Archive
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Article
The Global Trade Slowdown is both True and Non-trivial
Nov 2, 2016
Economists offer widely different explanations for the decline in trade between nations, in a debate that remains unresolved but is increasingly urgent
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Article
‘A Grownup Conversation About Race and Class’: Rev. William Barber to Address Institute’s Detroit Conference
Nov 2, 2016
Renowned campaigner for social and economic justice to set the tone in conference keynote
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Video
‘Stratification’ Theory Tackles the Racial Blindspots of Orthodox Economics
Nov 2, 2016
Economist Darrick Hamilton and Institute President Rob Johnson discuss “stratification economics”, which addresses the failure of orthodox economics to see, explain and point to remedies for persistent racial inequality.
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Conference Session
The World Economy’s Growing Debt Burden
Nov 2, 2016 | 04:00—05:30
A conversation with Richard Vague, Managing Partner at Gabriel Investments and Chairman of the Governor’s Woods Foundation.
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Article
Easy Money is Dangerous Without Activist Fiscal Policy
Nov 1, 2016
Seven dangers of chronically low interest rates amid austerity and fiscal-policy phobia
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesThe EuroZone “Debt” Crisis: Another “Center” – “Periphery” Crisis Under Financial Globalization?
Nov 2016
This paper analyzes the Euro crisis in light of the experience of center-periphery relations over the last 40 years of renewed financial globalization.
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Article
Like Abusive Policing, Denial of Access to Mortgage Credit for Black Americans is a Growing Crisis
Oct 31, 2016
Black Americans remain second-class citizens in access to housing finance
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Article
Secular stagnation, bubbles and the legacy of the contraceptive pill
Oct 28, 2016
Oral contraception created a population that, today, is disproportionately inclined to save, resulting in low to negative real interest rates. Excess eurozone savings can only be accomodated by raising sovereign debt levels
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Article
How Gender Roles, Implicit Bias and Stereotypes Affect Women and Girls
Oct 27, 2016
Young women of all races and gender identities are powering movements from Black Lives Matter to immigration reform to reproductive justice to minimum wage and beyond. Researchers need to support their progress with metrics that capture the spirit they are building
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Article
Cook: Race-blind economics distorts data
Oct 27, 2016
Scholar sees Institute for New Economic Thinking conference as an important opportunity to discuss issues of race and economics, and of Detroit’s past and future
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Article
Inequality As Policy: Selective Trade Protectionism Favors Higher Earners
Oct 27, 2016
Offshoring manufacturing may have hurt many working people in America, but professionals and intellectual property have been robustly protected
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Article
Rashad Robinson: Building a Civil Rights Movement for the Digital Age
Oct 26, 2016
Wired profiles Color of Change leader Rashad Robinson and explores the challenges of movement-building in an era of digital activism
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Video
What Caused Detroit’s Demise?
Oct 26, 2016
Historian Prof. Thomas Sugrue offers a critique of the conventional wisdom that roots the city’s fate in the racial tension of the tumultuous ‘60s and the decline of the auto industry.
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Article
Baby Bonds: A Plan for Black/White Wealth Equality Conservatives Could Love?
Oct 25, 2016
Darrick Hamilton calls for spreading the benefits of asset-ownership to all Americans.
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Article
Yellen Challenges Economists Amid Elusive Great Recovery
Oct 24, 2016
Like the Great Depression and the stagflation of the ’70s, the anemic growth of the U.S. economy can’t be understood or remedied without changes in economists’ thinking
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Video
The War on Crime, not crime itself, fueled Detroit’s post-1967 decline
Oct 24, 2016
In this Q-and-A, historian and National Book Award finalist Heather Ann Thompson argues that draconian police tactics in black Detroit neighborhoods had as much to do with the city’s decimation as white flight and lost jobs.
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Article
Sex Uncensored
Oct 21, 2016
Improvements in data collection create potential for better outcomes for the LGBT community.
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Video
Clinton Likely to Win, But Struggle in 2020 Unless She Changes Course
Oct 20, 2016
Institute for New Economic Thinking President Robert Johnson, in an appearance of the CNN International show Quest Means Business, warns that the anger of Trump’s supporters is unlikely to ebb absent significant economic and political changes — and that this anger could be more successfully marshaled by a more skilled and sophisticated Republican challenger four years from now.
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Article
Why Can’t Economics See Race?
Oct 19, 2016
Theoretical dogmas that are literally blind to the causes of the racism that determines the economic fates of most African-Americans leaves the economics profession unable to comprehend or recognize remedies for a key driver of America’s crippling inequality. Instead, conventional economic models unmindfully shape policies that actually exacerbate racial conflict.
