Archive

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

Technology will ruin America if we don’t compensate for its impact, warns Andy Stern.

Pernicious cultural norms inside American banks and regulatory agencies have crowded out fundamental moral principles. Ed Kane proposes an antidote.

A response to Arjun Jayadev’s argument about the impact of automation on our work and life

What we’re reading: A weekly scan of published items relevant to the Institute’s work

Book review: Michel De Vroey and the problems of macroeconomics

The company’s focus on stock buybacks to increase shareholder value is a reminder of why so much of the value created daily by millions of workers ends up in the hands of the billionaires

Anxiety over human labor being replaced by cyborgs may be in vogue, but it’s overblown — machines may help us achieve healthier and more meaningful lives

The Institute is proud to welcome the revival of an indispensable resource for those seeking to understand the evolution of economics in context

Neither the Rational Expectations Hypothesis nor behavioral finance approaches alone provides an adequate predictor of investor behavior, argues Roman Frydman

New economic thinking has the potential to make political debates far more productive

Why most economists did not see the 2008 crash coming

What we’re reading: A weekly scan of published items relevant to the Institute’s work

The recent growth in the scale and different forms of shadow banking and alternative finance mechanisms in China poses many questions of understanding, from its sustainability; different forms of credit growth; to the role of local government financing, and; the tensions between financial reform policy and practice.

Is Neoliberalism a fixed set of ideas, or even an identifiable political movement?

A debate over definitions of Neoliberalism from different historical and philosophical approaches.

Company law in the US and UK fails to acknowledge that authorities’ propensity to rescue giant banks from the consequences of insolvency assigns taxpayers a coerced and badly structured equity stake in too-big-to-fail institutions.

A meditation on Vercelli, Vernengo and Levitt & Seccareccia

Professor Wendy Brown engages in an in-depth exploration of the corrosive effect of approaching education, law, politics and governance through the lens of neoliberal economic rationality.

While the Neoliberal movement’s concerns extend into a broad political reorganization of society, it remains intimately connected with neoclassical economic thought.

Eight years after the 2008 crisis the global economy is still stuck with low growth, too low inflation, and rising debt burdens. Massive monetary stimulus has failed to generate adequate demand, and some commentators suggest that we are “out of ammunition” with which to counter deflationary pressures.

Mass protests challenging the government to focus on job-creation rather than on market liberalization and trade deals may carry a cautionary message to Western policy makers, too.

From 1958 onward, the back cover of Paul Samuelson’s bestselling textbook, Economics, showed a family-tree of economists. The diagram’s evolution, in particular its use of the term “mainstream economics,” reflected, and, I speculate, influenced how economists came to perceive the structure of their discipline.

If the government/CB together finance an increased fiscal deficit with permanent non-interest-bearing fiat money, then some private sector agents have to hold non-interest-bearing monetary base, and must continue to do so even when policy and market interest rates have moved away from the ZLB. How is this possible in an environment where most bank deposit money is potentially interest-bearing?

In the growing debate about the pros and cons of a monetary financed fiscal stimulus (a.k.a. helicopter money) it is argued by some participants that a money-financed stimulus will have no more effect than a debt financed stimulus since:

I am pleased to announce that the History of Economic Thought Website is back. I am thankful for the assistance of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), which has supported its revival and made it possible.

What we’re reading: A weekly scan of published items relevant to the Institute’s work

Spanning centuries, this website concentrates information and resources on the history of economic thought for students, researchers and all those who are interested in learning about economics from a historical perspective.

The shift toward applied economics in the last 40 years is usually associated with the development of computers and datasets. Yet, the success of computer-based approaches is highly selective, and what computerization failed to change in economics is equally remarkable.

Renewed interest by policymakers in the challenges of long-term slow economic growth highlights the importance of the Institute’s research

Behavioral finance views stock-market investors’ expectations as largely unrelated to fundamental factors. Relying on survey data, this paper presents econometric evidence that fundamentals are a major driver of investors’ expectations.

Julia Cage warns that a media ravaged by market forces cannot serve democracy’s need for an informed citizenry.

Karl Polanyi demonstrated that Classical Liberalism and current Neoliberalism were organized political movements, but their successes sparked political backlashes against laissez-faire economics — a dialectic that continues to shape politics to this day.

Author Rana Foroohar explains why the economic policies being touted by both presidential frontrunners offer none of the new thinking necessary to drive a policy response to revitalize the economy

The SPD, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, has been collapsing in the popularity polls ever since they in 2003 launched the reform Agenda. What would have come of the party if it had not been for this insane rush to reform? Possibly Gerhard Schroeder could even still be chancellor today. A case for the time machine.

Despite using different methodologies, a number of scholars agree that most of the ‘bailout’ money is going to Greece’s foreign creditors

The following is based on Chapter 1 of my forthcoming book, Crisis and Sustainability. The Delusion of Free Markets.

Peter Conti Brown’s new book explores and debunks a powerful meme shaping public understanding of the role of the Fed

What we’re reading: A weekly scan of published items relevant to the Institute’s work

A major shift is needed in the Econometrics curriculum for both graduate and undergraduate teaching to include modern topics.

The corrosive social and economic effects of what have now become ‘normal’ unemployment levels require new solutions, and tradewithout full employment exacerbates the problem

Any use of money-financed fiscal expansion as a policy tool will require rules to ensure discipline and avoid excess

Five lessons from the last crisis — for managing the next one