Economic Stagnation: Problems of Theory and Policy
From Malthus to Piketty
After a long period of sustained growth, the spectre of stagnation in advanced capitalist economies is back again. A major theme at the time of John M. Keynes and Joseph A. Schumpeter, stagnation is once more on the agenda with a vengeance. The Graz Schumpeter Summer School addresses the following questions:
- What is the evidence that advanced capitalist economies face the problem of stagnation?
- What are the driving forces responsible for stagnation at the beginning of the 21st century?
- How is the problem of stagnation related to trends in the distribution of income and wealth, the exhaustion of natural resources and ecological constraints of economic growth, asynchronous demographic trends, the increased power of the financial sector and fiscal imbalances etc.?
- What are adequate policy responses and institutional innovations?
- Can Schumpeterian forces be relied upon to lead out of the depression?
The Summer School discusses these problems at a theoretical, empirical and policy level. It provides a thorough account of the multifarious aspects of stagnation as dealt with by authors from Thomas R. Malthus, via Alvin Hansen to Josef Steindl and beyond, and applies relevant ideas, concepts and tools to contemporary problems.