I am Professor in Economic Policy at University of Bergamo. I taught from 2006 to 2011 post-Keynesian seminars in the course coordinated by Prof. Giorgio Lunghini at Bocconi University (Alternative Economic Models). At University of Pavia (in 2010 and in 2011) I taught History of Political Economy and Theory of Firm, stressing the role of institutions in line with the neo-Schumpeterian approach. At University of Bergamo I taught Public Economics both in the Faculty of Economics (in 2006, 2007 and in 2013) and in the Faculty of Law (from 2006 to 2013). Since 2009 I have been teaching International Monetary Economics both in Italian (48 hours, in this case I am also the course coordinator) and in English (24 hours; this course is coordinated by Riccardo Bellofiore and Jan Toporowski), Economic Policy (in Italian) an Economic Ethics (in Italian). The International Monetary Economics course aims to provide the analytical tools necessary to address some of the issues that emerge as a result of the evolution of the international economic system in last decades. The role of the institutions in understanding the foreign exchange market is always at the centre of my lectures. Following the work of André Orléan and John T. Harvey I combine analyses rooted in the scholarly traditions of John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Alois Schumpeter with that of modern psychology and Foucauldian studies to produce a set of new theories to explain international monetary economics, including not only exchange rates but also financial crises.
Since 2008 my research projects (supported and funded by the University of Bergamo) include institutional economics, cognitive capitalism, monetary theory of production, financialization, stock-flow consistent models and complementary currencies. On these issues I have published in a wide variety of journals including Applued Ecinomics (2018), the Cambridge Journal of Economics (2016), the Journal of Evolutionary Economics (2014), Metroeconomica (2014), Forum for Social Economics (2014), International Journal of Political Economy (2011 and 2012), International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education (2012), Review of Social Economy (2008), Theory Culture and Society (2015). Also I edited in 2008, with Andrea Fumagalli, the special issue of the European Journal of Economic and Social systems (EJESS) on “Money and Technological Change”
In 2012 I edited (Together with Marco Passarella) a book that present a collection of papers on the issue of the special session at the VII Storep Conference, with a preface of Alessandro Vercelli. The purpose of this work (New Research Perspectives in the Monetary Theory of Production, Sestante, Bergamo University Press) is to introduce the reader to the recent developments in the Italian heterodox literature on monetary theory, showing that the monetary theory of production – mainly pursued by French and Italian authors in the mid-1970s - is still a vital approach among the new generations.
In 2010 I started a research on complementary currencies, by collaborating with the research group at Bocconi University coordinated by Prof Massimo Amato.
During my visiting at the “Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, UMR-8174 du CNRS”, I have been involved as researcher in the task that is investigating, through an action research methodology, the most significant experiences of mutual credit schemes and virtual social currencies in Europe. This research is part of D-CENT European Project (2013-2016). I have been also involved in Decode European Project (2017-2020).
Supervisors: Massimo Amato, Fabio Fiorillo, Giorgio Lunghini, Andrea Fumagalli, Lorenzo Robotti, Alessandro Roncaglia, Carlo Vercellone, and Laura Viganò
Address: Bergamo, Lombardia, Italy
Since 2008 my research projects (supported and funded by the University of Bergamo) include institutional economics, cognitive capitalism, monetary theory of production, financialization, stock-flow consistent models and complementary currencies. On these issues I have published in a wide variety of journals including Applued Ecinomics (2018), the Cambridge Journal of Economics (2016), the Journal of Evolutionary Economics (2014), Metroeconomica (2014), Forum for Social Economics (2014), International Journal of Political Economy (2011 and 2012), International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education (2012), Review of Social Economy (2008), Theory Culture and Society (2015). Also I edited in 2008, with Andrea Fumagalli, the special issue of the European Journal of Economic and Social systems (EJESS) on “Money and Technological Change”
In 2012 I edited (Together with Marco Passarella) a book that present a collection of papers on the issue of the special session at the VII Storep Conference, with a preface of Alessandro Vercelli. The purpose of this work (New Research Perspectives in the Monetary Theory of Production, Sestante, Bergamo University Press) is to introduce the reader to the recent developments in the Italian heterodox literature on monetary theory, showing that the monetary theory of production – mainly pursued by French and Italian authors in the mid-1970s - is still a vital approach among the new generations.
In 2010 I started a research on complementary currencies, by collaborating with the research group at Bocconi University coordinated by Prof Massimo Amato.
During my visiting at the “Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, UMR-8174 du CNRS”, I have been involved as researcher in the task that is investigating, through an action research methodology, the most significant experiences of mutual credit schemes and virtual social currencies in Europe. This research is part of D-CENT European Project (2013-2016). I have been also involved in Decode European Project (2017-2020).
