Webinar Series | Wage-Led and Profit-Led Economies

Dear fellow Keynesians,

It is with great pleasure that the YSI Keynesian Economics Working Group would like to announce the webinar series entitled “Wage-led and Profit-led economies: how distribution affects growth and how growth affects distribution”. We will have the opportunity to discuss the topics around this debate with international leading researchers.

TO JOIN US, click here: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/225896645

Wednesday, April 5th
Wage-led versus Profit-led Demand: What Have we Learned?
Prof. Dr. Engelbert Stockhammer (Kingston University)
1:00 PM (EST)/6:00 PM (CET)

Wednesday, April 12th
The origins and evolution of the debate on wage-led and profit-led regimes
Prof. Dr. Marc Lavoie (Ottawa University)
1:00 PM (EST)/6:00 PM (CET)

Wednesday, April 26th
Weaknesses of 'wage-led growth
Prof. Dr. Peter Skott (University of Massachusetts-Amherst)
1:00 PM (EST)/6:00 PM (CET)

Date to be confirmed
The Wage Share, Inequality and Economic Growth
Prof. Dr. Amitava Dutt (University of Notre Dame, US)

With increasing importance in recent times, distribution of income towards workers has been seen as a positive impulse to economic growth. The basic assumption being made is that profit earners, or in a broader sense wealthy people, have a higher propensity to save than those at the bottom of the income and wealth distribution. This argumentation was particularly appealing in the post-World War II in North America and Europe. Those times where characterized by shared prosperity thanks to a redistribution of income and strong wage increases in line with productivity, an economic policy strategy known as wage-led. The two decades of high growth collapsed in the early 1970s. This led to a re-birth of the Classical argument, according to which the wage share increases of the previous decades had depressed capitalist expectations since profits were shrinking. Thus, the economy would be profit-led.

The purpose of this webinar series is to dig into the limits and constructive critiques that are being debated around the economic policy proposal of building a share prosperity based on wage-led growth. The presentation will discuss, among other topics, functional income inequality and wage inequality, consequences of financialization for the debate, and econometric issues regarding demand regimens (either wage-led or profit-led).

This webinar is organised by Ayoze Alfageme and Rafael Ribeiro on behalf of the Keynesian Economics Working Group