Archive

INET grantee Vamsi Vakulabharanam describes his work to gather parallel social threads—such as class, caste, gender and religion—to better understand the mechanisms of inequality in India, and why this can lead to better outcomes around the world.

Rob Johnson joins Background Briefing with Ian Masters to discuss public concern about inflation

The conventional measures of economic well-being are dangerously limited, and we are seeing the resulting policy consequences play out daily.

Author and law professor Maurice Stucke warns that as fundamental privacy rights vanish, your personal data can and will be used against you.

Central banks can encourage climate-friendly investments by offering financial institutions favorable haircuts on green collateral

Central banks can encourage climate-friendly investments by offering financial institutions favorable haircuts on green collateral

Stagnating real wages may have contributed to the slowdown of US productivity

A persistent regime of low wages may determine very negative long-term consequences on the economy.

We are in the midst of another global transformation, but this time we might have the tools to get it right.

Ratner and Sim’s “Who Killed the Phillips Curve – A Murder Mystery”

Pari passu clauses were deliberately crafted to gain an upper hand in sovereign bankruptcy disputes brought to the London stock exchange’s jurisdiction

Pari passu clauses were deliberately crafted to gain an upper hand in sovereign bankruptcy disputes brought to the London stock exchange’s jurisdiction

Expertise is broken. Trust is eroding. Enough is enough.

Ekaterina Cleary, Matthew Jackson and Fred Ledley’s INET research on government innovation in pharmaceuticals was cited in The American Prospect

The depth of the U.S. securities market helps ensure dollar hegemony

James K. Galbraith responds on the U.S. dollar system

New mandates must beget new organizing

Frank McCourt discusses his work to reinspire hope in the American experiment, and to build the framework necessary for that better tomorrow.

Billions living in insecurity and injustice is hardly a rational system.

Michael Greenberg’s INET working paper on derivatives regulation is featured in Salon

How can we develop a deeper, more human and multifaceted understanding of the past?

An analysis of gun lobby contributions to Republicans and Democrats

Can society continue its long-run trajectory and commit to institutional, legal, social, fiscal, and educational systems that can advance equality?

Besides the crucial COVID-19 vaccine patent waiver, far more is at stake at this ministerial than is generally known.

Evidence-based answers to the main (policy) questions concerning the return of high inflation

Are there alternative, less socially costly, ways to bring inflation down?

Columbia University’s renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs talks about the lessons he has learned from consulting with governments around the world, about how global problems, such as the war in Ukraine, will only be solved via efforts to understand the other side, never through force.

James M. Buchanan’s defenders argue he was not racist because of his ties with the anti-apartheid economist W.H. Hutt, but this defense fails miserably

Despite his opposition to South Africa’s apartheid, Hutt embraced notions of black inferiority

An obituary for Axel Leijunhufvud (Sept 6, 1933 - May 5, 2022)

Corporate responsibility needs to evolve if businesses are going to rebuild trust and provide real value for society.

Author and law professor Maurice Stucke explains why the practices of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are so dangerous and what’s really required to rein them in. Hint: Current proposals are unlikely to work.

In a harrowing new book, scholar Laura Katz Olson pulls back the curtain on a shadowy Wall Street threat that is taking over health care companies – and preying on human lives.

Over the last four decades, the US economy has done quite well for the top 1%, but it has been stagnant for most Americans. This was not an accident, nor the natural workings of the market and certainly not an inevitability. US policies have been deliberately structured since 1980 to redistribute income upwards. In other words, the system has been rigged.

Climate change is already here, and we are on a path towards catastrophic global warming. Governments have failed to curb carbon emissions, and fossil fuel production continues to increase. This is not merely a political failure; it is also a failure of economic analysis.

INET Fellow Moritz Schularick writes in The Economist that Germany should immediately cut off Russain gas

The multipolar financial world is here. The United States can survive it – but only with major political and economic changes at home. It’s time to start thinking about what those need to be.

Lynn Parramore discusses her INET article on neoliberalism and mental health with The Healthcare Policy Podcast

As women’s rights to make reproductive choices come under assault, historian John M. Riddle argues that abortion has been far more essential to human history than you might imagine.

Contrary to the neoclassical loanable funds theory, historical bond yields show Keynes was right that “convictions” anchor long-term interest rates

Contrary to the neoclassical loanable funds theory, historical bond yields show Keynes was right that “convictions” anchor long-term interest rates

Re-evaluating the “equality-efficiency” trade-off

It’s not as simple as orthodox vs. heterodox.

Lynn Parramore’s INET article is cited in The New Republic

Regulators propose democratizing data and encouraging competition to reign in Big Tech. But such moves won’t go far enough in protecting user privacy. New: A reply to critics

Economic sanctions against Russia are adding to a major redistribution of income from workers and middle-class consumers to profits in international trade.

Veteran researcher sheds light on what’s going on, how long the pain might last, and possible paths forward.

We develop resources for students and educators interested in exploring new economic thinking.

On April 4th, 1967, at a time when the justness and necessity of the Vietnam War was broadly accepted, Dr. King issued a stirring rebuke of the U.S. establishment. He was criticized heavily for challenging US foreign policy; he was told to stick to civil rights.

A comment on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rule “Share Repurchase Disclosure Modernization”

Business firms are not alone in making investments in the productive capabilities required to generate innovative goods and services. Household units and government agencies also make investments in productive capabilities upon which business firms rely for their own investment activities.

