Minsky’s Moment

Piero Ferri, Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Bergamo, Italy

'This book presents interesting and original insights into Hyman Minsky's thinking based on a long and close personal relationship. It offers a variety of new developments and draws on the author's extensive knowledge of economic thinking over the past 50 years to put Minsky's work into context.'--Steven Fazzari, Washington University in St. Louis, US'Piero Ferri's new book offers an alternative approach to Hyman Minsky's well-known financial instability hypothesis (FIH) that is well-grounded in work on which they collaborated for over a decade. Rather than focusing on the ''Minsky Moment'' as so many others have done, Ferri places the FIH within Minsky's life-long research program that began with his dissertation and continued in his years at the Levy Economics Institute before his death in 1996. The FIH is presented as a particular case of Minsky's general vision of the evolution of a complex, dynamic system. While instability is natural, it is constrained by policy and institutional ceilings and floors. Building on co-authored papers with Minsky, Ferri extends the analysis, in particular by returning to and updating Minsky's early focus on the dynamics of labor markets in models that allow for more complex analysis.'--L. Randall Wray, University of Missouri-Kansas City and Levy Economics Institute, US'This book is a fascinating journey in search of the inner roots of the financial instability hypothesis theorized by Minsky. His towering figure assumes a convincing new light, where heterogeneity, emergency and complexity converge in the idea that credit, and not money, and private information are the links that connect present and future. The reader will recognise Minsky as a unique figure among the economists of the last century.'--Mauro Gallegati, Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy

• Contents: Preface 1: Overview Part I “It” Happened Again 2. The Minsky Moment And The Economics Of Minsky 3. A Synoptic View Of The Financial Instability Hypothesis 4. An Insider’s View Part II Co-Authoring 5. Prices, Employment And Prices 6. The Breakdown Of The IS-LM Synthesis: Implications For Post-Keynesian Economic Theory 7. Market Processes And The Thwarting System Part III Deepening The Methodology 8. Micro And Macro In Minsky’s Models 9. The Foundations Of Medium-Run Dynamics 10. New Tools For Dynamics Part IV Entering The Black Box 11. Drivers, Adapters And Constraints 12. Growth, Technical Change And Unemployment 13. Heterogeneity In The Labor Market Part V The Economics Of Minsky In A Dynamic Setting 14. The Financial Instability Hypothesis And The Great Recession 15. A Meta-Model Of The Financial Instability Hypothesis 16. Final Considerations And Challenges Index