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesThe Personal Wealth Interests of Politicians and the Stabilization of Financial Markets
Oct 2016
We examine whether personal wealth interests affect politicians’ decisions about stabilizing financial markets.
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YSI Event
Piecing Together a Paradigm
YSI Plenary
YSI
ConferenceOct 19–22, 2016
New approaches are being developed, but efforts are fragmented and need to be brought together if we hope to piece together a paradigm.
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Article
Here’s What Economists Don’t Understand About Race
Oct 18, 2016
William Darity, Jr. has a new key to unlocking the mystery of inequality: stratification economics.
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Article
Unemployment Insurance Extension During Great Recession Did Not Destroy Jobs
Oct 13, 2016
Social safety nets don’t always need to come with a dark side
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Video
Investigating ‘Secular Stagnation’
Oct 13, 2016
Institute for New Economic Thinking launches a far-reaching research effort into causes and potential remedies for the low-to-no-growth malaise afflicting many of the world’s leading economies
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Conference Session
New Nationalist Challenges to Globalization: The Good, Bad, and Ugly
Oct 13, 2016 | 06:00—07:30
A conversation with Robert Johnson, President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, former Managing Director for Soros Fund Management and former Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee.
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YSI Event
'How much is Enough?' with Robert Skidelky
YSI
DiscussionOct 12, 2016
The epidemic extension of working hours and difficulty in maintaining work-life balance raises the question of the point of income and leisure satisfaction.
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Article
James Boyce Wins 2016 Leontief Award for Work on Environmental Inequality
Oct 11, 2016
Institute grantee Boyce cited for integrating ‘ecological, developmental and justice-oriented approaches’ into economics
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Article
Three Things to Know to Hold Wells Fargo Accountable
Oct 11, 2016
Justice requires that the media, policy makers, and the public understand why corporations engage in misconduct and fraud
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Article
Congratulations to Economics Nobel Laureates Hart and Holmström
Oct 10, 2016
Economists honored for their work on contract theory, which has important implications for issues such as executive compensation that have been a focus of Institute research
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Video
The Dangers of Financialization
Oct 10, 2016
The financial system no longer funds new ideas and projects — only about 15 percent of the money coming out of financial institutions goes into business investment; the rest is spent buying and selling existing financial instruments.
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Article
Escaping the New Normal of Weak Growth
Oct 7, 2016
Eight years after the crisis erupted, what the global economy is experiencing is starting to look less like a slow recovery than like a new low-growth equilibrium. With monetary policy unable to stimulate demand, or even inflation, it’s time for fiscal authorities to relieve the burden on central banks.
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Webinars and Events
Secular Stagnation
DiscussionSecular Stagnation
Hosted by Secular Stagnation
Oct 7, 2016
Out of Ammunition? A discussion on central banking and secular stagnation with Larry Summers and Adair Turner
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Article
Are Our Earnings Really Our 'Just Deserts'?
Oct 5, 2016
A new paper by Nancy Folbre offers an evidence-based refutation of ‘just-world’ assumptions
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Video
Getting to Grips with the Trump Phenomenon
Oct 5, 2016
The media has failed ask basic questions about the economic thinking — and business record — of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, says Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, author of The Making of Donald Trump.
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Working Paper
CommentaryThe “Natural” Interest Rate and Secular Stagnation: Loanable Funds Macro Models Don’t Fit the Data
Oct 2016
The main point of this paper is that loanable funds macroeconomic models with their “natural” interest rate don’t fit with modern institutions and data. Before getting into the numbers, it makes sense to describe the models and how to think about macroeconomics in the first place.
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Video
Global Finance, Debt and Sustainability
Oct 3, 2016
CEP Lecture by Adair Turner co-hosted with the IMF.
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Video
Class Divide: Same Street, Different Destinations
Oct 3, 2016
Marc Levin highlights the recent effects of hyper-gentrification in New York City’s West Chelsea, focusing on an intersection where an elite private school sits directly across the street from public housing projects.
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Course
Advanced Microeconomics for the Critical Mind
Oct 3–Dec 19, 2016
This course aims to introduce graduate students to the “standard” basic methods and topics of microeconomics as taught at the Ph.D. level, while providing a very different teaching approach than is prevalent in introductory doctoral-level microeconomics courses. Typically, much effort is focused on mastering a large technical apparatus consisting of axioms, theorems, propositions, and corresponding proofs, often leaving students longing for an informed and critical understanding of the deeper significance of the methods and results.
