Government & Politics

Beneath the heated political rhetoric over U.S.-China economic ties lies an increasingly complex reality

Research funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking has revealed that the SEC reports executive compensation using a formula that routinely undercounts it

Milwaukee-born short-seller Jim Chanos, founder and managing partner of New York-based Kynikos Associates, teaches University of Wisconsin and Yale business students about corporate fraud. During his life and career, he has witnessed seismic shifts in economic thinking and the relationship between labor and capital. Chanos shares his thoughts on the world emerging from the election of Donald Trump and the tumultuous political events of 2016. 

In the 40th anniversary year of John Kenneth Galbraith’s Age of Uncertainty, the 1970s look remarkably stable in comparison with today’s turbulent world 

Amid heightened focus on conflicts of interests, new research shows how legislators’ votes on the 2008 bank bailout tracked with the exposure to peril of their personal stock portfolios

The big question in Asian countries right now is what lesson to take from Donald Trump’s victory in the United States’ presidential election, and from the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum, in which British voters opted to leave the European Union. Unfortunately, the focus is not where it should be: geopolitical change.

A discussion on President-elect Trump’s economic agenda and its implications for the U.S. and world economies.

New research by Nobel Laureate and Institute for New Economic Thinking Advisory Board member James Heckman finds strong economic gains from birth-to-five education programs 

As the world turns upside down, Mariana Mazzucato discusses how to shape an economy that works for everyone

Remedies have failed to produced growth and reduce indebtedness because they’re focused on protecting toxic behavior by banks in Europe’s core countries

The Volcker Alliance has launched a series of new papers with important proposals for reforming financial regulations to guard against future crises 

Nobel laureate argues that the party’s adherence to neoliberal orthodoxy has hurt its prospects

Flows of goods and services, people and capital have overwhelmed the ability of political processes to accommodate them

Real existing neoliberalism as a set of social facts distinct from a purist ideology has proven remarkably adaptable and politically resilient 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies allowed the United States to avoid the perils of right-wing populism that plunged Europe into war in the 1930s — Europe should learn from his example

What we’re reading: Some analysts expect dramatic changes and a short-term boost to the US economy, others predict continuity — and see Trump’s election reflecting a sea change in the global order

By suddenly eliminating two widely used bank notes, India’s government risks undermining public confidence in the basic means of exchange

Surviving the geopolitical and economic challenges of the coming years requires a world order less vulnerable to the vagaries of U.S. elections

How orthodox economics paved the way for the political shocks of 2016

By suppressing important questions in favor of being cheerleaders for globalization, economists failed to influence the public conversation

How economics underperforms in diversity, and some potential remedies

The TPP is dead, as is the assumption that future free-trade agreements can be negotiated by experts alone

Mission-oriented public investment is vital to spur a revival of private-sector investment

In an Al Jazeera documentary “In Search of the Great American Job”, Institute scholar William Lazonick offers some arch insights into the relationship between financialization — particularly the “shareholder value” ideology in corporations, which drives the transfer of profits to shareholders through stock buybacks — and job creation and inequality.

A conversation with Richard Vague, Managing Partner at Gabriel Investments and Chairman of the Governor’s Woods Foundation.

This paper analyzes the Euro crisis in light of the experience of center-periphery relations over the last 40 years of renewed financial globalization.

Offshoring manufacturing may have hurt many working people in America, but professionals and intellectual property have been robustly protected

Like the Great Depression and the stagflation of the ’70s, the anemic growth of the U.S. economy can’t be understood or remedied without changes in economists’ thinking

Institute for New Economic Thinking President Robert Johnson, in an appearance of the CNN International show Quest Means Business, warns that the anger of Trump’s supporters is unlikely to ebb absent significant economic and political changes — and that this anger could be more successfully marshaled by a more skilled and sophisticated Republican challenger four years from now. 

We examine whether personal wealth interests affect politicians’ decisions about stabilizing financial markets.

New approaches are being developed, but efforts are fragmented and need to be brought together if we hope to piece together a paradigm. 

William Darity, Jr. has a new key to unlocking the mystery of inequality: stratification economics.

Social safety nets don’t always need to come with a dark side

Institute for New Economic Thinking launches a far-reaching research effort into causes and potential remedies for the low-to-no-growth malaise afflicting many of the world’s leading economies

A conversation with Robert Johnson, President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, former Managing Director for Soros Fund Management and former Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee.

