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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.

Some cautionary remarks

Tom Nichols, Professor of National Security Affairs, US Naval War College, columnist for USA Today, and contributing writer at The Atlantic, discusses his new book, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy, and how a decline in civic virtue has generated a dangerous illiberalism.

The INET community mourns Harcourt’s passing

The 4th Law, Economics & Policy Conference (LEPC) is a virtual, multi-capsule conference series that aims to bring together legal, economic and public policy thinkers to consider a variety of real world issues in India in a holistic manner.

By helping abate the liquidity crisis, incidences of banks becoming insolvent are reduced, and hence moral hazard in its severest form is minimized.

By helping abate the liquidity crisis, incidences of banks becoming insolvent are reduced, and hence moral hazard in its severest form is minimized.

Yuen Yuen Ang, political science professor at the University of Michigan and author of the book, China’s Gilded Age, argues that the US and China have more in common than we usually think and that it makes more sense to see the conflict as a clash of gilded ages instead of a clash of civilizations.

A response to Phillip Magness in The Wall Street Journal

How systemic racism of the past continues to haunt the present.

For several weeks, representatives of governments across the globe gathered in Glasgow to discuss plans for climate mitigation and adaptation. But the meetings were dominated by representatives of the world’s most advanced economies, often to the detriment of the places where the majority of the world’s population lives: the developing world.

It’s time to prioritize mental well-being to avoid far-reaching economic and social consequences.

An interview with Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki, CEO of the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD)

How innovation ought to be guided if it is to be successful in addressing our most pressing problems.

Economists Claudia Sahm, Servaas Storm, and Pia Malaney share their views on the problem that has everyone freaking out. Here’s what it all means for your pocketbook – and your democracy.

publishing • the job market • writing • teaching • mental health • work-life balance

Covid and BLM protests were key to Biden’s victory

Covid and BLM protests were key to Biden’s victory

The curious case of the Wall Street Journal article on Virginia and school vouchers

Governments and civil society organizations must work together with UNCTAD to provide developing countries the tools — and the transformed governance regimes — they need to “build back better” through these challenging and difficult times.

Graciela Chichilnisky has a plan to do exactly that.

Economic journalist Martin Wolf’s address to the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University’s 20th anniversary conference, Economic Policy and Economic Theory for the Future

In a trend that has surprised social scientists, fathers are seeking better work/life balance and rejecting their pre-pandemic status as secondary parents – a movement that’s good for moms, too.

The education of the next generation of economists too often ignores the real crisis we face today: climate change, inequality, and financial instability.

Swift reorganization or liquidation of insolvent businesses is the single best policy to deal with corporate debt booms.

Swift reorganization or liquidation of insolvent businesses is the single best policy to deal with corporate debt booms.