stagnation. This article reviews and discusses the alternative views on the causes of the slowdown in accumulation and growth and the policies implemented and proposed to deal with it. It is argued that growing inequality, notably the secular decline in the share of wages, and financialisation are the main factors. Neither spending booms driven by financial bubbles, nor exporting unemployment through trade provides sustainable solutions. It is necessary to rebalance capital and labour, restrain finance and assign a greater role to the public sector in aggregate demand management and income and wealth distribution. However, the dominant neoliberal ideology rules out such socially progressive and economically effective solutions. Consequently, stagnation is likely to remain the new normal in the years to come with governments attempting to reignite growth by creating credit and asset bubbles and/or trying to export unemployment through beggar-thy-neighbour macroeconomic, labour market, trade and exchange rate policies, thereby generating financial and economic instability and tensions in international economic relations with significant repercussions for emerging and developing economies.

We extend the model of optimal consumption and asset allocation by incorporating the biased agent beliefs—overconfidence and overextrapolation. It predicts that overconfidence entails overconsumption, lower overconfidence-induced hedging demand and overinvestment in the risky assets, while overextrapolation induces underconsumption, higher overextrapolation-induced hedging demand and underinvestment. Our model provides an alternative explanation for an agent’s mis-consumption/hedging and portfolio misallocation from the perspective of biased beliefs.

To examine the degree to which price fluctuations affect how individuals approach an intertemporal decision-making problem, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which subjects spend their savings to purchase only one commodity over 20 periods. In the control treatment, the commodity price is constant across all periods. In the small (large) price-fluctuation treatment, the price rate of change is always 1% (20%). Regardless of the treatment, the commodity price and subjects’ savings change at the same rate over time. Therefore, the optimal amount of consumption is the same in all three treatments. Our main findings are twofold. First, the magnitude of misconsumption (i.e., the deviation from optimal consumption) is significantly high, with the large price-fluctuation treatment being the highest, followed by the small price-fluctuation treatment and then the control treatment. Second, regardless of the presence of price fluctuations, subjects exhibit underconsumption (oversaving) behavior, and price fluctuations strengthen this tendency.

The paper analyzes possible policy and institutional responses to underconsumption (deficient consumption spending that leads to depressed economic activity). Underconsumption is an effect of a specific market failure; uncoordinated rational microeconomic decisions to keep labour costs low result in sub-optimal macroeconomic outcomes. Traditionally, any manifestations of demand constraints have been corrected with expansionary fiscal and monetary policies. These methods have ceased to be effective and viable. Alternative measures aimed directly to change income distribu- tion are considered. Such measures (progressive income tax, stronger labour unions) would rather not gain acceptance of entrepreneurs even though in principle they should boost business activity. Non-confrontational solutions are beyond the reach of economic policy but good apprehension of the problem at hand in the democratic debate might lead to a better compromise with respect to social distribution of incomes.

This research tries to evaluate how much COVID-19 affects consumer behavior in the U.S. and Japan. Hence, this study wants to present two new concepts, followed by the massive unnecessary overconsumption levels and massive irreversible underconsumption levels. The main objective is to determine how COVID-19 generates a profound transformation in American and Japanese consumer behavior in the short run. We propose a new dynamic indicator entitled "The Consumption Unstable Behavior in COVID-19 Index (CUBE-COVID-19-Index)." The CUBE-COVID-19-Index offers policy-makers and researchers a new analytical tool to evaluate how much distortion COVID-19 can generate in any country's consumption of essential goods and services (food and basic services). The CUBE-COVID-19-Index is not intended to be a predicting indicator in any case. It shows the rapid consumer preferences changes originated by COVID-19 in the U.S. and Japan recently.

This study examines whether mental accounting theory is applicable to consumption of own-produced food of smallholder farm households. We are motivated by the farm household's procedure of allocating own-produced food, and some evidence of inflexible use of own-produced food reserve. Using hypothetical scenarios of food reserve and consumption, we find that smallholder farm households show evidence of having a mental budget for own-produced food for self-consumption, tracking their consumption against the budget, and compensating for earlier over- or underconsumption. A substantial number of people used the reserve of their own produced food, exceeding their consumption needs, as their mental budget to guide their consumption, leading to an outcome of overconsumption of own produce. Furthermore, we explored factors of mental accounting and proposed policy implications of the study.

