Archive

New approaches are being developed, but efforts are fragmented and need to be brought together if we hope to piece together a paradigm. 

William Darity, Jr. has a new key to unlocking the mystery of inequality: stratification economics.

Social safety nets don’t always need to come with a dark side

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

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.

The epidemic extension of working hours and difficulty in maintaining work-life balance raises the question of the point of income and leisure satisfaction.

Institute grantee Boyce cited for integrating ‘ecological, developmental and justice-oriented approaches’ into economics

Justice requires that the media, policy makers, and the public understand why corporations engage in misconduct and fraud

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

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.

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.

Out of Ammunition? A discussion on central banking and secular stagnation with Larry Summers and Adair Turner

A new paper by Nancy Folbre offers an evidence-based refutation of ‘just-world’ assumptions

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.

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.

CEP Lecture by Adair Turner co-hosted with the IMF. 

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.

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.

Past failures, present uncertainty, and a challenging political environment have vastly complicated the central bank’s task, says Institute President Rob Johnson

Research by INET grantees Atkinson, Casarico and Voitchovsky shows that women are starkly underrepresented in top earning brackets across a range of different countries

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.

In a Bloomberg Markets Most Influential Summit Debate, Institute board chairman Adair Turner explains why extraordinary monetary policy isn’t working

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

If additional education is not the solution to racial inequality, what is?

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.

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

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.

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

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’

An exclusive conversation with Richard Batley, Head of Macroeconomics at Lombard Street Research.

China is drowning in it. The whole world has too much of it. History suggests: This won’t end well.

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’!

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.

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

Newspaper’s probe amplifies questions raised by our research into the impact of corporate donations onU.S. elections

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.

We know about emergency lending, but what we are missing is the macroeconomic framework to guide a new rule for stabilization policy

Prof. Sanjeev Goyal explains his general theory of network formation based on individual incentives, and their economic implications

Investigating race as a driver of economic destiny.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”?

Renewed attention on America’s stark and growing racial wealth divide requires critical thinking on policy remedies

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?

The untold story of shadow banking

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.

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.

How economists turned to the study of collective decision-making after World War II, faced many impossibilities, and lost interest after solving them

Oversights of two generations of social scientists have weakened democracy.

The Economist pays tribute to Hyman Minsky, whose ideas on financial instability have not been given the attention and prominence they deserve

This paper responds to a paper by Claudio Borio, Piti Disyatat and Anna Zabai “Helicopter Money: the Illusion of a Free Lunch”

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?

Epstein discusses financial reform, central banking, and how the FED actually contributed to economic inequality.

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.

Social scientists have stubbornly held that money and election outcomes are at most weakly linked. New research provides clear evidence to the contrary.

On George Akerlof’s “The Market for Lemons”

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).

A comment on Goher-Ur-Rehman Mir and Servaas Storm’s Carbon Emissions and Economic Growth: Production Based vs Consumption-Based Evidence on Decoupling

Average U.S. household loses over $100,000 to destructive activities of bankers and financiers

Evidence from Insider Trading in Banks

With the power of modern computing being harnessed into increasingly small and portable devices, what do digital platforms mean for the entrenched global economy?

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.

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.

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.

One thing is now certain about the upcoming presidential election in the United States: the next president will not be a committed free trader.

It was during a year in residency at Tokyo’s Hitotsuabashi University in 1995 that Jim Crotty first “met” John Maynard Keynes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Business school students are taught to extract resources instead of creating value.

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

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

The economic historian would have seen the British vote to leave the European Union as part of a larger drama of centralization versus pluralism

No, it’s not bureaucracy that is to blame - It’s the EU that has a problem, because urged by Germany it has pushed a kind of naive globalization, the outgrowths of which contribute to the upswing of dim-witted populists. Not only in the EU. Time for a new paradigm.

An election has failed to resolve a political deadlock that coincides with long-term economic stagnation

The Advanced Graduate Workshop in Development, led by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz is interested in identifying the complex interactions that influence well-being, development and growth.

INET interviews Luigi Pasinetti

The Brexit referendum is nothing less than an earthquake. But when an earthquake happens, seismologists try to understand how and why the tectonic plates had been shifting, and the pressures that had been building to bring about the event. The causes underlying every earthquake are specific in how they come together, even if they are seen in different places.

New perspectives on Europe’s unfolding financial, economic and political crises

Several days ago, we woke up to a new world. Britain had voted to leave the European Union. Some were pleased, many were deeply concerned. What is likely is that many will be affected. Some wonder if the EU will survive. It will take months if not years to fully understand the ramifications.

What fraction of total economic growth accrues to the top 10%, top 1%, etc.? How does growth per capita of the bottom 90% compare to overall growth? Zucman discusses his research and efforts to bring more hard data into the inequality dialogue.

The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in collaboration with the Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET) are organising 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.

The BIS offers a comprehensive picture of the state of the world economy, and of dysfunctional policies holding it back

The European Union is headed for a disorderly disintegration, and can only be saved if it is reconstructed to satisfy citizens’ needs and aspirations

It would be a tragic mistake to read anti-E.U. sentiment across Europe as simple bigotry — racism and xenophobia are being nurtured by the economic pain produced by prevailing economic policies

The deadline for submission of paper proposals and complete sessions for the 20th FMM conference is approaching: 30 June 2016. Proposals (extended abstracts, max. 400 words) have to be submitted electronically via this web application. Please find more information in the Call for Papers.

Frank Dikötter explores previously classified Chinese leadership documents, and attempts to set the record straight.

Why a British vote to leave the European Union would have consequences far larger than the UK’s proportional share of the global economy might suggest

Remarks at a memorial service for pioneering financial analyst Jack Treynor Memorial, MIT Chapel, June 19, 2016

Some predict global economic catastrophe if Britain votes to leave the EU, others foresee a more limited set of consequences — and some see a telling trend in the public ignoring economists’ warnings

Globalisation was once considered a doctrine of salvation - but it has produced too many losers and created a breeding ground for heralds of simplistic truths. It is high time for a new doctrine.

A dollar-denominated global economy means the Fed is at once the bankers bank and government bank, as well as both U.S. central bank and global central bank — managing that hybrid is the challenge of our time

What we’re reading: Recent statements from the IMF and the OECD highlight a growing call for new economic policy thinking in response to the specter of long-term stagnation