Archive

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

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

“From 2010 to 2019 the FDA approved 356 drugs. Recent research from Bentley University finds that NIH funding contributed to every single new drug approved. At a cost to the tax payer of roughly $230 billion dollars. In spite of this contribution the NIH is listed on only 27 of those patents. This suggests that while tax payers provide funding for the bulk of the early stage research they do not get patent protections supposedly secured by the by dole act. In essence American tax payers are paying the highest prices in the world for drugs they already paid to help develop.” — Senator Tammy Baldwin

“As William Lazonick and other analysts have pointed out, stock buybacks artificially inflate executive pay and drain capital that could be put to productive purpose. .[xxv] — Sarah Anderson, Counter Punch [xxv] William Lazonick, “Profits Without Prosperity,” Harvard Business Review, September 2014.”