INET Blog

Alexander Field: A Great Leap Forward - Productivity Growth During the Great Depression

Alexander Field offers a new take on postwar prosperity in the United States. While public spending during the Second World War is often credited with laying the foundation for postwar growth, Field suggests this foundation had long been laid. In this INET interview with Rob Johnson he says productive capacity increased tremendously in the years preceding the war, and that fact – not the war spending – provided the basis for prosperity and productivity improvements in the 1950s and 1960s.

Alexander J. Field is Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University and Executive Director of the Economic History Association. He is author of the book A Great Leap Forward: 1930s Depression and U.S. Economic Growth.

Part 1: A Great Leap Forward: Productivity Growth During the Great Depression

Part 2: Crowding Out? - The Role of Public Investment During a Depression

Part 3: The Depression Era R&D Explosion

Part 4: Mixed Lessons From the Great Depression - the Benefits of Public Spending and Private Growth

Posted by The Institute for... at 5:43 pm

Vamsi Vakulabharanam - Inequality in Asia: The Local Effects of Global Capitalism

Inequality did not increase during the early stages of economic development in Japan and the East Asian Tigers. But in India and China it did. Why is that? Vamsi Vakulabharanam suggests that the explanation lies not with the particularities of the countries themselves, but rather with the shift in the "regime of global capitalism" around 1980. Testing whether a global regime shift drives inequality dynamics in national development -- this is new economic thinking.

About Vamsi Vakulabharanam

Vamsi is currently an Associate Professor of economics at the University of Hyderabad, India. He completed his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 2004. His research interests center around the nature and changing dynamics of inequality in the contemporary economies of India and China. More...

In this video: 
Vamsi Vakulabharanam
Posted by The Institute for... at 5:59 pm

Sylvia Nasar on The Story of Economic Genius: Great Thinkers in History

Today INET presents you an interview with Sylvia Nasar, who discusses her book, Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius, with INET Executive Director Rob Johnson. Nasar discusses the work of economists leading up to the early 20th century. She suggests that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was a work of economics that influenced later economists such as Alfred Marshall. Nasar also talks about the intellectual debates between Keynes and Irving Fisher on one side and Joseph Schumpeter and Hayek on the other.

Part 1: Charles Dickens, Economist

Part 2: The Discovery of Productivity Growth and the Welfare State

Part 3: Keynes and Fisher

Part 4: Joseph Schumpeter and Hayek - Keynes' Challengers

Part 5: The State of Economics

Posted by The Institute for... at 2:03 pm

Suresh Naidu - Property Rights and Growth: Lessons from Slavery

30 Ways to Be an Economist is INET's grantee interview series - INET grantees talk about how they do their work, and how they came to be doing it. This week: Suresh Naidu - Property Rights and Growth: Lessons from Slavery.

Strong enforcement of property rights is good for economic growth, says the conventional wisdom. The link may not be as clear cut, says Suresh Naidu. He and co-investigator Jeremiah Dittmar are digging through court records and newspaper ads on runaway slaves to come up with a measure of property rights enforcement. The hypothesis is that weak enforcement of property rights in people – slavery that is – discouraged investment in slaves and encouraged investment in manufacturing and infrastructure instead. A new angle on the link between property rights and economic growth – this is new economic thinking. Watch video

Posted by The Institute for... at 6:11 pm

Moritz Schularick: Credit Booms Gone Bust

30 Ways to Be an Economist is INET's grantee interview series - INET grantees talk about how they do their work, and how they came to be doing it. This week: Moritz Schularick: Credit Booms Gone Bust. Read more

Posted by The Institute for... at 4:42 pm

READING ROOM: Robert Johnson in Time Magazine about the Failures of the Economics Profession

"Not long ago, the principal theories of economics appeared to be the secular religion of society. Today, economics is a discipline in disrepute. It’s as if our ship of state broke from its stable mooring and unexpectedly slammed into the rocks. How could things have gone so spectacularly wrong? And what can be done to repair economics so economists can play a productive role in helping society?" Read more

Posted by The Institute for... at 11:54 am

David Tuckett: How Stories about Economic Fundamentals Drive Financial Markets

Fund managers cannot possibly know what the future will bring, yet they have to commit today to holding assets that promise a return tomorrow. Such a commitment requires confidence -- confidence that is hard to find in the face of uncertainty. To cope with the uncertainty, fund managers rely on gut feelings and invent stories that justify their decisions. In the end, it is stories and emotions that drive financial markets. That is, in a nutshell, the theory of asset pricing developed by David Tuckett. Read more

Posted by The Institute for... at 7:10 pm

INET in Berlin: The Conference Program

We are pleased to announce the program of INET's annual plenary conference in Berlin. Over 100 scholars, journalists, and policy makers will participate in the conference entitled "Paradigm Lost: Rethinking Economics and Politics." All sessions will be filmed and uploaded to the web. Visit this page to explore the full conference program, and find the sessions below. Read more

Posted by The Institute for... at 6:21 pm

Sanjay Reddy - Facts and Values Are Entangled: Deal with It

30 Ways to Be an Economist is INET's grantee interview series - INET grantees talk about how they do their work, and how they came to be doing it. This week: Sanjay Reddy - Facts and Values Are Entangled: Deal with It. Read more

Posted by The Institute for... at 7:22 pm

INET in Berlin: The Annual Plenary Conference to Take Place on April 12-14, 2012

The Institute for New Economic Thinking will host its third annual plenary conference in Berlin from April 12 to 14, 2012. The conference, entitled “Paradigm Lost: Rethinking Economics and Politics," will take place in the Axica Conference Center adjacent to the world famous Brandenburg Gate. Read more

Posted by The Institute for... at 4:36 pm

Satyajit Das: The Cultural Transformation of the World of Finance

When Satyajit Das started to work at a commercial bank, the world of finance was simple: banks made money by lending it. That was 44 years ago, and the tools of the trade have changed quite a bit since then. In this INET interview with Robert Johnson, Das describes some of the cultural changes that transformed the world of finance from the perspective of a practitioner and shows how traders of the "School of Hard Knocks" were replaced by a generation of traders that came straight from business school and overly relied on models and financial theory.

  Read more

Posted by The Institute for... at 5:07 pm

Bringing in the Gunslinger: Nicholas Wapshott on Keynes vs. Hayek

Keynes and Hayek were defining figures in 20th century economics. In this INET interview, Nicholas Wapshott talks about his book, Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics, and about the intellectual clashes between two foundational economic thinkers. He details how the "gunslinger," Hayek, was brought in to London to bring down the "panther," Keynes. Things were about to get ungentlemanly.

Read more

Posted by The Institute for... at 9:59 am

Stephen Marglin: Occupy Harvard, Economics and Ideology

Students staged a walkout of the intro economics class at Harvard, as a protest against the bias they perceive in the course (here is their open letter). Every other year, Harvard Professor Stephen Marglin teaches Economics: A Critical Approach (syllabus here), as an alternative intro course for Harvard freshmen. The video below shows Marglin at a teach-in, given to students at Occupy Harvard on December 7, 2011. Read more

Posted by The Institute for... at 12:55 pm