Archive

In a new book from Cambridge University Press, Lance Taylor reveals that wage repression — far more than monopoly power, offshoring or technological change — is driving rising inequality.

Claudia Sahm dares to call out systemic bullying and harassment that drives out talent and compromises science. Perpetrators are not happy.

The promise of globalization is built on a lie, designed to spread risk while concentrating reward.

Wage Repression, Asset Price Inflation, and Structural Change Caused Rising Macroeconomic Inequality for Fifty Years from before Reagan through Trump.This is a summary of a new book that is being published as part of a new book series with Cambridge University Press.

Amid debates over costs—and profits—from a coronavirus vaccine, a new study shows that taxpayers have been footing the bill for every new drug approved between 2010 and 2019

Amid debates over costs—and profits—from a coronavirus vaccine, a new study shows that taxpayers have been footing the bill for every new drug approved between 2010 and 2019

Why are we creating an education shortage?

During this interview, Professor Kako Nubukpo, Dean of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Lomé, Togo and former Minister of Prospective and Evaluation of Public Policy of Togo considers the economic and social impact of the COVID-19 crisis and its repercussions on monetary policy and fiscal reforms underway in West and Central Africa today.

Dans le cadre de cet entretien, Pr Kako Nubukpo, Doyen de la Faculté des Sciences Economiques et de Gestion (FASEG) de l’Université de Lomé au Togo, et ancien Ministre de la Prospective et de l’Evaluation des politiques publiques du Togo, revient sur l’impact économique et social de la crise du COVID-19 au Togo et sur ses répercussions sur les politiques économiques dont les réformes monétaires et fiscales en cours en Afrique de l’Ouest et Centrale.

Lance Taylor provides a second and final response to Andrew Smithers’ criticism of his working paper on the role of the “Global Savings Glut”

Andrew Smithers responds to Lance Taylor’s rebuttal.

“Good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure.”

A debate between Lance Taylor and Andrew Smithers on the alleged “global savings glut.” Smithers responds to Taylor’s INET working paper, to which Taylor then offers a rebuttal. A second round of the debate is now included as well.

Financial commentator Andrew Smithers responds to Lance Taylor’s INET working paper. You may also read Taylor’s response to Smithers’s comment here.

Lance Taylor responds to Andrew Smithers’s comment on his INET working paper, “Germany and China Have Savings Gluts, the USA Is a Sump: So What?”

Consolidation in the dairy industry has created separate, inflexible supply chains for consumers and commercial markets. When COVID killed commercial demand, perfectly good milk and cheese was wasted.

The rise of the Knowledge Based Economy and subsequent Data Driven Economy has created a new world in which the basis of wealth and power is derived from control of these intangible assets, alongside creating a new kind of social and political space in which both our public and private spheres are technologically reshaped. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated these transformations that permeate our world and has amplified their effects.

Consolidation in the dairy industry has created separate, inflexible supply chains for consumers and commercial markets. When COVID killed commercial demand, perfectly good milk and cheese was wasted.

A lot has changed since our taxes and benefits were designed, and the consequences of delaying reform are rising.

Global carbon emissions could fall by an estimated 5.5% in 2020 as a result of declining industrial production in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. But if the change is not systemic these effects may be fleeting, and the changing climate could put hundreds of millions of lives, trillions of dollars of economic activity, and the world’s physical and natural capital at risk.

A “global saving glut” was invented by Ben Bernanke in 2005 as a label for positive net lending (imports exceeding exports) to the American economy by the rest of the world. However, there is a more plausible explanation for the persistent trade imbalance between the US and its major trading partners.

An alternative look at the “global savings glut”

While policymakers around the world are in fire-fighting mode, trying to keep the economies in their charge running and the mysterious pandemic under control, the global terrain beneath our feet is shifting. Which countries will emerge as winners and losers in the new global landscape?

Despite post-2008 regulations, the boom-bust credit cycle continues to run wild

Despite post-2008 regulations, the boom-bust credit cycle continues to run wild

Chioma Agwuegbo of TechHer Nigeria, talks to Folashadé Soulé and Herbert Mba Aki about how the pandemic is impacting young people in Nigeria, especially young women, and how African youth are tackling the crisis.

Mainstream economics ignores historical and structural factors by design

Margaret Heffernan’s new book “Uncharted” warns against giving up the power to shape our destiny to gurus and gadgets promising false certainty.

