Articles

Many Americans have expressed outrage over Pfizer’s plan, through its merger with Allergan, to move its tax home from the United States to Ireland. Now, in a New York Times op-ed, Carl Icahn, the billionaire corporate raider turned hedge fund activist, has joined the chorus. He labels the Pfizer-Allergan deal a “travesty,” blaming the U.S.’s “uncompetitive international tax system.”

The United States economy has come apart, with the rich getting richer and workers’ incomes not advancing at all.

Spain’s future path for economic policy will soon be decided.

The Institute extends its congratulations to Philip Lane, who has been named to succeed Patrick Honohan as the Irish central bank chief, and inherit his role on the council of the ECB.

This essay critically evaluates the benefits and costs of the dominant methodology in macroeconomics, the DSGE approach. Although the approach has led to great progress in some areas, it has also created biases and blind spots in the profession that hold back our understanding and our ability to govern the macroeconomy. There is great scope for progress in macroeconomics by judiciously pushing the boundaries of some of the methodological restrictions imposed by the DSGE approach.

The best-known China bear says the emperor is not yet naked, but getting there.

Have economists fallen in love with an idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets? To what extent is standard microeconomics responsible for this state of affairs?

Comparing outcomes for biological and adopted children sheds light on the intergenerational transmission of wealth.

Archival artifacts from the history of economics.

The financial crisis of 2008 was unforeseen to a significant extent. One reason is that the dominant academic theories influencing political decision makers ignore recent advances and instead rely largely on models and decision science dating back to the Second World War.