Archive

To mark the release of INET’s “What Money Can’t Buy” with professor Michael Sandel, the YSI Philosophy of Economics Working Group and and Finance, Law and Economics Working Group invite young scholars working on issues related to the core issues in Michael Sandel’s lectures to present their work in a series of webinars. Professor Sandel will join the webinars to answer questions about the topics raised in his book, the video lectures and to give comment on the presentations.

Wage suppression—not monopoly power—is fueling corporate profits and the growing gap between rich and poor

“Meso” level analysis of 16 producing sectors sheds light on broad forces shaping growth of employment and profits. 

INET Senior Economist Arjun Jayadev and Dean Baker explore the patent system of Brazil, and its implications for developing countries.

The discipline is divorced from real-world relevance and has lost credibility, writes INET Global Commissioner Mohamed A. El-Erian 

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, in an exclusive interview with timesnownews.com, talks about what is wrong with current American capitalism, rise of a new kind of politics emerging from dissent towards government and more. Here are some excerpts from the interview.

Richard Baldwin writes on why we must rethink our outdated ideas about international trade.

For the BRICS countries to not just grow their economies but also raise the standard of living of their people, inclusive growth that prioritizes poverty reduction is a must

“The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow” talks to Lynn Parramore about her INET piece on public education.

To celebrate the release of our new series “What Money Can’t Buy” join Harvard University Professor Michael Sandel and INET for a live conversation exploring the role of money and morals in today’s world.

But the five countries must still support greater investment in other emerging and developing economies

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Mayor of Newark Ras Baraka, CEO of the Campaign for Black Male Achievement Shawn Dove, Pulitzer-prize winning author Heather Ann Thompson and more discuss race and inequality in Trump’s America Friday, April 20th 5-7pm.

As early as 1900, German sociologist Georg Simmel identified a central feature of wealth in his seminal work The Philosophy of Money. Simmel writes about the superadditum of wealth for the rich, namely that a great fortune is encircled by innumerable possibilities of use, as though by an astral body.

Newspapers consistently underplay wide public support for higher taxes on businesses and the wealthy

Over the last four decades, Americans have consistently told pollsters that they favor higher taxes on business and the wealthy, even as tax policy has moved sharply in the other direction.

A series on the changing economic dynamics of the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

The BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—play a crucial and growing role in the world economy. Sanjay Reddy kicks off our series exploring shifting social and economic dynamics within these countries, and what they mean for the global economy.    

Ahead of the series launch, Harvard’s Michael Sandel discusses the moral limits of markets with Rob Johnson

The INET YSI Financial Stability working group (WG) is organising a workshop as part of the Rethinking Finance Conference in Oslo at the Norwegian Business School BI on April 14th, 2018.

The twin threats of right-wing populism and unencumbered financial capitalism pose a crisis for democracy across the world, argues Robert Kuttner in his new book, Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?

Training first-world children for a third-world life

The economist reflects back on the racial justice leader who showed him the limits of his academic training.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders relied on black entrepreneurs to make their work possible

Steve Fazzari argues that stimulating demand is the key to jump-starting stagnant economies

The vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years later, and the relevance of his economic ideas today

Fifty years after the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., INET looks back at his forgotten economic legacy. In the final years of his life, these provocative positions made King controversial, and they remain as urgent now as they were then.

In the last years of his life, King was boldly forging a radical, multi-racial movement for economic justice

Bill discusses symbolism of the cross and lynching tree with theologian James Cone.

Cross posted from Thursday, February 28, 2008’s broadcast of Democracy Now!

Mainstream economists have ignored private debt to our peril

INET grantee William Lazonick explains why Sen. Tammy Baldwin is proposing to ban stock buybacks.

Economics can be creative, it can be rigorous, it can be relevant.

The renowned linguist, cognitive scientist, and historian on where we stand as an economy, as a country, and as human beings

The renowned economist reflects on the rise of neoclassical economics, the post-2008 surge of interest in non-mainstream, heterodox thought, and how young economists can remain independent in the face of biased evaluation systems

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What 200 Years of Government Interventions in Financial Markets Can Tell Us

The assumptions economists make in their models have implications not only for policymaking and choosing what data we collect, but also for the very definition of work, says Professor Maria Floro of American University. 

Reflections on the Radical Vision of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Last Major Speech

As the U.S. Congress works to undo financial regulation, INET reflects on the lessons of the Bear Stearns bailout

From the Archives: In the wake of the Bear Stearns bailout in 2008, INET Research Director Tom Ferguson and President Rob Johnson say taxpayers rescuing banks are owed their due: “If the public is going to pay for [bailouts]… it should also get paid back for them.”