When people recognize just how dangerous covid is, they worry more about the economy

In this conversation with Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin, Pr Njuguna Ndung’u, a Kenyan economist, Director of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), a pan-African organization devoted to the advancement of economic policy research and training in sub-Saharan Africa, and former Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya (2007-2015) analyses how the pandemic creates more fragility in African economies, but also how reforms could be implemented during this crisis; and the urgent need for investment in strong health institutional capacities

That’s the amount of buybacks U.S. corporations funneled to shareholders during the past decade—rather than invest in technologies for the common good. This article is being published jointly by INET and The American Prospect

The success of projects for pandemic preparedness and response depends on the strength of government-business collaborations.

Technology has played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic, facilitating remote work and automating certain pandemic responses. But it has also accelerated technological adoption, and the “future of work” may now be the present.

Colleges and universities need to be saved, not only from financial ruin, but also, all too often, from themselves.

Rob Johnson is not your average economist, and this is not your average economics podcast.

A webinar panel discussion moderated by INET Fellow Moritz Schularick, with Laura Carvalho, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of São Paulo, Matthew C. Klein, Economics Commentator at Barron’s, and Amir Sufi, Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

How and Why Bankers Still Enjoy a Global Rescue Network

A look at Dodd-Frank’s impact

To fulfill MLK’s vision of jobs and freedom for Black Americans, Washington must rein in corporate greed

To fulfill MLK’s vision of jobs and freedom for Black Americans, Washington must rein in corporate greed

As the world economy seeks to emerge from the deep recession caused by the pandemic, economic nationalism and isolationism are on the rise. Yet the better response to lower growth and worsening inequality could involve globally-coordinated policy responses that focus on broad based, sustainable economic growth. Now more than ever it is time for a new global economic policy paradigm that can facilitate a strong recovery.

A closer look at unique structural conditions is essential

Coming out of the Great Depression, America built a middle class, but systematic discrimination kept most African-American families from being part of it

To fight COVID-19, the EU must recognize that spending restraints have to go

Over and over again, US government policies designed to transfer and create wealth and economic opportunity were restricted to whites by design.

Researchers reveal the enemies to stability and prosperity that threaten us all.

Luohan Academy will share content while working with INET to plan future co-sponsored events, seminars & more

Gilead’s shareholders want exorbitant profits from Remdesivir, even though it was the public that enabled its development.

As protests erupt on the streets of America and the world, current power structures no longer feel tenable. Can this popular uprising break the neoliberal grip on the state and create lasting structural change that will empower the disenfranchised?

The Fed is taking an aggressive approach to put out the economic fires of the pandemic. But it needs to allow for flexibility as some business models irreparably change.

The speed and duration of COVID-19 economic recovery will depend on how the government will finance emergency programs.

Debt Talks is a new online webinar series that will bring together diverse voices to discuss one of the most pressing economic issue of our times: the surge in indebtedness. We are inviting prominent thinkers, policy-makers, and scholars from different backgrounds and countries to present and debate their views . Each monthly webinar will feature a lively panel presentation followed by Q&A. INET Fellow Moritz Schularick will moderate the events.

In this conversation with Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin, Pr Takyiwaa Manuh analyses how the pandemic has disproportionately affected women at different levels especially in Ghana, and describes why governments need to focus more strongly on the gendered impacts of COVID-19 in both their sanitary and economic response.

The Occupational Safety Health Administration was created 50 years ago. Today, it’s in dire straits, say OSHA’s leaders during the Obama administration

The activist and author shares a free-ranging conversation with INET president Rob Johnson.

“We do not publish papers about our own profession.” – Top Five Journal

Do the benefits of new technologies accrue primarily to inventors, early investors, and highly skilled users, or to society more widely as their adoption generates employment growth?

Rising inequality has focused attention on the benefits of new technologies. Do these accrue primarily to inventors, early investors, and highly skilled users, or to society more widely as their adoption generates employment growth?

COVID has meant unemployment for the many and a corporate profit-fueled windfall for the few.

In March the US government authorized the largest domestic bailout in history. Who were the real winners and losers of this bailout? Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Jesse Eisinger has been following the money.

By not addressing inclusivity, we are losing entire generations of new minds.

Entretien avec Pr Felwine Sarr, Professeur Titulaire des Universités et agrégé en économie à l’Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis au Sénégal, pour la série d’INET sur COVID-19 et l’Afrique

An interview with Professor Felwine Sarr, Professor of Economics at the Université Gaston Berger of Saint-Louis in Senegal, for INET’s series on COVID-19 and Africa

Since the 1980s, the enemy of equal employment opportunity through upward socioeconomic mobility has been the pervasive and entrenched corporate-governance ideology and practice of maximizing shareholder value.