The welfare state represents the greatest investment in human capital ever made in history, as the data show. It advanced beyond underconsumption and, for the first time, extended well-being to the whole of society. But the 1980s saw the prevalence of parasitic tendencies; instead of moving on to a full post-industrial economy, the eventual outcome was saturation of demand. On top of the unemployment caused by saturation came further unemployment generated by the ICT revolution and then by globalisation, which shifted western manufactures to the emerging countries. From this profound crisis of the West neoliberalism was born, leading to monstrous inequalities. Neoliberalism reasserted the despotism of profit but went on to see rent triumphing once again.

This article traces some of the historical roots of current debates about secular economic stagnation, involving L. Summers, R. Gordon, and others. We focus on early contributions by Alvin Hansen and John A. Hobson. Although Hansen has been the main influence on the secular stagnation literature, Hobson’s suggested link between economic inequality and stagnation is of interest in view of T. Piketty’s recent claim about the connection between slower growth and inequality. E. Domar and P. Samuelson, Hansen’s students at Harvard, elaborated economic growth and multiplier-accelerator models as follow-ups to Hansen’s original treatment. Domar called attention to Hobson’s insight about underconsumption, increasing capacity, and deficient aggregate demand. We conclude that the range of positions held today concerning stagnation and inequality is large, as it was earlier in the history of thought.

Sardoni (2015) presents an underconsumptionist reading of Marx's crisis theory and argues for developing a theory of capitalist investment by building on the insights of Keynes and Kalecki. This paper engages with both these arguments. It offers a critique of the underconsumptionist reading of Marx's crisis theory and flags some critical differences between the Marxian and Keynesian–Kaleckian viewpoints of capitalist investment. It also presents some general remarks on Marxist crisis theory.

This paper incorporates the so-called Bhaduri-Marglin accumulation function in Goodwin’s original growth cycle model and econometrically estimates the proposed model for the case of the US economy in the time period 1960–2012, using a modern Bayesian sequential Monte Carlo method. Based on our findings, the US economy follows an exhilarationist regime throughout our investigation period with the sole exception of an underconsumption regime for the time period 1974–1978. In general, the results suggest that the proposed approach is an appropriate vehicle for expanding and improving traditional Goodwin-type models.

I begin the second chapter by positing that the modern perspective of conceiving reality generates a type of thought linked to the economy of agroextractivism. This is a way of understanding the world, and ourselves, as if we were governed by the laws of the market, treating everything else as merchandise, and conceiving our actions as if they were always motivated by profit. I present a brief environmental history of how this rationality permeates agro-capitalist expansion on a world scale, focusing specifically on the discursive binomial of development and poverty, through which a series of needs formulated in terms of underconsumption were created. This discourse “created truth” that created “needs” could be met by bringing more people into the market economy and exposing them to the benefits of technology, which had important implications for the creation of consumers for the agricultural surpluses that plagued the system’s postwar operations, for processed food from the food industry, chemical inputs, and agricultural machinery. I conclude the chapter with a data-backed discussion of how ecosystem simplification and pollution created by the model has destroyed the natural sustenance on which capital itself depends in order to continue its tireless expansion. I also show how the system is exploiting this destruction by trying to reconfigure the world agricultural model and open new sources of business by promoting the “green economy” and “sustainable development.”

The article deals with the issue of consumption in modern society. Social changes influence human needs. Based on the analysis of researches, the article describes two different approaches (economic and sociological) to consumption. The article argues that consumption is a human adaptation mechanism to changes of the world. The article also touches upon the issue of responsible and irresponsible consumption of different resources. Philosophers and economists argue that a man is constantly striving to satisfy unlimited wants. There are different economic laws which declare limitlessness and infinity of human wants (e.g., the Engel’s law). The sustainable development model cannot change current consumption patterns because it assumes that human desires are limited, but the human experience demonstrates that inability to satisfy human needs leads to social stagnation. Thus, one can conclude that the modern society is not socially responsible. It is facing a dilemma: responsible behavior vs. irresponsible behavior. One of the ways out is to satisfy human needs through social networks (communication, joint purchasing, etc.). A search for the golden mean should take into account the social role of consumption as an adaptation mechanism and the role of the society in formation of human desires. However, this model also disregards consumption limits - overconsumption and underconsumption - which need to be eliminated. Fundamental changes in the consumption model could solve the problem.