Archive
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Working Paper
Working paperThe Consumption Response to Liquidity-Enhancing Transfers: Evidence from Italian Earthquakes
Jun 2015
Exploiting three earthquakes in Italy as quasi-experiments, we analyse the response of homeowners’ consumption to transfers targeted to finance housing repair and reconstruction. To the extent that funds are made available up-front, these transfers are akin to loans, mainly affecting the liquidity of households’ wealth
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Working Paper
Working paperIs There a Debt-threshold Effect on Output Growth?
Jun 2015
This paper studies the long-run impact of public debt expansion on economic growth and investigates whether the debt-growth relation varies with the level of indebtedness.
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Article
Europe’s Attack on Greek Democracy
Jun 30, 2015
The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors. In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics.
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Article
The Charleston shooter has been arrested, but the true killer remains at large
Jun 29, 2015
Inequality, racism, and violence are the real killers in America.
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Working Paper
ReportIMF Country Report 15/165: Greek Debt Sustainability Analysis
Jun 2015
According to Reuters, Eurozone officials attempted to suppress the publication of this report.
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Video
It's Time to Get Radical on Inequality
Jun 25, 2015
America’s economic system has failed by not raising living standards for most.
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Article
Is There a Quantitative Turn in the History of Economics (and how not to screw it up)?
Jun 23, 2015
The (very) recent rise of quantitative analysis in history of economics working papers calls for a closer examination of the prospects and limitations of this approach, and of the impediment to its large-scale development.
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Video
The Death of ‘Homo Economicus’
Jun 18, 2015
Good incentives are no substitute for good citizens.
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Article
Greece Has Made Tough Choices. Now It's the IMF's Turn.
Jun 18, 2015
The International Monetary Fund’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, recently asked a simple and important question: “How much of an adjustment has to be made by Greece, how much has to be made by its official creditors?” But that raises two more questions: How much of an adjustment has Greece already made? And have its creditors given anything at all?
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Article
Bankers Think They Have an Ethical Duty to Steal From Taxpayers
Jun 16, 2015
It doesn’t make sense to pay someone to rob you.
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Article
Why This Time Is Different for Ukraine
Jun 15, 2015
The Ukrainian government has committed to implement far-reaching reforms in exchange for the support it is getting from the international community, led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Understandably, given Ukraine’s disappointing transition history, there is widespread scepticism on whether the country will live up to its commitments. Three failed IMF programmes later, the fundamental question is: Is it different this time?
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Article
What Even Famous Mainstream Economists Miss About the Cambridge Capital Controversies
Jun 15, 2015
Non-mainstream economists are disputing neoclassical ideas about capital.
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Working Paper
Working paperAggregating Elasticities: Intensive and Extensive Margins of Female Labour Supply
Jun 2015
There is a renewed interest in the size of labour supply elasticities and the discrepancy between micro and macro estimates. Recent contributions have stressed the distinction between changes in labour supply at the extensive and the intensive margin. In this paper, we stress the importance of individual heterogeneity and aggregation problems.
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Article
Fiscal implications of the ECB’s bond-buying program
Jun 14, 2015
The monetary-fiscal policy connection is under scrutiny by the German Constitutional Court in the context of the ECB’s OMT bond-buying programme. This column argues that most analyses are deeply flawed by the misapplication of private-company default principles to the central bank. ECB bond-buying transforms public bonds into monetary base, and sovereign-default risk into inflation risk. The real question is: What is the non-inflationary limit to money-base expansion? This depends upon the economic situation and is much higher in the current liquidity-trap setting.
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Video
How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom, and Security
Jun 14, 2015
Janine Wedel charts the fast–evolving system of power and influence. Who is accountable? What are the remedies available to the average citizen?