The Research Group in Political Economy at the Institute of Economics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro follows the Sraffian project proposed by Garegnani to make the Keynesian-Kaleckian principle of effective demand compatible with the classical surplus approach. For our group, growth is demand-led and policy (and often balance of payments) constrained and inflation is basically a cost-push political economy phenomenon that depends on conflicting claims over income distribution. In this framework, macroeconomic policies are important to growth, inflation and income distribution and are, in capitalist economies, the result of institutional arrangements and political power relations.The Research Group in Political Economy also considers that the soundness of this theoretical approach is best demonstrated by constructing policy-relevant analyses and models both theoretical and applied in order to understand the concrete performance of developed and developing economies.

Given the approach taken by the Group and in the context of the recent increasing dialogue and convergence between some Kaleckians and some Sraffians (on endogenous money and supermultiplier models, for instance), the main idea of the workshop is to strengthen this promising trend by promoting a constructive and policy-relevant debate between Kaleckians and Sraffians (to which other heterodox approaches to economics are more than welcome) on new contributions concerning demand-led growth analyses and models and their multiple relations with conflict inflation, income distribution and macroeconomic policies.