Archive
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Article
What Piketty Missed in Measuring Wealth
Mar 1, 2018
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
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Video
How America Turned Its Police Into an Army
Feb 28, 2018
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
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Article
Stock Buybacks Hurt Workers and the Economy. We Should Ban Them.
Feb 27, 2018
Workers, innovation, and productivity all suffer when corporations spend their new U.S. tax breaks on stock buybacks.
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Article
A Note on the Gender Disparity in Quoted Experts
Feb 26, 2018
Why women experts are denied the same scholarly authority conferred to men, and what we should do about it
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Article
With Official Unemployment This Low, Why Are Wages Rising So Slowly?
Feb 26, 2018
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
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Article
INET Research in a Stressful Year
Feb 23, 2018
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.
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Webinars and Events
Financial Networks
ConferenceBig Risks, Macroeconomic Externalities, and Policy Commitment Devices
Feb 23–24, 2018
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.
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Video
How Music Helped James Baldwin Make Sense of Inequality
Feb 21, 2018
Ed Pavlić discusses the role of music in communicating suffering and resistance in the African-American experience
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Article
Don't Want a Robot to Replace You? Study Tolstoy.
Feb 20, 2018
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.
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News
CNN: Tax cut scoreboard: Workers $6 billion; Shareholders $171 billion
Feb 16, 2018
INET grantee William Lazonick explains how the Trump tax cut is resulting in buybacks on Wall Street and bonuses for CEOs
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Article
Even in France, Money Rules Politics
Feb 15, 2018
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.
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesThe Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014
Feb 2018
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.
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News
Le Monde: L’impact des dons sur les résultats électoraux est un sujet central En savoir plus sur
Feb 15, 2018
Julia Cagé explains the impact of money on French elections
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Article
Financial Markets Have Taken Over the Economy. To Prevent Another Crisis, They Must Be Brought to Heel.
Feb 13, 2018
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.
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Article
When Demand Shapes Supply
Feb 11, 2018
Contrary to the neoclassical model’s assumptions, shifts in aggregate demand have persistent effects on GDP
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesPersistent Effects of Autonomous Demand Expansions
Feb 2018
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).
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Article
Should You Buy Bitcoin?
Feb 8, 2018
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.
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Video
Sadie Alexander: An Economist Ahead of Her Time
Feb 7, 2018
Nina Banks assesses the legacy of the first African-American economist in the United States
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News
Washington Post: Don’t Let Pay Increases Coming Out of Tax Reform Fool You
Feb 6, 2018
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.
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Collection
Global Commission
Learn more about the Commission on Global Economic Transformation
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Article
The Path to an African Economic Boom
Feb 2, 2018
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.
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Video
Why Cities Are Key to Escaping Poverty
Jan 31, 2018
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.
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Article
Why Big Firms No Longer Pay (Much) More
Jan 28, 2018
The corporate titans of yore once offered a sizable wage premium over smaller employers—but not anymore. What happened?
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesInequality in the 21st century
Jan 2018
A critical analysis of Piketty’s work
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Article
How Pseudoscientific Rankings Are Distorting Research
Jan 18, 2018
The shocking—but illustrative—example of how an Italian government agency concocted statistics to evaluate scholarship, hid them from the public, and masqueraded them as science. It’s a growing phenomenon
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Article
How Black Businesses Helped Save the Civil Rights Movement
Jan 15, 2018
Behind towering figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. were the taxi dispatchers, pharmacists, grocers, and other small business owners who were instrumental in making civil rights a reality.
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesLending a Hand: How Small Black Businesses Supported the Civil Rights Movement
Jan 2018
A large literature has detailed the seminal roles played in the Civil Rights Movement by activists, new political organizations, churches, and philanthropies. But black-owned businesses also provided a behind-the-scenes foundation for the movement’s success.
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Article
China’s Green Opportunity
Jan 12, 2018
China is now the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter, accounting for over 25% of the global total. But the country has also demonstrated a growing understanding that a truly green economy promises to improve quality of life and create enormous opportunities for technological and political leadership.