The financial system no longer funds new ideas and projects — only about 15 percent of the money coming out of financial institutions goes into business investment; the rest is spent buying and selling existing financial instruments.

The media has failed ask basic questions about the economic thinking — and business record — of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, says Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, author of The Making of Donald Trump.

The main point of this paper is that loanable funds macroeconomic models with their “natural” interest rate don’t fit with modern institutions and data. Before getting into the numbers, it makes sense to describe the models and how to think about macroeconomics in the first place.

Past failures, present uncertainty, and a challenging political environment have vastly complicated the central bank’s task, says Institute President Rob Johnson

An award created as a concession to market-minded bankers needs to recognize the centrality of social-democratic policies to the wellbeing of industrialized economies

The Eurozone is (quietly) disintegrating as ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ countries continue on paths of economic divergence. That disintegration is reinforced by self-defeating policies shaped by a macroeconomic model that mimics and reinforces the divisions between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’

An exclusive conversation with Richard Batley, Head of Macroeconomics at Lombard Street Research.

China is drowning in it. The whole world has too much of it. History suggests: This won’t end well.

An Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper by William Lazonick and Matt Hopkins reveals that much reporting on executive pay relies on systems of measurement that underreport real compensation

Newspaper’s probe amplifies questions raised by our research into the impact of corporate donations onU.S. elections

There is much for U.S. authorities to learn from the European example of forcing corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, but more far-reaching oversight of executives’ allocation of resources is also required

Report to the Institute for New Economic Thinking on the statistical measurement and policy implications of the compensation of the highest- paid U.S. corporate executives

The US stands out as an outlier: the US spends far more on health than any other country, yet the life expectancy of the American population is not longer but actually shorter than in other countries that spend far less.

Using a unique dataset provided by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), we document a direct channel through which financial institutions contribute to the net worth of members of the U.S. Congress, particularly those sitting on the finance committees in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Oversights of two generations of social scientists have weakened democracy.

Focusing on what money really is – whether gold or state fiat – shifts attention away from what credit really is, which is to say away from the center of discontent.

Social scientists have stubbornly held that money and election outcomes are at most weakly linked. New research provides clear evidence to the contrary.

With the power of modern computing being harnessed into increasingly small and portable devices, what do digital platforms mean for the entrenched global economy?

Inflation, the euro crisis – for years there has been one worry hype after another. Yet fear frequently turns out to be wrong. We need a committee of wise men in charge of dealing with the real risks.

This paper considers the estimation problem in linear regression when endogeneity is present, that is, when explanatory variables are correlated with the random error, and also addresses the question of a priori testing for potential endogeneity.

One thing is now certain about the upcoming presidential election in the United States: the next president will not be a committed free trader.

Europe’s leaders must recognize that the EU is on the verge of collapse. Instead of blaming one another, they should pull together and adopt exceptional measures.

The EU is preparing to take a tough line with Britain, in order to deter other member states from following it out of the Union. But it is the neoliberal agenda that has prevailed for last four decades, benefiting only the top 1%, that is fueled voter anger on both sides of the Atlantic.

If Italy or the European Union have to step in to save banks, there’s no reason for them to have to do it for free

What we’re reading: As the shock of the UK referendum vote to leave the European Union continues to roil, a number of analysts see it as revealing dynamics of which all Western policymakers ought to be aware

The economic historian would have seen the British vote to leave the European Union as part of a larger drama of centralization versus pluralism

No, it’s not bureaucracy that is to blame - It’s the EU that has a problem, because urged by Germany it has pushed a kind of naive globalization, the outgrowths of which contribute to the upswing of dim-witted populists. Not only in the EU. Time for a new paradigm.

An election has failed to resolve a political deadlock that coincides with long-term economic stagnation

The Advanced Graduate Workshop in Development, led by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz is interested in identifying the complex interactions that influence well-being, development and growth.

The Brexit referendum is nothing less than an earthquake. But when an earthquake happens, seismologists try to understand how and why the tectonic plates had been shifting, and the pressures that had been building to bring about the event. The causes underlying every earthquake are specific in how they come together, even if they are seen in different places.

Several days ago, we woke up to a new world. Britain had voted to leave the European Union. Some were pleased, many were deeply concerned. What is likely is that many will be affected. Some wonder if the EU will survive. It will take months if not years to fully understand the ramifications.

The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in collaboration with the Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET) are organising India’s first “Law Economic Policy Conference (LPEC 2016)”. The aim is to bring together economic, legal and policy thinkers together to consider policy issues in a holistic manner.

The BIS offers a comprehensive picture of the state of the world economy, and of dysfunctional policies holding it back

The European Union is headed for a disorderly disintegration, and can only be saved if it is reconstructed to satisfy citizens’ needs and aspirations

It would be a tragic mistake to read anti-E.U. sentiment across Europe as simple bigotry — racism and xenophobia are being nurtured by the economic pain produced by prevailing economic policies

Frank Dikötter explores previously classified Chinese leadership documents, and attempts to set the record straight.

Why a British vote to leave the European Union would have consequences far larger than the UK’s proportional share of the global economy might suggest

Some predict global economic catastrophe if Britain votes to leave the EU, others foresee a more limited set of consequences — and some see a telling trend in the public ignoring economists’ warnings

Globalisation was once considered a doctrine of salvation - but it has produced too many losers and created a breeding ground for heralds of simplistic truths. It is high time for a new doctrine.

A dollar-denominated global economy means the Fed is at once the bankers bank and government bank, as well as both U.S. central bank and global central bank — managing that hybrid is the challenge of our time

What we’re reading: Recent statements from the IMF and the OECD highlight a growing call for new economic policy thinking in response to the specter of long-term stagnation

What we’re reading: A weekly scan of published items relevant to the Institute’s work

Why most economists did not see the 2008 crash coming

What we’re reading: A weekly scan of published items relevant to the Institute’s work

Is Neoliberalism a fixed set of ideas, or even an identifiable political movement?

Company law in the US and UK fails to acknowledge that authorities’ propensity to rescue giant banks from the consequences of insolvency assigns taxpayers a coerced and badly structured equity stake in too-big-to-fail institutions.

A meditation on Vercelli, Vernengo and Levitt & Seccareccia

Professor Wendy Brown engages in an in-depth exploration of the corrosive effect of approaching education, law, politics and governance through the lens of neoliberal economic rationality.

While the Neoliberal movement’s concerns extend into a broad political reorganization of society, it remains intimately connected with neoclassical economic thought.

Mass protests challenging the government to focus on job-creation rather than on market liberalization and trade deals may carry a cautionary message to Western policy makers, too.

What we’re reading: A weekly scan of published items relevant to the Institute’s work

Renewed interest by policymakers in the challenges of long-term slow economic growth highlights the importance of the Institute’s research

Julia Cage warns that a media ravaged by market forces cannot serve democracy’s need for an informed citizenry.

Karl Polanyi demonstrated that Classical Liberalism and current Neoliberalism were organized political movements, but their successes sparked political backlashes against laissez-faire economics — a dialectic that continues to shape politics to this day.

Author Rana Foroohar explains why the economic policies being touted by both presidential frontrunners offer none of the new thinking necessary to drive a policy response to revitalize the economy

The SPD, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, has been collapsing in the popularity polls ever since they in 2003 launched the reform Agenda. What would have come of the party if it had not been for this insane rush to reform? Possibly Gerhard Schroeder could even still be chancellor today. A case for the time machine.

Despite using different methodologies, a number of scholars agree that most of the ‘bailout’ money is going to Greece’s foreign creditors

The following is based on Chapter 1 of my forthcoming book, Crisis and Sustainability. The Delusion of Free Markets.

Peter Conti Brown’s new book explores and debunks a powerful meme shaping public understanding of the role of the Fed

What we’re reading: A weekly scan of published items relevant to the Institute’s work

Economist James K. Galbraith warns that ‘unrealistic expectations’ by Athens’ creditors is a recipe for turmoil

A new book by economist Julia Cagé offers a participatory business model for independent media.

Does the technology revolution require a new social policy?

Keynes passed away 70 years ago today, with his copyright now expiring, there is an opportunity to build a digital archive of all his work

Orthodox macroeconomics has become a place where visions die and hopes are banished, for both liberals and conservatives.