Articles

Articles and analyses from the INET community on the key economic questions of our time.

Article

Mortgage Fraud Fueled the Financial Crisis—and Could Again

Sep 7, 2018

Both before 2008 and today, there’s a disturbing tendency in Washington to not take mortgage fraud seriously

Article

The Zero-Sum Economy

Aug 20, 2018

The anthropologist David Graeber has argued that as much as 30% of all work is performed in “bullshit jobs,” which are unnecessary to produce truly valuable goods and services but arise from competition for income and status. But the deeper problem is that more and more economic activity performs a merely distributive function.

Article

The Mechanics of Cryptocurrency

Aug 15, 2018

INET Global Commissioner Peter Bofinger breaks down cryptocurrencies, and why they’re actually far from “anonymous”

Article

Reproducibility Crisis Reaches All Randomised Controlled Trials

Jul 9, 2018

The social and medical sciences depend on randomised control trials – though they face more assumptions and biases than commonly thought.

Article

Was Martin Luther King a socialist?

Jul 5, 2018

Was Martin Luther King a socialist? New book may surprise you.

Article

Who Says Labor Laws Are “Luxuries”?

Jun 11, 2018

The World Bank and IMF say developing economies can’t afford to have strong labor laws. Actually, they can’t afford not to.

Article

Why We Need a Global Public Economics

May 7, 2018

Global public goods, from health to peace to security, crisscross national and social boundaries. We need a new economic theory to understand their pivotal role in the global economy.

Article

Learning from MLK, the Inconvenient Hero

Apr 4, 2018

The vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years later, and the relevance of his economic ideas today