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Article
Here’s Why Sexual Harassment Matters for Economists
Jan 11, 2018
To get justice, targets must show measurable harm. Economists can help
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Video
How to Rewrite the Rules of Globalization
Jan 10, 2018
How did globalization create such discontent in developed and developing countries alike? Nobel laureate and INET grantee Joseph Stiglitz explains in this 150th episode of our “New Economic Thinking” video series.
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Article
How Money Won Trump the White House
Jan 9, 2018
It wasn’t Comey or the Russians. Trump prevailed because his campaign carefully targeted key states with late infusions of big money from private equity, casinos, and other far right contributors, a remarkable wave of donations from small donors, and substantial infusions from the candidate himself.
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesIndustrial Structure and Party Competition in an Age of Hunger Games: Donald Trump and the 2016 Presidential Election
Jan 2018
The U.S. presidential election of 2016 featured frontal challenges to the political establishments of both parties and perhaps the most shocking election upset in American history.
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Working Paper
Conference paper$MeToo: The Economic Cost of Sexual Harassment
Jan 2018
To get justice, targets must show measurable harm: economists can help.
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Article
Nancy Folbre’s Feminist, Unorthodox Economics
Jan 4, 2018
The renowned feminist economist discusses the importance of heterodoxy, radicalism, and social justice to the discipline
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Grant
Years granted: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018Imperfect Knowledge Economics (IKE)
Note: As of March 2019, the Imperfect Knowledge Economics(IKE) Program has been re-launched as the INET Program on Knightian Uncertainty Economics (KUE). Please see the KUE page for updates on this body of work.
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Article
INET Grantee Lazonick’s Research Shapes DC Share Buyback Debate
Dec 22, 2017
Sen. Tammy Baldwin features arguments in questions to SEC nominees, pharmaceutical industry witness
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Article
How Public Spending Creates Jobs and Growth—Without Inflation
Dec 21, 2017
Contrary to conventional wisdom, government stimulus can improve the health of the economy for years after, without inflationary side effects
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Article
What Mainstream Economists Get Wrong About Secular Stagnation
Dec 21, 2017
Forget the myth of a savings glut causing near-zero interest rates. We have a shortage of aggregate demand, and only public spending and raising wages will change that.
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Working Paper
Conference paperVeiling
Dec 2017
Veiling among Muslim women is modeled as a commitment mechanism that limits temptation to deviate from religious norms of behavior.
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Article
Larry Summers: Reagan’s Tax Plan Was Better Than Trump’s
Dec 20, 2017
Summers discusses inequality, the GOP tax plan, and our economic future
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Conference Session
Servaas Storm: Secular Stagnation, Loanable Funds and the ZLB
Dec 16, 2017 |
Servaas Storm’s commentary on the papers presented at the secular stagnation conference.
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Article
Why Stopping Tax “Reform” Won’t Stop Inequality
Dec 15, 2017
Inequality isn’t driven by taxes—it’s driven by the power of capital in relation to workers
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Working Paper
Conference paperTransition to Slower Population Growth: Demography and its Effect on Real Interest Rates
Dec 2017
The past 30 years has witnessed a worldwide decrease in real interest rates. We demonstrate that a large part of the fall in interest rates can be explained by changes in demography, which are as the result of a sudden fall in fertility rates across all of the advanced economies in the early 1970s.
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Working Paper
Conference paperEndogenous Technology Adoption and R&D as Sources of Business Cycle Persistence
Dec 2017
We examine the hypothesis that the slowdown in productivity following the Great Recession was in significant part an endogenous response to the contraction in demand that induced the downturn.
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Working Paper
Conference paperSecular Demand Stagnation in the 21st Century U.S. Economy
Dec 2017
The concern that an economy could experience persistent, and in some sense unusual, weakness goes back to Keynes’s General Theory and led Alvin Hansen to coin the term “secular stagnation.”