Supervisors: Massimo Amato, Fabio Fiorillo, Giorgio Lunghini, Andrea Fumagalli, Lorenzo Robotti, Alessandro Roncaglia, Carlo Vercellone, and Laura Viganò
Address: Bergamo, Lombardia, Italy
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A critical review of known European complementary monetary circuits is followed by examination of the Sardex clearing system. The paper then goes on to argue by means of a stock-flow consistent model that complementary monetary circuits can serve to stabilise local economic systems. In particular, a local clearing union for local exchanges has the effect of stabilising the profits of firms while attenuating the impact of the credit crunch at same time.
A critical review of known European complementary monetary circuits is followed by examination of the Sardex clearing system. The paper then goes on to argue by means of a stock-flow consistent model that complementary monetary circuits can serve to stabilise local economic systems. In particular, a local clearing union for local exchanges has the effect of stabilising the profits of firms while attenuating the impact of the credit crunch at same time.
Pensare le traiettorie di sviluppo future dei territori europei, e le eventuali forme di mediazione e collaborazione che li caratterizzeranno, richiede non solo la presa d’atto delle trasformazioni epocali che hanno investito il lavoro, il welfare ed il territorio, ma anche uno sforzo collettivo che sappia immaginare ed agire un modello di sviluppo altro, radicato nei principi di giustizia sociale ed ambientale. Se, parafrasando un lungimirante Pasolini, gli italiani sono diventati consumisti in seguito ad una nefasta “rivoluzione
antropologica”, allora bisognerà trovare il coraggio e la forza di invertire e rilanciare quel processo, stavolta in direzione di una sostenibilità concreta, diffusa e solidale; così che l’ambito economico sia funzionale ad un abitare autenticamente umano.
Even before the neoclassical theory came into being, Ricardo and Marx showed that the economic or rather capitalist system is instead characterised by distributive conflict and that crises are the norm within it. Moreover, the critiques developed by Keynes and Sraffa during the twentieth century have shown that the world we live in is fraught with uncertainty, that the neoclassical theory is vitiated by irreparable logical flaws, and that if economic theory is to arrive at relevant conclusions, the importance of the political and ideological dimension – of history – must be recognised.
1. l'accettazione acritica di un vincolo istituzionale derivante da un preciso equilibrio politico che caratterizza l'attuale Unione Monetaria Europea (UME). Tale vincolo assume la seguente forma: occorre correggere lo squilibrio delle finanze pubbliche tra i diversi Paesi aderenti all'UME attraverso politiche fiscali restrittive.
2. la consapevole presa di distanza (sino alla vera e propria criminalizzazione) della sperimentazione e costituzione di forme mutualistiche di erogazione e godimento di beni comuni.
Esiste tra le due esperienze di governo un approccio teorico comune alle politiche economiche?
Cercheremo innanzitutto di comprendere la natura del vincolo istituzionale che grava sulla situazione italiana a partire da un’analisi del contesto macroeconomico europeo.
Passeremo poi ad analizzare le forme politiche ed istituzionali in cui tale vincolo è stato recepito dal governo Monti, e le probabili forme in cui verrà recepito dal governo Letta."
The most successful textbooks used to teach students of economics are instead still grounded on the traditional theoretical hypotheses. The primary aim of our contribution is to show that the approach to international monetary economics put forward in the textbooks can in actual fact be traced back to the theoretical framework of a mainstream aggregate general economic equilibrium in an open economic context. The dominant approach sees money as a mere tool and its influence on the economic system as therefore restricted solely to the sphere of prices. What view of money could prove useful in order to establish a balanced international monetary system?
In order to demonstrate the need to develop a non-orthodox approach to the research question, this paper seeks to provide a critical analysis of the way in which international monetary economics is usually taught.
Section 2 will present a brief overview of the concrete problems that the discipline has been faced with since the global crisis and that are not addressed in the textbooks.
Section 3 will present a simple aggregate model of general economic equilibrium in a closed economy and subsection 3.1 will show how this can be extended to an open-economy context through the introduction of purchasing power parity.
It will then be shown (3.2) how the mainstream approach seeks to account for the volatility characterising the foreign exchange market by introducing imbalances into the international system of payments, which are in any case supposed to be absorbed in the long period. Our discussion here will be confined to the way in which their arguments are developed in the major textbooks of international monetary economics, especially Krugman, Obstfeld and Melitz (2009).
Without claiming to be exhaustive, the second part will suggest some lines of research in the sphere of post-Keynesian analysis.4 Symmetrically to the first, it will open with the analysis of a closed economic system in line with the argument developed in Keynes’s work (4.1), and then go on to extend its findings to an open-economy context (4.2). As neither full employment nor balanced trade over the short or long run are assumed, this constitutes a new contribution to the postKeynesian analysis of exchange rate determination.