Ten years ago, the investment bank Bear Stearns collapsed. Its controversial rescue by the Federal Reserve and JP Morgan Chase marked a prelude to the global financial crisis, which would begin in earnest in September 2008. As part of INET’s look back at the financial crisis, we offer this series of reflections on the Bear Stearns bailout, the financialization of debt, and the moral hazard of government bailouts of banks. 

Unregulated, speculative lending markets nearly brought down the global financial system 10 years ago. Now, Western banks are exporting this failed model to the developing world.

Ten years ago when Bear Stearns crashed, the Fed decided to bail out first, ask questions later. It was a mistake that set a bad precedent.

Banks are pushing for deregulation and roll backs of Dodd-Frank’s regular check-ups on their financial health. We should be worried. 

Mariana Mazzucato argues that the idea that entrepreneurship is confined to the private sector is wrong.

Cuba’s entirely state-owned biopharmaceutical industry has been remarkably successful, and can serve as a model for other nations

One of Wall Street’s favorite tools could be deepening the growing chasm between America’s rich and poor, according to INET grantee William Lazonick.

Despite assembling a formidable data set and leveling a bold argument, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has theoretical and accounting flaws that distort its central findings

Economist Olugbenga Ajilore shows the high cost of the American government’s arming of local police with military weapons, which has exacerbated lethal use of force against black communities

Workers, innovation, and productivity all suffer when corporations spend their new U.S. tax breaks on stock buybacks.

Why women experts are denied the same scholarly authority conferred to men, and what we should do about it

By pushing workers into precarious, part-time work, “Third Way” governments of the past 20 years helped to create the disturbing economic trend that’s vexing orthodox economists

In the face of  laissez-faire capitalism at home and resurgent nationalism across the globe, INET offers an innovative look at the causes of—and solutions for—the problems that ail a fissuring world economy.

The objective of the conference is to exchange perspectives on the risks posed by financial networks, and the role these networks play in the well-functioning of the real economy. 

Ed Pavlić discusses the role of music in communicating suffering and resistance in the African-American experience

Economist Morton Schapiro, president of Northwestern University, and his colleague, literary critic and Slavic studies scholar Saul Morson, argue that—contrary to popular belief—studying the humanities is the key to not getting outsourced.

INET grantee William Lazonick explains how the Trump tax cut is resulting in buybacks on Wall Street and bonuses for CEOs

France, like many Western European countries, has strong campaign finance laws and a vibrant multiparty system. Yet even there, money has had a corrosive effect on democracy, as private donations have an outsized impact on electoral outcomes.

Money in politics is not a strictly American phenomenon. In France, despite strong campaign finance laws, campaign donations have a direct influence on legislative and municipal election results.

Julia Cagé explains the impact of money on French elections

Banks have long had undue influence in society. But with the rapid expansion of a financial sector that transforms all debts and assets into tradable commodities, we are faced with something far worse: financial markets with an only abstract, inflated, and destabilizing relationship with the real economy. To prevent another crisis, finance must be domesticated and turned into a useful servant of society. 

Contrary to the neoclassical model’s assumptions, shifts in aggregate demand have persistent effects on GDP

The prevailing wisdom that aggregate demand ‘shocks’ determine short-run cyclical fluctuations around a supply-determined equilibrium growth rate and an associated equilibrium unemployment rate (or NAIRU) has been called into question by various streams of literature in the last decades. Specifically, a recently revived literature on hysteresis finds significant persistence in the effects of recessions and negative aggregate demand shocks (Blanchard et al. 2015; Martin et al. 2015).

Over the next year, the Bitcoin price could double, soar tenfold, or collapse by 95% or more, and no economic analysis can help predict where in that range it will lie. Like other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin serves no useful economic purpose, though in macroeconomic terms, such currencies probably also do little harm.

Nina Banks assesses the legacy of the first African-American economist in the United States

In their op-ed in the Washington Post, INET grantee William Lazonick and Rick Wartzman show how companies are spending their tax savings on investors, not workers.

Learn more about the Commission on Global Economic Transformation

The African Development Bank has laid out a plan for economic prosperity in the continent. But to get there, African countries must first confront jobless growth and underfunded infrastructure projects.

There’s no turning back from humanity’s move to high-density living, says Ed Glaeser. The task of the century will be making cities more liveable.