In this introduction to our project, “Fifty Years After: Black Employment in the United States Under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,” we outline the socioeconomic forces behind the promising rise and disastrous fall of an African American blue-collar middle class.

As the collapse of global supply chains highlights the fragility that comes with economic interdependence, the pandemic is fueling the rise of ethnonationalism. Policy decisions in response to the crisis will play an important role in determining the fate of the world economy.

An interview with Dr Fatima Denton, Director of the United Nations University – Institute for Natural Resources in Africa, for INET’s series on COVID-19 and Africa

Economist Darrick Hamilton explains why confronting the racial wealth gap is the only way to address 400 years of discrimination.

What counts as work and what doesn’t?

Regardless of what Trump says, the economic pain of the pandemic isn’t going anywhere

Economist Darrick Hamilton explains that pursuit of profit, not hatred of black people, is the real root of discrimination.

Every country has had a different policy response to the crisis; and within countries different political parties have championed various approaches. How has COVID-19 affected politics and social life in developed western countries?

An interview with Pr Benno Ndulu, the former Governor of the Bank of Tanzania, for INET’s series on COVID-19 and Africa

A series of interviews by Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin with African leaders on the pandemic.

An introduction to a series of interviews conducted by Dr. Dr. Folashadé Soulé and Dr. Camilla Toulmin in support of INET’s Commission on Global Economic Transformation (CGET)

Abstract, “basic science” research is essential to drug discovery. It is also largely funded by the public sector.

A special note from INET board member john a. powell

The Great Migration brought many freedmen to the North, and the reaction to that brought the Southern Mind to northern police officers as well.

A collection of INET’s research and articles on race and the US economy, reposted in connection with recent protests against police brutality in Black communities.

Technology has played a central role in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But that has come with increased risks to privacy. How do we balance our needs for safety, convenience and privacy in the wake of this crisis?

The world is on edge at the prospect of a resurgent wave of infections. Models and speculation are rife, but facts remain scarce, which is why the events in Wisconsin on April 7, and their eventual impact, are so important.

The Calamity of Germany’s Distorted Perception of Italy

The economic and social costs of the global lockdown have been astronomical but as governments look to begin the process of reopening economies it will be critical to develop strategies that balance both the health and economic risks of the pandemic.

Over five phased announcements last week, the Indian government set in motion an unprecedented fiscal stimulus. Gaurav Dalmia looks at India’s near-term economic challenges and offers a prescription on how privatisation can help India achieve its objectives.

The geopolitical showdown between the United States and China is both inevitable, and avoidable.

A webinar panel discussion, moderated by Gillian Tett, US Managing Editor of the Financial Times, with Laurence Boone, OECD Chief Economist, Moritz Schularick, INET Research Fellow, and Adam Tooze, Director of the European Institute at Columbia University.

John Ruskin helps shed light on what it means to have an economy that demands we die for it

To able to deal with these consequences, our crisis response now should not lock us in into a permanent state of austerity, greater inequality and heightened vulnerability to future health calamities. New-old social democratic solutions are needed more than ever before.

The popular discontent and rise of ‘populist’ political parties is closely related to the failure of New Labor to navigate social democracy’s dilemma.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust us into a new reality, and any course we set now will have huge and lasting repercussions on public health and the economy.

MIT Sloan Assistant Professor Emil Verner discusses his research into credit markets, and the role of economics in the rise of populism.

Once again, income earned by the many is used to save the wealth of the few.

Developing countries, many of which appear not to have felt the health effects of COVID to the same extent as Europe and the US, are nonetheless facing severe economic effects as the pandemic pushes the global economy into a recession.

We find empirical evidence that changes in market sentiment drive unforeseeable change in how stock returns unfold over time, thereby engendering Knightian uncertainty.

A look at the American household debt boom

Increased borrowing by middle-class families with low income growth played a central role in rising indebtedness

We reveal a novel channel through which market participants’ sentiment influences how they forecast stock returns: their optimism (pessimism) affects the weights they assign to fundamentals.

How the fear-of-the-new transformed a “miracle” into an aborted attempt at catching-up

Find all of our COVID-19 pandemic articles, webinars, and working papers here.

If a tree falls outside of the market sector, does it make a sound?