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Article
Johnson: The Fed is losing its aura of expertise
Sep 30, 2016
Past failures, present uncertainty, and a challenging political environment have vastly complicated the central bank’s task, says Institute President Rob Johnson
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Article
New Evidence Shows Gender Inequality in Top Incomes
Sep 29, 2016
Research by INET grantees Atkinson, Casarico and Voitchovsky shows that women are starkly underrepresented in top earning brackets across a range of different countries
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Article
Is there really an empirical turn in economics?
Sep 29, 2016
The idea that economics has recently gone through an empirical turn –that it went from theory to data– is all over the place. I argue that this transformation has been oversimplified and mischaracterized.
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Article
Turner: Why Macroeconomic Policies are Failing
Sep 29, 2016
In a Bloomberg Markets Most Influential Summit Debate, Institute board chairman Adair Turner explains why extraordinary monetary policy isn’t working
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Article
VP Biden Cites Lazonick in Critique of Stock Buybacks
Sep 28, 2016
Vice President warns that corporate stock buybacks restrict America’s long-term prosperity, citing the research of Institute grantee William Lazonick who has long argued the same
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Video
The Economic Legacy of Racism
Sep 28, 2016
If additional education is not the solution to racial inequality, what is?
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Webinars and Events
Law Economic Policy Conference
ConferenceSep 28–30, 2016
The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in collaboration with the Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET) are organizing India’s first “Law Economic Policy Conference (LPEC 2016)”. The aim is to bring together economic, legal and policy thinkers together to consider policy issues in a holistic manner.
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Article
The Nobel Prize in Economics: Time for a Return to Social Democracy
Sep 26, 2016
An award created as a concession to market-minded bankers needs to recognize the centrality of social-democratic policies to the wellbeing of industrialized economies
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Article
Rethinking Macroeconomic Theory Before the Next Crisis
Sep 23, 2016
While many countries throughout the world have faced severe financial crises over the last decades, and while the Japanese stagnation and the 1997 Asian financial crisis did induce some additional interest for the introduction of banking and finance in macroeconomic theory, it is only with the advent of the US subprime financial crisis that macroeconomic and monetary theories put forward by mainstream economists have started to be questioned.
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Article
Why gender remains a central focus in tackling economic inequality
Sep 22, 2016
Remarks by IMF managing director Christine Lagarde remind us why gender remains a major research and policy focus for the Fund — and for the Institute for New Economic Thinking
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Article
How economic policy drives European (dis)integration
Sep 22, 2016
The Eurozone is (quietly) disintegrating as ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ countries continue on paths of economic divergence. That disintegration is reinforced by self-defeating policies shaped by a macroeconomic model that mimics and reinforces the divisions between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’
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Conference Session
The Outlook for the Global Economy
Sep 22, 2016 | 06:00—07:30
An exclusive conversation with Richard Batley, Head of Macroeconomics at Lombard Street Research.
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Article
The Private Debt Crisis
Sep 21, 2016
China is drowning in it. The whole world has too much of it. History suggests: This won’t end well.
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Article
‘Advanced Microeconomics for the Critical Mind’ Returns in October
Sep 20, 2016
We are happy to announce that we are offering a second run of the online course which aims to introduce graduate students and interested persons generally to the basic methods and topics of standard microeconomics as taught at the Ph.D. level — with a bit of ‘attitude’!
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Article
Who Has Space for Renewables?
Sep 19, 2016
Estimated space requirements for solar energy sufficient to power the entire world are reassuringly trivial, at 0.5-1% of global land area. For individual countries however, the challenges vary greatly, reflecting dramatic differences in population density.
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Article
Why Corporate CEO Pay is Routinely Undercounted
Sep 15, 2016
An Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper by William Lazonick and Matt Hopkins reveals that much reporting on executive pay relies on systems of measurement that underreport real compensation
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Article
Guardian’s Wisconsin investigation points to big money’s systemic distortion of U.S. democracy
Sep 15, 2016
Newspaper’s probe amplifies questions raised by our research into the impact of corporate donations onU.S. elections
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Article
Do U.S. Economists Ignore Inequality?
Sep 14, 2016
Painting economics as blind to inequality may be overstating matters, but for too long efforts to explain it have been self limiting. Now, new economic thinkers are willing to pose uncomfortable questions.
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Article
Monetary Policy in a Post-Crisis World: Beyond the Taylor Rule
Sep 9, 2016
We know about emergency lending, but what we are missing is the macroeconomic framework to guide a new rule for stabilization policy
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Video
Understanding the Economics of Networks
Sep 7, 2016
Prof. Sanjeev Goyal explains his general theory of network formation based on individual incentives, and their economic implications
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Collection
Economics of Race
Investigating race as a driver of economic destiny.
