Interest and Capital: The Monetary Economics of Michał Kalecki

Jan Toporowski

Jan 2022 · Oxford University Press

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Interest and Capital brings together Michał Kalecki's published fragments on monetary theory and policy to explore his distinctive approach to money and its circulation in the capitalist economy. Toporowski lays out Kalecki's critique of the international monetary arrangements proposed by Keynes and White at Bretton Woods, casting new light on the international monetary imbalances that have since disrupted the international economy. The greater importance of debt management revealed in Kalecki's monetary analysis makes it particularly relevant to the policy dilemmas of developing countries and governments facing high levels of debt in the wake of recent global crises. In Kalecki's theoretical approach, money has both an industrial and a financial circulation. Corporate finance takes its place at the centre of monetary considerations because it is the money of capitalists that is the autonomous determinant of expenditure in the economy. This theory has important implications for the rate of interest, which is not related to the rate of profit, nor to the kind of portfolio adjustments necessary to maintain portfolio equilibrium, but to the kind of financing that may prevail in any given phase of the business cycle.

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Jan Toporowski is Professor of Economics and Finance at SOAS University. He studied economics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and the University of Birmingham. He has worked in fund management, international banking, economic consultancy and central banking, and has published widely on money, finance and economic development, monetary policy and the history of economic thought. He has held academic appointments in Italy and Japan. He is the author of a two-volume biography of Michał Kalecki.