Archive

“There is a lot to like about with this infrastructure plan from what we already know and there seems to be a historical opportunity to get things right. Before answering your question, let me bring us to three trends just for context. Firstly, for decades we’ve had an economic model that benefited a small number of people tremendously and left behind the majority of Americans, resulting in widening inequality and decline in the middle class. The fact that a zip code could predict a lot of things; your health outcome, your lifespan, your success in life is an extremely telling example. Secondly, we’ve had the digital revolution which spanned a good part of the last 15 years that further demonstrated a lot of displacing and polarizing tendencies. If you’re in the wrong parts of the economy so to speak, it really didn’t work that much for you. Thirdly of course, we had the Covid crisis which turbocharged a lot of these trends. A lot of this is to say that sure there’s a lot of roads and bridges to fix and as well as fiscal infrastructure, but how to productively engage more Americans in the economic process through like you said job training and education, through better child care, invest in green recovery, and climate resilience these are paramount tasks.” — Jack Gao, Institute for New Economic Thinking

Formerly incarcerated Black people emerge from prison with far less education and social skills than white ex-cons. And they have great trouble forming families or earning a good living.

“So these companies have been hamstrung by these hedge fund activists that are only interested in making a buck as quickly as possible. And they really don’t care about the long-term sustainability or health of the company. Or is it anything the company might want to do in the way of making products in the future? They’re all about the short term. So they are holding American companies back.” — Lynn Parramore

Join us for this lively and timely presentation, followed by Q&A.

Hedge fund managers are pushing American firms to play Wall Street games instead of investing in technologies of the future. China doesn’t have that problem.

Your identity is being used against you. Can economics help?

“The economists Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick, and Alan Taylor studied the sensitivity of house prices to interest rates across 14 countries and 140 years of history. They found that a 1 per cent rise in interest rates reduces the ratio of house prices to incomes by about 4 per cent. In New Zealand, for example, that ratio has risen by about half in a decade, implying a double-digit rise in interest rates to stabilise it.” — Robin Harding, FT

Lynn Parramore appeared on Ian Masters to discuss Biden’s stimulus package and the “New Koch Brothers” wrecking America’s green new deal.

Contrary to its image as a cash-strapped, transparent public service, Wikipedia is a wealthy NGO with close ties to big tech companies that it tries to obscure

“In “Private Equity’s Engagement With Health Care: Cause for Concern?” a report to the Institute for New Economic Thinking, researchers Eileen Applebaum and Rosemary Batt found that wages dropped at urgent care centers after acquisitions by private equity companies. They were 9 to 12 percent lower than hospital wages. More consolidation and Amazon’s relentless drive to suppress costs bode more of the same.” — Brian Alexander, Boston Globe

The discussants will illuminate the findings and wisdom in Montek S. Ahluwalia’s book BackStage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years (2019) and then explore the challenges for the developing world and Asian geopolitics.

The world has changed, and we need to adapt. Andrew Sheng calls for a more human economics to drive us toward a sustainable future.

History shows robust antitrust enforcement helps promote a prosperous, fair, and balanced economy. Antitrust expert Mark Glick explains how the U.S. went astray during the 1980s, and how to get back on track.

Mortality and economic data show how constraints to government spending and a skepticism of redistributive policies have made the pandemic far worse

“As consumers become richer, they spend more on services such as health and education, the demand for which is much more income elastic, and less on agriculture and manufactured goods, according to a recent study, co-led by Diego Comin, a professor of economics. The results are published in Econometrica. Until now, productivity has often been considered at least as important, if not more, than preferences, in shaping the sectoral composition of the economy. Politicians and business leaders often make claims about why certain sectors in the economy are shrinking, such as the decline in U.S. manufacturing is due to robotics or trade with China. Such assessments are flawed, as the sectoral composition of the economy is mostly driven by preferences and not by productivity, according to the study, which models long-run structural change in the economy.” — Amy Olsen, Darmouth News