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Working Paper
Conference paperAging, Output per capita and Secular Stagnation
Dec 2017
This paper shows that aging has positive effect on output growth per capital at positive interest rates, due to capital deepening.
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Working Paper
Conference paperStagnation Traps
Dec 2017
We provide a Keynesian growth theory in which pessimistic expectations can lead to very persistent, or even permanent, slumps characterized by high unemployment and weak growth.
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Working Paper
Conference paperInequality and Aggregate Demand
Dec 2017
We explore the transmission mechanism of income inequality to output.
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Working Paper
CommentarySome Thoughts on Secular Stagnation, Loanable Funds and the ZLB
Dec 2017
I have read the various conference papers and am struck by the fact that many use the (omnipresent New-Keynesian) model of an aggregate loanable funds market to diagnose secular stagnation and investigate possible remedies.
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Working Paper
Conference paperThe Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015
Dec 2017
This paper answers fundamental questions that have preoccupied modern economic thought since the 18th century.
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Working Paper
Conference paperAre Low Real Interest Rates Here to Stay?
Dec 2017
Long-term real interest rates across the world are low, having fallen by about 450 basis points (bps) over the past thirty years.
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Working Paper
Conference paperA Model of Secular Stagnation: Theory and Quantitative Evaluation
Dec 2017
This paper replaces an earlier version of a paper released in 2014 under the title “A Model of Secular Stagnation.”
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Conference Session
The Debate over Secular Stagnation
Dec 15, 2017 | 09:15—10:15
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Conference Session
Long-Run Interest Rates and Secular Stagnation
Dec 15, 2017 | 02:10—03:30
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Conference Session
Secular Stagnation and Inequality
Dec 15, 2017 | 11:00—12:30
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Conference Session
A Conversation with Lawrence H. Summers and Adair Turner
Dec 15, 2017 | 01:00—02:00
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Webinars and Events
Is Slow Growth the “New Normal”?
ConferenceIf So, What Are the Policy Solutions?
Hosted by Secular Stagnation
Dec 15, 2017
Distinguished Scholars Including Larry Summers and Adair Turner Present Evidence of the Trend and Policy Solutions
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Article
How Academic Conformity Punishes Women—and Restricts the Diversity of Economic Ideas
Dec 14, 2017
Skewed measures of “research output” hold back women who think differently or study smaller subfields in economics—and it’s harming the discipline as a whole
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Conference Session
Explaining a Decade of Stagnation: Where Do We Go From Here?
Dec 14, 2017 | 04:00—05:30
A discussion with Steven M. Fazzari, INET Grantee and the Bert A. & Jeanette L. Lynch Distinguished Professor of Economics, Washington University.
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Webinars and Events
World Economic Roundtable
DiscussionExplaining a Decade of Stagnation: Where Do We Go From Here?
Dec 14, 2017
The World Economic Roundtable seeks to help the business, investment, and policy communities understand ongoing changes in the world economy and to promote a discussion of ideas that can advance the goal of a widely shared global prosperity.
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Article
Three Surprises on Climate Change from Economist Michael Grubb
Dec 12, 2017
Two years after the 2015 Paris Agreement, where we stand today is better than you may think
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Article
Why Research and Innovation Are Vital for Southern European Economies—and Eurozone Survival
Dec 11, 2017
Austerity measures have battered the region and created instability throughout the Eurozone. Here’s one way out of the mess.
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Video
Narrative as Destiny: Steering Markets and Innovation to Serve Society
Dec 6, 2017
“The stories we tell ourselves about the world are a map of the world as we see it. And if we want to change the world, we have to change the story first.”
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Research Program
Secular Stagnation
Are Falling Interest Rates and Slower Growth the “New Normal”?
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Webinars and Events
Law Economics Policy Conference
ConferenceDec 4–6, 2017
Organized by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in collaboration with the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), New York, the aim of LEPC 2017 is to bring together legal, economic and public policy thinkers to consider a variety of real world issues in India in a holistic manner.