The Consumer Welfare Standard of antitrust is outdated and defective

Distinguished Public Lecture on “Making India a Prosperous and Happy Nation @100”, by Dr. Ajay Chhibber, Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University on Tuesday, 22 March 2022.

The Consumer Welfare Standard of antitrust is outdated and defective

Nobody likes to be in debt, but we owe even more to interest itself.

An alternative to Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models

The social cost of America’s economic royalty

The neoliberal economy was supposed to bring about a utopian world order. Instead, it gave us crippling psychological stress and social breakdown. How can we ever recover?

Fragility and Resilience in Green Development in Africa: Intersections and Trade-offs

An interview with INET Global Commissioner Winnie Byanyima

As a discipline rooted in exceptionalism and capitalist values, is economics capable of comprehending socialism?

How could the new SDR allocation help developing countries?

How could the new SDR allocation help developing countries?

An overview of the current digital access landscape in Africa

As young scholars we are confronted with many challenges: publishing, teaching, the job market, work-life balance and institutional barriers, often we face these demands alone and without much institutional or even moral support.

Thirty Years of Indian Economic Reforms: Assessing the Growth and Development of Kerala

Lynn Parramore explores Peter Temin’s new book on the country’s two economic histories: progress for whites, slavery and segregation for Black people. He warns of a second-tier global future unless they come together.

President Biden’s first SOTU Address was a missed opportunity to say what he knows to be true: Stock buybacks manipulate the market and leave most Americans worse off

Legislators who vote together get paid together

The Daily Poster cites INET research on stock buybacks

Using aggregate campaign finance data as well as a Transformer based text embedding model we can predict roll call votes for legislation in the US Congress with more than 90% accuracy.

Nicholas Mangee, associate professor of finance in the Parker College of Business at Georgia Southern University, begins How Novelty and Narratives Drive the Stock Market with a statement that encompasses the problem he tackles and the compelling reason for investor interest in the new-style thinking that addresses it. This detailed stock market study attempts to extend Nobel Prize-winner Robert Shiller’s development of narrative economics, albeit Mangee’s focus is on novelty information embedded in textual news narratives. Using a set of text-based indices to capture the uncertainty and ambiguity in unscheduled news, Mangee measures the impact of news narratives on equity behavior.

This law is my law, this law is your law…

EEO-1 employment data document the vast over-representation of Asian Americans and vast under-representation of African Americans at tech companies in recent years. How did this happen?

EEO-1 employment data document the vast over-representation of Asian Americans and vast under-representation of African Americans at tech companies in recent years. How did this happen?

“What is the motivation for tax avoidance? To maximize profits and juice the stock price, of course. A research team led by William Lazonick at the University of Massachusetts reports in Harvard Business Review that from 2009 to 2019, S&P 500 companies spent over 90% of net income on buybacks and dividends, with the highest levels achieved after the 2017 tax cuts, in 2018 and 2019. Taking on corporate debt to finance share repurchases has become commonplace. Never mind that share buybacks deplete corporate treasuries of cash to weather setbacks and to fund productive investment in labor and R&D.”

Should the government regulate personal behavior, or are the irrational choices of people actually reasonable?

VIDEO

A new global economic system has to be based on a key principle of Bretton Woods: multilateralism

In a new book, How Novelty and Narratives Drive the Stock Market, economist Nicholas Mangee examines the influence of stories on stock market outcomes in an uncertain world.

US regulators can step in to ensure drug pricing both supports patient access and drug development

US regulators can step in to ensure drug pricing both supports patient access and drug development

Against the backdrop of frequent calls for debt cancellation and reorganization, the Private Debt Initiative of the Institute for New Economic Thinking is convening a conference on “Debt Restructuring” in New York City on Thursday, February 3rd and Friday February 4th, 2022, hosted by Richard Vague (Secretary of Banking and Securities, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania), Rob Johnson (INET President), and Moritz Shularick (INET Fellow).

How do we make economic development work for everyone?

Professor Glenn Hubbard, professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School, talks about his just-released book, “The Wall and the Bridge: Fear and Opportunity in Disruption’s Wake,” and how society and policymakers can help those who are left behind in the wake of today’s competitive world.

The youth paradox is accentuated by the effects of Covid-19, while the concrete short- and medium-term prospects for young people remain unclear.

A formal argument that Kahneman and Tversky’s compelling empirical findings, and those of other behavioral economists, do not provide a basis for a general approach to specifying participants’ “predictable errors.”

In a society where asset ownership is incredibly unequal, social mobility becomes severely diminished

In a society where asset ownership is incredibly unequal, social mobility become severely diminished

A review of regional integration in Africa

From feudal land rights to intellectual property in the modern era, lawyers have been battling over capital for centuries. Typically leveraging social resources to generate and protect private wealth.

Researchers studying beasts that pass on resources and advantages to offspring have raised the old question of whether humans are destined to live in stratified conditions. Your view may depend on your relative position.

The pandemic and electrification are shaking the foundations of the auto industry

The pandemic and electrification are shaking the foundations of the auto industry

How did this dire situation come about?

The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and the Open Society Foundations (OSF) announced that OSF has made a gift of $23.5 million to INET. The grant marks the completion of the organizations’ 12-year collaboration.

Evidence reveals our remote ancestors were neither brutes nor innocents, but complex beings whose experiments in living have much to teach us. Welcome news as disaster looms in every direction.

A new view of stock market instability under Knightian uncertainty

A tractable formalization of the Knightian uncertainty faced by an economist and market participants in an intertemporal asset-price model.

Many studies of the effect of climate change on GDP seriously mislead the research community, policymakers, and the general public.