Since the Great Recession, the economic policy debate has converged on Austerity vs Stimulus (neoclassical vs. Keynesian theory).

Advocates of both strategies concede that the world’s major economies are not operating at full employment and seek to promote sustainable fuller employment and enhanced earnings of poor and middle-class people. Professor Ashford offers a different strategy (widening competitive opportunities for capital acquisition with the earnings of capital) based on a different theory of fuller employment: The prospect of more broadly distributed capital earnings in future years provides market incentives to profitably employ more labor and capital in earlier years. Unlike Keynesian theory, Ashford’s approach operates in both the short and long run and requires no redistribution through tax and transfer mechanisms. Predicted results include enhanced earnings for poor and middle-class people, enhanced corporate profits and growth, reduced need for welfare dependence, government spending, borrowing, and taxes, and enhanced sovereign creditworthiness. 

Robert Ashford is Distinguished Professor of Law at Syracuse University, where he teaches Business Planning, Inclusive Capitalism, Public Corporations, Securities Regulation, among others. He holds a J.D. degree with Honors from Harvard Law School. 

Robert Hunter Wade is a political economy and development scholar. He is currently Professor of Political Economy and Development at the Department of International Development at the LSE. 

The Department of International Development (@LSE_ID ) promotes interdisciplinary postgraduate teaching and research on processes of social, political and economic development and change. The department is dedicated to understanding problems of poverty and late development within local communities, as well as national and international political and economic systems.