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Collection
#NewEconomicThinking
To commemorate the 150th episode of our video series, “New Economic Thinking,” we are highlighting some of the most compelling content from the series here.
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesCorporate Scandals and Regulation
Dec 2017
Are regulatory interventions delayed reactions to market failures or can regulators proactively pre-empt corporate misbehavior?
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Conference Session
The Unfolding Energy Revolution: Lessons from Europe and the United Kingdom
Nov 30, 2017 | 04:00—05:30
A discussion with Michael Grubb, INET Grantee and Professor of Energy and Climate Change at University College of London.
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YSI Event
YSI @ ALAHPE 2017
YSI workshop on history of economic thought ahead of the Conference of the Latin American Association for the History of Economic Thought (ALAHPE).
YSI
WorkshopNov 28, 2017
The History of Economic Thought and the Philosophy of Economics working groups are organising a Young Scholars Workshop on the methods and approaches to the history of economics that have consolidated during the last two decades.
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Article
Nothing Natural About the Natural Rate of Unemployment
Nov 24, 2017
With unemployment reaching very low levels in major economies, despite low – and slowly rising – inflation, it’s time for central banks to rethink their reliance on the so-called natural rate. No numerical target for this rate can serve as an anchor for monetary policy.
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Conference Session
China’s International Economic Strategy
Nov 21, 2017 | 04:00—05:30
The Implications of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative for China and the World Economy
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Article
How Despair Helped Drive Trump to Victory
Nov 16, 2017
From the Rust Belt to Rural America, Economic and Social Distress Helped Shape the 2016 US Presidential Election Outcome
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News
Euractiv: Champion of ‘helicopter money’ questions universal basic income
Nov 14, 2017
“As chair of Britain’s Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner saw the collapse of the financial system firsthand. In the aftermath of the crisis, he became one of the main advocates of helicopter money – but today he doubts if universal basic income is the best way to address growing inequality. Adair Turner spoke with EURACTIV’s Jorge Valero during INET’s conference held in Edinburgh (Scotland”
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Article
China vs. the Washington Consensus
Nov 13, 2017
The 2008 financial crisis was a shock to faith in entirely free financial markets. But the neoliberal assumptions underlying the previously dominant “Washington Consensus” continue to inform much Western commentary on China’s economy.
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YSI Event
YSI @ UNCTAD International Debt Management Conference 2017
YSI
ConferenceNov 13–15, 2017
The Young Scholars Initiative will be hosting a group of young scholars to attend the meetings and discussions in and around UNCTAD International Debt Management Conference of 2017.
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Video
Scottish First Minister Opens #INET2017
Nov 10, 2017
Nicola Sturgeon covers a range of topics including how economists’ work relates to policymaking, the financial crisis and the dangers of groupthink, how dissatisfaction with stagnating wages and rising inequality played into political shocks like Brexit, the legacy of Adam Smith, why new economic thinking is so important, and what her government is doing to foster and apply it.
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Research Program News
BBC World Service Interviews CGET Commissioners Rob Johnson and Winnie Byanyima
Nov 10, 2017
Why the solution to global inequality may actually be the revival of old school policies such as public education and organised labour rights.
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Research Program News
BBC World Service Interviews CGET Commissioners Rob Johnson and Winnie Byanyima
Nov 10, 2017
Why the solution to global inequality may actually be the revival of old school policies such as public education and organised labour rights.
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YSI Event
The Crisis of Globalisation
21st FMM Conference
YSI
ConferenceNov 9–11, 2017
The 21 FMM conference of the The Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK) will take place in Berlin on 9-11 November 2017.
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Video
Redefining Inequality
Nov 8, 2017
As the old lines continue to blur, what does inequality mean in the modern global economy? And, how does the economy need to evolve to address these changes?
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Video
Commission on Global Economic Transformation Announcement
Nov 6, 2017
Several founding CGET members announce the ambitious project and respond to questions from the press.
