Archive

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?

Evidence shows pharmaceutical companies won’t stop price-gouging and risking American lives for financial gain in this time of crises – unless we force them.

A Report From the Front Line

States can be sorted into two groups with statistically significantly different productivity regimes. In this sense, the US economy shows signs of dualism—which is the idea that the economy consists of heterogeneous units that exhibit different behaviors and levels of performance.

This paper analyzes regional contributions to the US payroll share from 1977 to 2017 and the four major business cycles throughout this period.

Please join us for a discussion with Geoff Mann, INET Senior Fellow and author of Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future, on how the coronavirus pandemic might (or might not) teach us to prepare for a life on an increasingly hot planet.

A Template to Prevent a Global Debt Crisis?

With the COVID-19 death toll rising, we should question the wisdom and morality of an IP system that silently condemns millions of human beings to suffering and death every year.

As the COVID crisis threatens to overwhelm both federal and state government services, getting the digital component of government services to function effectively is mission critical.

Just before the crisis, European countries were designing austerity reforms that would increase inequality and reduce internal demand. Could they return?

Economists have gone to great lengths to write humans out of economics, pushing self-interest and generally providing two choices—faith in markets or the state.

Researchers have shown that the financial and economic impacts of denying women abortion care can last years

Contrary to pharmaceutical company claims, revenue from high insulin prices are going to shareholders, not R&D

This paper considers the relationship between profits realized from higher insulin list prices, pharmaceutical innovation, and the financial structures of the three dominant insulin manufacturing companies, which set list prices.

Economist Emmanuel Saez explains how inequality is destroying society.

A call to action for a world economy in crisis

Financial industry donations to members of Congress lead to the adoption of pro-bank policies

The links between campaign contributions from the financial sector and switches to a pro-bank vote were direct and substantial

IMPORTANT: Due to growing concerns around the coronavirus, the INET Conference, as well as these workshops will be postponed. Applicants will soon be provided further information.

Austerity policies will slow recovery and should be rejected

Cambridge-INET has just launched a new website, featuring research, insights and news from Cambridge Economists about the economic implications of COVID-19

Much historical commentary emphasizes how pandemics restructure long-standing social and political arrangements. The observation applies to macroeconomics as well.

Economist Gordon Lafer describes a race against the education technology industry to do what’s right for America’s kids

The scale of firm exposure to the coronavirus is unprecedented by earlier outbreaks, spans all major economies and is pervasive across all industries

As Covid-19 spreads globally in the first quarter of 2020, this paper finds that firms’ primary concerns relate to the collapse of demand, increased uncertainty, and disruption in supply chains

INET Board Member Richard Vague writes in The Hill on how to rescue the coronavirus economy

What ails the EU Green Deal is exactly what troubles the Union in general — an absence of social democracy at work

This paper considers the ambition, scale, substance and strategy of the European Union’s Green Deal

Quarantine or not, it can be hard to stay connected, but INET’s Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) is here for this generation’s new economic thinkers.

During WWII FDR mobilized private manufacturers to support the war effort. To keep Americans healthy, we need to do the same now for medical equipment

Effective and quick federal policy response is critical to create conditions for a quick recovery.

Incomes Destroyed at the Bottom, Profits Supported at the Top

William Lazonick emphasizes that keeping workers productively employed is key to economic recovery from Covid-19 as well as a healthy economic future

As we face a coronavirus-induced health and economic crisis of uncertain duration, policy makers should be particularly concerned about private equity’s heightened use of debt to buy out healthcare providers and take them private, with no regulatory oversight.

Private equity firms have become major players in the healthcare industry. How has this happened and what are the results?

It’s time for business executives, employees, and taxpayers to come together to help get us out of the pandemic and create conditions for a sustainable and equitable future

If the public is to be called upon for the second time in twelve years to bail out businesses, it should get something back for its money. Bailed out firms should be compelled to issue convertible bonds to the government.

Rob Johnson discusses whether the recession will become a depression

The younger generation, already saddled with student debt and uncertain jobs, will pay a high price as the crisis unfolds.

Stuck at home and already bored of Netflix? Then check out our #LearnEconAtHome series of video explainers you can watch from anywhere.

If the European Central Bank does not jump to the aid of peripheral countries weakened by the pandemic, the Eurozone could collapse.