Government & Politics

The US federal lobbying industry, based in Washington DC, is major focal point for political money and the exercise of influence, with expenditures peaking at approximately $2.5 billion per annum during the first Obama administration. 

Not just an American dilemma: is political money in dual economies the biggest problem of all?

The Death of the Seventy-year American Empire  

As dual economies transform countries, how does world politics adjust?

Coping with the dysfunction of advanced economies, and developing strategies for economic development.

This paper examines the value of connections between German industry and the Nazi movement in early 1933. Drawing on previously unused contemporary sources about management and supervisory board composition and stock returns, we find that one out of seven firms, and a large proportion of the biggest companies, had substantive links with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Firms supporting the Nazi movement experienced unusually high returns, outperforming unconnected ones by 5% to 8% between January and March 1933. These results are not driven by sectoral composition and are robust to alternative estimators and definitions of affiliation. 

“The Failure of Democracy” – “The weaknesses of Weimar” Do headlines such as these suggest that the whole architecture of the first German republic was wrong, that it was doomed right from the start, that the “collapse” was unavoidable?

Stock Market Returns and Corporate Networks 

A look at how liberal democracies have disintegrated amid economic crises. Speakers: Thomas Ferguson, Tiziana Foresti, Nadia Garbellini, Peter Langer, Joachim Voth, Ariel Wirkierman Discussant: James Kurth Chair: Thomas Ferguson

On 23 June 2016, the British electorate voted to leave the European Union (EU). We analyse vote and turnout shares across 380 local authority areas in the United Kingdom.

Different accounts trace populism to cultural reactions, racial or gender animosity, and/or economics. What does the empirical evidence suggest?

Support for populism is often attributed to xenophobia, racism, sexism; to anger and resentment at immigrants, racial or ethnic minorities, or “uppity” non-traditional women. According to these accounts , people who feel socially resentful may reject established politicians as favoring those “others” over people like themselves, and turn to outsider populistic leaders.

Unpacking the Effect of Trade on Workers and Voters 

A better set of approaches for the 21st century.

The contemporary literature on neoliberalism has grown so large as to be unwieldy. For some on the left, this has presented an occasion to denounce it altogether.

How far are economists implicated in the rise of ‘fake experts’ and ‘fake news’?

Fake news, propaganda, and “expertise”: What has happened to information in the information age?

The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure

The Academic and Professional Performance of the Chicago School, 1960-1985

What Do Citations Actually Measure in Economics and How Should Economic Journals and Department Review Committees Use This Data? 

Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Spence and a global team of leading thinkers are calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy

The current crisis is the culmination of a process of integration that has profoundly changed the structure of each member state, their inter-relations and their power relations. One of its side effects was the rediscovery of the terms ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ to analyse the economic situations of the European countries.

The euro area has been experiencing a prolonged period of weak economic activity and very low inflation.

The wind appears to be back in the sails of the Eurozone economy ….

Some fresh reflections on ECB policy

Can a monetary union without true banking and fiscal union be saved? What remains of the hopes that animated the Treaty of Rome?

Nicola Sturgeon covers a range of topics including how economists’ work relates to policymaking, the financial crisis and the dangers of groupthink, how dissatisfaction with stagnating wages and rising inequality played into political shocks like Brexit, the legacy of Adam Smith, why new economic thinking is so important, and what her government is doing to foster and apply it. 

INET gathered hundreds of new economic thinkers in Edinburgh to discuss the past, present, and future of the economics profession.

The Festival for New Economic Thinking is a collaborative initiative of several organizations, and aims to bring together those who seek to improve how economics is taught, studied and practiced. 

“Blindly” Engaging in Global Supply Chains Can Erode Developing Nations’ Economic Power

The YSI Economics of Innovation Working Group in partnership with the Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology is hosting a YSI Conference on “Innovation, Institutions and Governance”.

Personal connections are key to understanding concentrations of wealth and power

In this episode of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Robert Johnson, about the political economy, inequality, and the failings of our technocratic institutions.

An examination of some little-known ways nation states and central banks prop up megabanks

The same angst that Americans and Europeans have about the future of jobs is an order of magnitude higher in Asia.

Robinson explains how natural experiments are done and why they’re useful. He also explains distribution of power and development of state play critical roles in successful economies.