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Article
The Dark Side of Discrimination in the Economics Profession
Nov 3, 2017
How Women Are Forced to Conform to the Research Habits and Interests of Men
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Article
The Big Questions Are Back
Nov 3, 2017
How Germany, the EU and the economics field itself suffer from myopia—and what we can do about it
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Video
Economists Often Say History Is Irrelevant. That’s A Mistake
Nov 1, 2017
Examining the past is essential to understanding the present
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News
Deutsche Welle: Can we avoid another financial crisis?
Oct 26, 2017
“Economist Steve Keen specializes in researching how private and public debt mountains arise and generate financial crises. In an interview with DW, he explains how the ECB could solve the problem — but probably won’t.”
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News
Euractiv: Oxfam chief: ‘We also feel the lack of trust among citizens’
Oct 24, 2017
“Winnie Byanyima believes it is high time to come up with fresh thinking in the world of politics and economy. But first, deeper self-criticism is needed across the board because all fields, including the NGO sector, are affected by a lack of trust from citizens.”
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News
Bloomberg: Inequality Is Biggest Danger for Global Growth, Warn Top Economists
Oct 24, 2017
Bloomberg highlights INET’s new Commission for Global Economic Transformation
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Research Program News
Inequality Is Biggest Danger for Global Growth, Warn Top Economists (Bloomberg News)
Oct 24, 2017
This article originally appeared on Bloomberg
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News
Euractiv: Catalonia, a viable independent state?
Oct 23, 2017
“Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz tells EURACTIV.com that the region would be accepted in the EU and therefore become a viable independent economy if it applied, but the former chair of the UK’s Financial Services Authority Adair Turner disagrees.”
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News
Bloomberg: Sturgeon Urges May to Shut Out Brexit Hardliners and Get a Deal
Oct 23, 2017
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon quoted by Bloomberg at INET’s Reawakening conference in Edinburgh
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Working Paper
Grantee paperEmpirical Research on the Revolving Door ‘Shadow Lobbyists’
Oct 2017
The US federal lobbying industry, based in Washington DC, is major focal point for political money and the exercise of influence, with expenditures peaking at approximately $2.5 billion per annum during the first Obama administration.
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Conference Session
The Real High Income Trap: Political Money, Political Establishments and Power
Oct 23, 2017 | 09:30
Not just an American dilemma: is political money in dual economies the biggest problem of all?
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Working Paper
Conference paperWhy Observation of the Behaviour of Human Actors and How They Combine Within the Economy, is an Important Next Step.
Oct 2017
One might think of the satisfied consensus reigning in macroeconomics before the financial crisis (and still relatively entrenched) as evidence of “Groupthink” in a “Divided State”
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Working Paper
Conference paperWhy central bank models failed and how to repair them
Oct 2017
The consensus that reigned in macroeconomics before the financial crisis has come under renewed attack.
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Conference Session
The Future of Macroeconomics
Oct 23, 2017 | 04:30
Macroeconomics and finance beyond DSG
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Conference Session
What's the Future?
Oct 23, 2017 | 08:30
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Working Paper
Conference paperCarbon producers’ tar pit: dinosaurs beware
Oct 2017
The path to holding fossil fuel producers accountable for climate change & climate damages
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Conference Session
In the Long Run Are We All Dead?
Oct 23, 2017 | 04:30
Climate Change and Denial
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Working Paper
Conference paperFinancial Reform Is Working, But Deregulation That Incentivizes One-Way Bets Is Sowing the Seeds of Another Catastrophic Financial Crash
Oct 2017
The deregulatory zeal of the 1990s and 2000s has returned to the US and the post-Brexit plans to protect the City in the UK sound like the pre-crash light-touch mentality that fueled global regulatory arbitrage. As a result, a foremost “challenge of our time” is to stop “subsidizing more one-way bets” and “doubling down on failure.”
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Working Paper
Conference paperGlobalization and Japanese Manufacturing Industry
Oct 2017
As globalization proceeds rapidly, manufacturing industry in most of developed countries declined steadily.