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Article
European Ruling Highlights Apple's Corrupted Business Model
Aug 31, 2016
There is much for U.S. authorities to learn from the European example of forcing corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, but more far-reaching oversight of executives’ allocation of resources is also required
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Article
Monetary Policy Family Reunion at Jackson Hole
Aug 31, 2016
Like any family reunion, the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium may have been as significant for what was said as it was for what was not discussed
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Article
The Pros and Cons of a Universal Basic Income
Aug 29, 2016
In June of this year, Swiss voters saw an initiative on their ballots calling for an “unconditional basic income” that would “allow the whole population to lead a decent life and participate in public life.” Put on the ballot by a petition drive after it was rejected in parliament, the initiative was rejected by 77 percent of Swiss voters, with 23 percent approving.
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesThe Mismeasure of Mammon: Uses and Abuses of Executive Pay Data
Aug 2016
Report to the Institute for New Economic Thinking on the statistical measurement and policy implications of the compensation of the highest- paid U.S. corporate executives
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesThe performativity of potential output: Pro-cyclicality and path dependency in coordinating European fiscal policies
Aug 2016
This paper analyzes the performative impact of the European Commission’s model for estimating ‘potential output’, which is used as a yardstick for measuring the ‘structural budget balance’ of EU countries and, hence, is crucial for coordinating European fiscal policies.
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Video
Who Picked the Pockets of America’s Households?
Aug 24, 2016
The 2008 financial meltdown wiped out what was left of the savings of millions of American families, but Professor Edward Wolff says decades of income inequality had set the stage for the collapse of their household wealth.
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Article
The link between health spending and life expectancy: The US is an outlier
Aug 18, 2016
The US stands out as an outlier: the US spends far more on health than any other country, yet the life expectancy of the American population is not longer but actually shorter than in other countries that spend far less.
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Article
Demystifying Monetary Finance
Aug 17, 2016
The debate about so-called helicopter money is burdened by deep fears and unnecessary confusions: some worry that monetary finance is bound to produce hyperinflation; others argue that, in terms of increasing demand and inflation, it would be no more effective than current policies. Both cannot be right.
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Video
Is Technology Killing Capitalism?
Aug 17, 2016
Is Market Capitalism simply an accident of certain factors that came together in the 19th and 20th centuries? Does the innovation of economics require a new economics of innovation? Is the study of economics deeply affected by the incentive structures faced by economists themselves, necessitating a study of the “economics of economics”?
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Article
Racial Wealth Gap Won't be Fixed by Education Alone
Aug 16, 2016
Renewed attention on America’s stark and growing racial wealth divide requires critical thinking on policy remedies
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Article
General Equilibrium Theory: Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing?
Aug 16, 2016
Does general equilibrium theory sufficiently enhance our understanding of the economic process to make the entire exercise worthwhile, if we consider that other forms of thinking may have been ‘crowded out’ as a result of its being the ‘dominant discourse’? What, in the end, have we really learned from it?
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Article
The (Impossible) Repo Trinity
Aug 12, 2016
The untold story of shadow banking
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Article
There Isn’t Really a ‘Mainstream’ at All
Aug 11, 2016
There is a mix of common-sense opinions, political prejudices, conventional business practice, and pragmatic rules of thumb, supported in an ad hoc, opportunistic way by bits and pieces of economic theory.
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesPolitical Lending
Aug 2016
Using a unique dataset provided by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), we document a direct channel through which financial institutions contribute to the net worth of members of the U.S. Congress, particularly those sitting on the finance committees in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
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Article
The strange fate of economists' interest in collective decision-making
Aug 9, 2016
How economists turned to the study of collective decision-making after World War II, faced many impossibilities, and lost interest after solving them
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Article
Stark New Evidence on How Money Shapes America’s Elections
Aug 8, 2016
Oversights of two generations of social scientists have weakened democracy.
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Article
Minsky's Many Moments
Aug 5, 2016
The Economist pays tribute to Hyman Minsky, whose ideas on financial instability have not been given the attention and prominence they deserve
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Working Paper
CommentaryWhy a future tax on bank credit intermediation does not offset the stimulative effect of money finance deficits
Aug 2016
This paper responds to a paper by Claudio Borio, Piti Disyatat and Anna Zabai “Helicopter Money: the Illusion of a Free Lunch”
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Collection
Economic Growth
The global economy appears to be stuck in a pattern of low growth, low inflation and unresolved debt burdens. Is this a result of policy mistakes, or have the fundamental dynamics of the economy shifted into an era of little or no growth known as secular stagnation?