Back-room deals on corporate tax reform won’t increase growth

Greater efficiency, lower costs, and universal coverage make it the sustainable option, say some top economists

The famed short-seller offers a mid-2017 reality check for “fake fiscal news,” and economic pipe dreams, and sees “portents of even worse things”

Current proposals will worsen inequality and harm those Trump promised to protect—while further enriching the top 1%

The Young Scholars Initiative is hosting its regional convening for Latin America in Mexico City from 17-21 June. 

Naomi Klein discusses her new book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need.

Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) has released a new e-book, “Conversations on Dependency Theory”

Why some goods and services should stay in the public domain

This blog post looks at the aggregate picture and collates some micro evidence in a more robust estimating framework to shed light on this question.

The Young Scholars Initiative and the University of the Free State, SA, invite young scholars to attend the first YSI Africa conference. 

The Young Scholars Initiative and its working groups will be hosting meetings and discussions in and around the 2017 Trento Festival of Economics. 

A discussion featuring Kenneth Smith, Head of the Trade and NAFTA Office of the Ministry of the Economy of Mexico, and Jay Pelosky, Principal of Pelosky Global Strategies.

This two-day skills workshop / annual meeting of the Finance, Law, and Economics Working Group (FLE) aims to connect participants with politicians (MEP), lobbyists, NGOs, and practitioners working in fields related to law and finance. It will comprise workshops and visits with representatives, which will facilitate exchanges between academia and politics. Participants will gain fresh insights into the decision-making and lobbying processes in Brussels, allowing them to translate their ideas into actions and create a stronger social impact. 

Globalization has fallen into disrepute; the myth of the prosperity and happiness-generating  free market has been dispelled. A visionary concept that provides guidance and direction is required now.

Demand, Secular Stagnation and the Vanishing Middle-Class

The U.S. economy is widely diagnosed with two ‘diseases’: a secular stagnation of potential U.S. growth, and rising income and job polarization. The two diseases have a common root inthe demand shortfall, originating from the ‘unbalanced’ growth between technologically ‘dynamic’ and ‘stagnant’ sectors.

A look at America’s strange and dangerous approach to medicine, and how to fix it

This paper presents a model of mass incarceration in the United States, which has the largest proportion of its population imprisoned among advanced countries.

A discussion with Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University and former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. 

Professor Dutt discusses how group identity is key to addressing inequality and how inequality can disrupt group identity.

A new book by economist Peter Temin finds that the U.S. is no longer one country, but dividing into two separate economic and political worlds

The YSI Keynesian Economics Working Group is co-hosting a PhD seminar at the Nordic Post-Keynesian Conference entitled “Economics at the Edge”.

“The humility to accept that economic propositions cannot be universal would save us from self-defeating arrogance.” Economist Amit Bhaduri adds his perspective to our Experts on Trial discussion.

In his 2017 presidential address to the National Economic Association, Professor Darrick Hamilton warned that treating economics as a morally neutral ‘science’, and the discipline’s limited attention to structural barriers and overemphasis individual agency, has resulted in bad economics, and bad policy particularly as it relates to racial disparity.

The YSI Political Economy of Europe Working Group invites young scholars to partake in a Research Seminar aiming to investigate the interplay between fiscal policy in the European Union and domestic social policies of its member states. 

Along the entire “innovation chain” — from research and development, to production and commercialization — government and private sectors have very different roles to play.

The “War on Poverty,” and the impact of public policy

The Institute for New Economic Thinking, a global network of distinguished economists, is deeply concerned by the news of proposed legislation in Hungary’s National Assembly that would prevent the free functioning of the Central European University.

Brazil’s current economic scenario does not resemble the emerging economy that until recently fueled the optimism of analysts and investors.

In this comment, we explain our objections to the SEC’s current formulation of the Pay Ratio Disclosure Rule on each of three grounds: the erroneous estimation of CEO pay; the unclear specification of the “median” worker; and the risk of normalizing a pay ratio that is far too high. Then we present the latest data on the remuneration of the 500 highest-paid CEOs in the United States, demonstrating the way in which the SEC’s measure of CEO pay that enters into the CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio tends to systematically underestimate actual executive pay.

The health crisis afflicting working-class Americans recalls similar symptoms in Russia following the collapse of communism

A discussion with Shahar Shelef, Director of The Economic and Strategic Affairs Department, Center for Policy Research at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Pursuing equality while growing the economy requires reframing social spending as a form of investment.

Policies based on faith in the “market” as a principle of social organization have wrought havoc with a founding principle of American democracy

New findings show that hourly wage-rates in China are higher than in middle-income countries and are approaching the levels of Greece and Portugal

As part of our “Experts on Trial Series”, Antonella Palumbo argues for stripping away ‘scientific’ shibboleths that mask social and political choices

A trade war would undoubtedly hurt both sides. But there is reason to believe that the US has more to lose. If nothing else, the Chinese seem to know precisely which weapons they have available to them. China could stop purchasing US aircraft, impose an embargo.

A reference guide to all Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) community presentations at the Eastern Economic Association’s (EEA) 2017 annual meeting

Stanford economic historian Professor Gavin Wright, addressing the Institute’s conference on the economics of race, argues that the conditions facing the children of the great migration from the South are very different to the conditions for the children of those who stayed behind. 

Research by Thomas Piketty, partly funded by the Institute, shows that wealth and income gaps in China are now larger than Europe’s, and approaching those of the US

Austerity has nurtured resentments that will likely make the populist right PVV the biggest winner in the March 15 election — but without the majority or the allies needed to govern

The practical question in Washington today is not whether regulations will go, but whether anything will replace them

A presentation from The Economics of Post-Factual Democracy, the first annual conference of The Center for Information and Bubble Studies (CIBS) at The University of Copenhagen

Institute scholar Arjun Jayadev argues that while TPP is dead, its damaging legacy on intellectual property rights is likely to shape future bilateral trade agreements

A discussion on Brexit with Iain Begg, Professorial Research Fellow at the European Institute, London School of Economics.

In his contribution to our ongoing series “Experts on Trial”, Alessandro Roncaglia argues that viewing economists as princes or servants of power is inherently authoritarian. We should instead see the economist as a socially and politically engaged citizen

Mallaby’s research shows that Greenspan knew more about the looming perils than people realize.

Panic over the impact on  German savers of low interest rates and looming inflation neglects to mention that very few Germans are saving much

As part of our ongoing symposium “Experts on Trial”, Professor Sheila Dow argues that if voters have grown contemptuous of economists’ expertise, that’s because economics has been misrepresented as a technical subject separate from politics and moral judgments

Turner discusses The Economist’s Society the liquidity risks posed by Exchange Traded Funds.

Research by INET-affiliated scholars shows the US lags far behind its peers on inclusive growth, suggesting inequality is not an inevitable consequence of globalization and technology

Institute Governing Board member Anatole Kaletsky argues that the Trump Administration’s policies will boost inflation and spur interest-hikes as well as a stronger dollar more rapidly than many expect, but that the European Union’s economy is on the mend

Smick argues that distortions of capitalism have fed populist rebellion, and that reviving a capitalism that offers opportunity for average people to increase their earnings is an urgent priority if America’s political economy is to be stabilized.

A discussion on China’s economic management at the beginning of the Trump era featuring Leland R. Miller, Co-founder and CEO of the China Beige Book.

A conflict which revolves around key economic policy differences on questions such as rules vs. discretion, solidarity vs. liability, liquidity vs. solvency and austerity vs. stimulus.

Donald Trump’s presidency is a symptom of an interregnum between economic orders – a period that will result in a new balance between state and market. While his administration’s economic policies are unlikely to provide the right answer, they may at least show the world what not to do.

Institute President Rob Johnson interviewed by the New Yorker on hedge-fund managers and the market for air strips in New Zealand

Viewed in historical context, the weak recovery from the 2008 crisis has been slow and painful, but a sub-5% unemployment rate and healthy job and wage growth will be among the most important legacies Obama leaves to the next president

Any effort to replace the Affordable Care Act will be confronted by the same structural imbalances in the health care economy that the legislation’s authors faced

New evidence shows personal wealth interests drive Congressional votes

As part of an International Economy symposium, INET Research Director Tom Ferguson assessed the challenge facing central bankers through the lens of the missing virtues of Dorothy’s travel companions in the Wizard of Oz