Guilherme Spinato Morlin
PhD Student, DEPS, USiena
Nikolas Passos
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
Riccardo Pariboni
DEPS, USiena
Abstract
Recently, demand-led growth theories reshaped the study of comparative political economy. Since the Baccaro and Pontusson critique of Varieties of Capitalism, a new wave of studies has sought to analyze national economies in terms of their main demand driver of growth. Post-Keynesian authors provided extensions to perfect the fit between demand-led growth theories and comparative political economy. We argue that the Sraffian supermultiplier provides a growth theory compatible with the growth model perspective advanced by Baccaro and Pontusson and has advantages over Kaleckian and New Keynesian approaches. The concept of the autonomous components of demand, which comprise government spending, export, and debt-financed consumption, is already central for the studies of growth models. The supermultiplier provides a theory that coherently understands the relation between the autonomous demand drivers and the other induced components of demand. We demonstrate our arguments by decomposing the growth of four advanced economies: the United States, Germany, Japan, and Sweden. The decomposition shows the importance of separating the autonomous from the induced components and highlights the relevance of public expenditures and exports as growth drivers in advanced economies.
Keywords
Comparative Political Economy, growth models, Sraffian supermultiplier
Jel Codes
B52, E12, O47, O57, P52.
