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Michael Hudson
Economist who analyses how the finance-insurance-real-estate (FIRE) sector extracts economic rent, drawing heavily on classical and Georgist rent theory.
Overview
Michael Hudson (b. 1939) is an American economist known for his analysis of debt, finance, and economic rent. He frames the modern economy as a contest between productive activity and rent extraction by the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate), reviving classical and Georgist concerns about unearned income.
Key Work
- Killing the Host (2015) argues that the financial sector increasingly extracts rents — much of it ultimately land rent via mortgage credit — rather than funding productive investment.
- "Finance Capitalism versus Industrial Capitalism" (2021, Review of Radical Political Economics) is the peer-reviewed statement of his thesis.
- He co-authored the 2021 super-stimulus paper with Goodhart, Kumhof, and Tideman, linking his rent analysis to a concrete land-tax policy proposal.
Significance
Hudson connects Georgist land-rent theory to the dynamics of debt and banking, arguing that rising land prices and the credit that funds them are central to financial instability — a view aligned with the 18-year land cycle.
See Also
- Clean Slate Proclamations (Ancient Debt Jubilees) — the Bronze Age Mesopotamian debt-and-land-restoration tradition underlying Hudson's rent-and-debt framework
- Thorstein Veblen — institutionalist economist whose 1923 land-speculation critique Hudson's own FIRE-sector rent-extraction analysis explicitly builds on
- Hudson: 'How to Lie with Real Estate Statistics' / 'Where Did All the Land Go?' (2001) — Hudson's essays documenting how Federal Reserve methodology valued U.S. corporate land at negative $4 billion in 1993, statistically erasing land's true scale
- Economic Rent · 18-Year Land Cycle · Fred Harrison
- Narrative: The Rentier Economy — the rent-extraction critique he helped shape
Sources
- Michael Hudson (2015), Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy (book) — used for the FIRE-sector rent-extraction thesis (mined on the wiki's research page).
- Michael Hudson (2021), "Finance Capitalism versus Industrial Capitalism," Review of Radical Political Economics — used as the peer-reviewed statement of the finance-vs-industry thesis.
- Goodhart, Hudson, Kumhof & Tideman (2021) — used for Hudson's co-authorship of the land-tax super-stimulus proposal. wiki summary