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Video
How the FED's QE Contributed to Inequality
Aug 3, 2016
Epstein discusses financial reform, central banking, and how the FED actually contributed to economic inequality.
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Article
Financialization and its Discontents
Aug 2, 2016
Focusing on what money really is – whether gold or state fiat – shifts attention away from what credit really is, which is to say away from the center of discontent.
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesHow Money Drives US Congressional Elections
Aug 2016
Social scientists have stubbornly held that money and election outcomes are at most weakly linked. New research provides clear evidence to the contrary.
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Article
Why Does Economics Reject New Thinking?
Jul 29, 2016
On George Akerlof’s “The Market for Lemons”
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Article
A rejoinder to Michael Grubb, Annela Anger-Kraavi, Igor Bashmakov and Richard Wood
Jul 26, 2016
We are grateful to Michael Grubb, Annela Anger-Kraavi, Igor Bashmakov, and Richard Wood for their interesting, empirically rich and structurally insightful commentary on our paper on the production-based and the consumption-based Carbon Kuznets Curve (CKC).
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Article
Carbon Decoupling?
Jul 26, 2016
A comment on Goher-Ur-Rehman Mir and Servaas Storm’s Carbon Emissions and Economic Growth: Production Based vs Consumption-Based Evidence on Decoupling
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Article
How Much Do Shady Financial Practices Cost You, Exactly?
Jul 22, 2016
Average U.S. household loses over $100,000 to destructive activities of bankers and financiers
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Article
Was the Financial Crisis Anticipated? Evidence from Insider Trading in Banks
Jul 21, 2016
Evidence from Insider Trading in Banks
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Video
Modern Monopolies
Jul 21, 2016
With the power of modern computing being harnessed into increasingly small and portable devices, what do digital platforms mean for the entrenched global economy?
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Article
German Worries: Fear Fosters Crisis
Jul 20, 2016
Inflation, the euro crisis – for years there has been one worry hype after another. Yet fear frequently turns out to be wrong. We need a committee of wise men in charge of dealing with the real risks.
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesLatent Instrumental Variables: A Critical Review
Jul 2016
This paper considers the estimation problem in linear regression when endogeneity is present, that is, when explanatory variables are correlated with the random error, and also addresses the question of a priori testing for potential endogeneity.
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Article
Police Shootings, Economics, and Empirics
Jul 19, 2016
In the past month, analysts from all disciplines have tried to make sense out of shooting deaths of blacks by police and also ambush attacks of police.
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Article
What’s the Problem With Protectionism?
Jul 19, 2016
One thing is now certain about the upcoming presidential election in the United States: the next president will not be a committed free trader.
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Article
James Crotty and the Responsibilities of the Heterodox
Jul 17, 2016
It was during a year in residency at Tokyo’s Hitotsuabashi University in 1995 that Jim Crotty first “met” John Maynard Keynes.
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Article
On Arrest Filters and Empirical Inferences
Jul 14, 2016
I’ve been thinking a bit more about Roland Fryer’s working paper on police use of force, prompted by this thread by Europile and excellent posts by Michelle Phelps and Ezekeil Kweku.
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Article
The Promise of Regrexit
Jul 12, 2016
Europe’s leaders must recognize that the EU is on the verge of collapse. Instead of blaming one another, they should pull together and adopt exceptional measures.
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Article
From Brexit to the Future
Jul 11, 2016
The EU is preparing to take a tough line with Britain, in order to deter other member states from following it out of the Union. But it is the neoliberal agenda that has prevailed for last four decades, benefiting only the top 1%, that is fueled voter anger on both sides of the Atlantic.
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YSI Event
Basel III and the Challenges of Banking Regulation
A webinar series organized by the YSI Financial Stability Working Group
YSI
DiscussionJul 8–Sep 9, 2016
The YSI Financial Stability Working Group will explore the changing nature of banking regulation. The series will look into the history of the Basel regulations, how they are conceived, and the challenges that are posed in their implementation.
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Article
How MBA Programs Drive Inequality
Jul 7, 2016
Business school students are taught to extract resources instead of creating value.
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Article
Another Banking Crisis in Europe? This Time, Save Banks, Not Bankers
Jul 7, 2016
If Italy or the European Union have to step in to save banks, there’s no reason for them to have to do it for free
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Article
Brexit, Trump and the challenge of populism
Jul 6, 2016
What we’re reading: As the shock of the UK referendum vote to leave the European Union continues to roil, a number of analysts see it as revealing dynamics of which all Western policymakers ought to be aware
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Article
Channeling Charles Kindleberger on Brexit
Jul 5, 2016
The economic historian would have seen the British vote to leave the European Union as part of a larger drama of centralization versus pluralism