Inflation, Unemployment and Capital Malformations

The volume deals with the main problems faced by capitalist economies, inflation and unemployment, in a new and original way, and provides the theoretical foundations for quantum macroeconomic analysis. Its aim is to allow English-speaking economists and interested readers to have a direct access to the analysis provided by Schmitt in his 1984 book Inflation, chômage et malformations du capital.

Orthodox economics has failed to provide a consistent insight of the pathologies hindering our economies, and both the academic and the economic worlds are much in need for an alternative approach capable to explain the origins of these pathologies and how they can eventually be disposed of. Schmitt’s volume provides a revolutionary explanation of the cause of today’s economic disorder as well as an innovative solution allowing for the passage from disorder to order. Neoclassical and Keynesian theories of any type are essentially based on equilibrium analysis and this is why none of them has ever been able to provide a consistent macroeconomic analysis based on macroeconomic foundations. This is what Schmitt’s book aims for: developing a new analysis built on identities rather than conditions of equilibrium, capable to explain the objective origins of inflation and unemployment.

In this volume, Schmitt introduces a new, revolutionary analysis centred on the concept of quantum time. The topics analysed by Schmitt cover the entire field of national macroeconomics, from production to capital accumulation, the leading role in this ground-breaking investigation being played by what he calls the theory of emissions. The ensuing macroeconomic theory is built on a set of laws derived from the monetary nature of our economic systems and defines the logical framework of inquiry into modern macroeconomics.

Bernard Schmitt was a full professor of Monetary Macroeconomics at the Universities of Burgundy (Dijon), France and of Fribourg, Switzerland. He was also the co-director of the Laboratory of Research in Monetary economics at the Centre for Banking Studies in Lugano, Switzerland. Among his main publications are: La formation du pouvoir d’achat, Monnaie, salaires et profits, Macroeconomic Theory, A Fundamental Revision, Théorie unitaire de la monnaie, nationale et internationale, La France souveraine de sa monnaie, External Debt Servicing. A Vicious Circle, and a number of contributions to collective books as well as papers published in peer-reviewed journals.

English translation and introduction by

Xavier Bradley, Université de Bourgogne, France.

Alvaro Cencini, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland.