Thomas Ferguson is the Research Director at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and Senior Fellow at Better Markets. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and taught formerly at MIT and the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Golden Rule (University of Chicago Press, 1995) and Right Turn (Hill & Wang, 1986). His articles have appeared in many scholarly journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Economic History. He is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Political Economy and a longtime Contributing Editor at The Nation.
Thomas Ferguson
By this expert
Trump versus Biden: The Macroeconomics of the Second Coming
The current paper returns to the key questions of wages and incomes and how wealth effects cripple reliance on interest rates to control inflation.
Trump, Populism, and the Republican Establishment: Two Graphs From New Hampshire
This year’s New Hampshire primary testifies to the disintegration of the Republican Party
The Origins of the Investment Theory of Party Competition
Preface to the Japanese Edition of Golden Rule
Central Banks, Green Finance, and the Climate Crisis
The tough policy choices ahead for confronting the climate crisis
Featuring this expert
Thomas Ferguson is quoted in Rabble on money in politics
“Political scientist Thomas Ferguson has documented how U.S. big business interests poured money into local and state elections to ensure positive support for their largely unpopular policies. What Ferguson calls “political investment” is the practice of spending serious sums on party competition to keep hand-picked, docile representatives in power.” — Duncan Cameron, Rabble
INET's article on the dangers of reopening schools is featured in the Santa Fe New Mexican
“Right after the CDC made this announcement, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, sent a letter to the Biden administration, citing a study by the Institute for Economic Thinking. … The authors of the study are Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, who did much of the research for the study and is a clinical epidemiologist and statistical geneticist and senior lecturer at the William Harvey Research Institute in London; Dr. Phillip Alveldi, CEO and chairman of Brain Works Foundry Inc, a U.S.-based developer of artificial intelligence-enhanced health care technologies and services; and Thomas Ferguson, the director of research projects for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.” — Dennis Donohue, Santa Fe New Mexican
Thomas Ferguson's article is featured in the International Economy Magazine
“The much-touted “new thinking” on fiscal policy and debt is actually very thin and little of it is new. In the 1990s, economist Luigi Pasinetti clarified the folly of the proposed Maastricht criteria for public finances and forecast the coming disaster with those. Subsequently, many economists, including more than a few working with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, showed in detail how austerity reduces potential output over time and how absurd theories about Phillips Curve trade-offs lead to big underestimates of real rates of unemployment. Running below full employment for long periods blows big holes in public finances and thus piles on debt.” – Thomas Ferguson
Survey Bias May Underestimate Unemployment, Particularly Among Young Black Men With Julie Yixia Cai, Dean Baker, William Spriggs, and John Schmitt. Moderated by INET’s Thomas Ferguson
Join us for this lively and timely presentation, followed by Q&A.