Jan Kregel is responding to the following questions:

In your career you have worked with different leading post-Keynesians, like Joan Robinson, Alfred Eichner, Nicholas Kaldor or Paul Davidson, who was a PhD adviser of yours. What was their main impact on your work and are there any other teachers who impressed you or were important for you?

An important attempt at integration was your joint paper with Alfred Eichner in 1975 on post-Keynesian Economics as a new paradigm. What is your view today on the development of this paradigm, and why in your view has post-Keynesianism failed in terms of substituting mainstream neoclassical synthesis or monetarism?

Do you think that the attempt at integration has failed in general? Or do you believe it is still worth while working on it?

If we talk about the perspectives of post-Keynesian economics we see that the group is shrinking, to be modest. So what is in your view the relationship to modern New Keynesians, for instance Stiglitz or Akerlof ? Is there any bridge or any common ground which can be developed in terms of an overarching Keynesian paradigm with post-Keynesian elements, or do you think that this is the wrong way to go?

If we take a look at macroeconomic policy recommendations of post- Keynesians today, we seem to be back in the world of the 1960s and 70s: Use more active fiscal policies in order to stabilise the economy and make use of incomes policies in order to control inflation. But incomes policies did not work in the 1970s. You are suggesting as an alternative the "employer of last resort" (ELR) program developed by the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability in Kansas City. What are the advantages?

What is the difference between active labor market policies, as for instance practiced in Sweden, where they tried incomes policies by means of "solidaristic wage policies"? The idea was to increase wages according to the average productivity increase and then to take care of those who get out of these low productivity, slowly growing sectors and train them in order to get them in the fast growing high productivity sectors.

Does the ELR approach include compulsory work in your view?

Does the employer of last resort program contradict with the development of a permanent public sector?