The Irreconcilable Inconsistencies of Neoclassical Macroeconomics

Whichever the reader's circumstance, Weeks's book is essential reading for the critic...Weeks clearly strips a false science down to its logical fundamentals and presents neoclassical economics for what it is: the underlying academic justification for the actions of the world's dominant classes. Wesley Marshal, Autonomous Metropolitan University, Iztapalapa, Mexico John Weeks has written a lucid, engaging and persuasive critique of orthodox macroeconomics. In doing so, he provides an important counterpoint to the neoclassical perspective, to question not just its prescriptions but also its analysis. The book demonstrates that some of the most fundamental, indeed influential, propositions in orthodoxy are fallacies: that markets by themselves ensure full employment, or that inflation everywhere is a monetary phenomenon. In its near obsessive concern with the micro-theoretic foundations of macroeconomics, orthodoxy forgets that the whole is different from, if not greater than, the sum total of the parts. For an understanding of the world around us, the author argues, it is time for macroeconomics to return to the thinking of Marx and Keynes. This is a valuable alternative text for those who have questions or concerns about mainstream macroeconomics in most textbooks. Deepak Nayyar, Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Distinguished University Professor of Economics, New School for Social Research, New York Even after the global economic calamities tied to the Wall Street Crash and Great Recession of 2008-09, the view still prevails among both professional economists and policymakers that free market economies work best. In this book, Professor John Weeks powerfully demolishes neoclassical macroeconomic theory, the intellectual foundation for all such free-market celebrations. Weeks also goes further, by clearing the ground for us to think in fresh ways about a macroeconomic framework capable of delivering full employment, stable financial markets and a sustainable environment. Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts-Amherst John Weeks has written a passionate indictment of mainstream macroeconomics. His audience is sceptical students (and their teachers) who are puzzled about the lack of contact between what their textbooks and learned journals say about how things happen and what should be done about them, on the one hand and what they observe in the day-to-day happenings of the world in which they live, on the other. Weeks has absorbed the approach and details of the mainstream literature, reduced it to its essentials and examined its internal logic, which he often finds either wanting, or so dependent on special assumptions for which there is little economic justification as to be of limited applicability, or none at all. He contrasts these findings with the more relevant approach to be found in the writings of Marx, Keynes, and Weeks' own institutionalist teachers of long ago. False Paradigm is the best sort of textbook - clear, honest, challenging and relevant. G. C. Harcourt, School of Economics, University of New South Wales My heart goes out to those young people who, spurred on by the financial crisis, embark on a course in economics. Invariably they confront an orthodoxy taught by a profession that failed to predict the crisis, failed to explain it and failed to offer remedies. Indeed the economics profession, with very few notable exceptions has stood aloof, disdaining to offer society, and in particular young people, an understanding of, and a way out of the crisis. Not so John Weeks. This book applies academic rigour to shed light and understanding. It is for anyone with a sceptical mind wanting to understand and make sense of today's financial mayhemã - and keen to challenge the discredited economics that precipitated the crisis of August 2007 - a crisis that is still ongoing. Ann Pettifor, Executive Director of Advocacy International With intellectual rigour and passion for human progress, this book shows how much the dominant economic approach is based on false premises, faulty logic and ideological blindness. Even more important than its sharp and profound criticisms of all aspects of orthodox macroeconomics is its ability to develop the faculty for critical reflection in the reader. It is a must-read for everyone who is interested in understanding what is happening in the world economy today. Ha-Joon Chang, University of Cambridge John Weeks's book delivers what it has promised: a thorough critique of neoclassical theory and the synthesis models by undermining the contradictory propositions and implicit assumptions and turning these against themselves. Jelle Versieren, University of Antwerp