Government & Politics
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Identifying Weaknesses in the Eurozone
Dec 19, 2014
How should the Eurozone handle unemployment and other immediate hurdles?
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Working Paper Series
Intra-Financial Lending, Credit, and Capital Formation
Dec 2014
This paper examines the effects of intra-financial lending – claims between financial institutions – on aggregate investment and credit to the non-financial sector in the United States.
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Lessons from the Great Depression
Dec 5, 2014
How can we better integrate history into economic analysis?
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Working Paper Series
Long-term trends in intra-financial sector lending in the U.S. 1950 - 2012
Nov 2014
This paper examines the evolution of intra-financial sector lending in the United States, 1950- 2012, presenting estimates constructed from the Federal Reserve’s Flow of Funds Accounts.
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Two Hundred Years of Politics and High Finance
Oct 16, 2014
These videos cover not only Dr. de Cecco’s seminal research on the international gold standard, but his views on the international monetary system between the wars, the formation of the Bretton Woods system, and its breakdown – all topics on which Dr. de Cecco has written copiously.
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The IMF and Human Development: Little Progress and Worrisome Trends
Oct 13, 2014
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank celebrate their 70th anniversary this year, yet few countries have been eager to join the festivities.
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Development and Underdevelopment in Postwar Europe
Oct 1, 2014
The question of underdevelopment and development policies in postwar Europe will be the theme of a workshop organized by Michele Alacevich, Sandrine Kott, and Mark Mazower, at Columbia University, the Heyman Center for the Humanities, Friday, October 10, 2014. The program is available here. Below are some of Alacevich’s insights on the issue leading up the event:
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Working paper
Community Networks and the Process of Development
Sep 2014
Anyone who has spent time in a developing country knows the importance of social connections. Among their many roles, these connections help individuals land jobs, and provide them with credit and other forms of support.
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The Flummery of Capital-Requirement Repairs Since The Crisis
Sep 15, 2014
Government safety nets give protected institutions an implicit subsidy and intensify incentives for value-maximizing boards and managers to risk the ruin of their firms. Standard accounting statements do not record the value of this subsidy and forcing subsidized institutions to show more accounting capital will do little to curb their enhanced appetite for tail risk.
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Working paper
Please Don't Throw Me In The Briar Patch
Sep 2014
The flummery of capital-requirement repairs undertaken in response to the Great Financial Crisis.
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Working Paper Series
The Political Movement that Dared not Speak its own Name: The Neoliberal Thought Collective Under Erasure
Aug 2014
Why do so many people who should know better argue that Neoliberalism ‘does not exist’?
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Top incomes and the glass ceiling
Jul 17, 2014
The glass ceiling is typically examined in terms of the distribution of earnings. This column discusses the glass ceiling in the gender distribution of total incomes, including self-employment and capital income. Evidence from Canada and the UK shows we are still far from equality. Though the proportion of women in the top 1% has been rising, the progress is slower, almost non-existent, at the very top of the distribution.
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Self-Control and Public Pensions
Jul 13, 2014
Our welfare depends not only on our actual consumption, but also on alternate choices wedid not make.
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Azim Premji Summer School 2014
WorkshopJun 30–Jul 6, 2014
India has for the last twenty years been undergoing a rapid and abiding structural shift in its pattern of development. The transformation of the economy from the period of the license raj to the post liberalization era has wrought many changes, with somewhat ambiguous implications.
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Worldwide Revolutions: Is History Repeating Itself?
Apr 11, 2014 | 11:00—12:30
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Economic Progress and Financial Reform in China
Apr 11, 2014 | 07:00—07:00
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Finance and the Real Economy
Apr 11, 2014 | 05:15—06:30
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Conference paper
The Chinese Economic Model Revisited: Any Implications for the New Economic Thinking?
Apr 2014
The president of INET, Johnson(2013) emphasized the importance of Asian tradition for building up the New Economic Thinking. “It ismy sense that the Asian tradition of thought and philosophical perspective are better suited to embracing this radical uncertainty and living in the experimentation of the adaptive complex system that our world appears to resemble than are the Western mindsets that are the product of the Cartesian Enlightenment.” In the summary he argues that “As the Asian societies continue to evolve the architects will be better served by an new economics for Asia and from Asia that is based on the notions of radical uncertainty, complex adaptive systems, mimetic desire, the inseparability of politics and economics, and a vision of a world where policy makers are themselves less knowing and less capable of control than we often yearn to believe is within their power.”
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Conference paper
The Arab Spring is Genuine Revolution, But a Bumpy and Arduous Road Ahead
Apr 2014
The Arab Spring has been a fundamental event in the Arab world and yet among Middle East scholars, there is great intellectual and analytical debate about the degree of political change or continuity that the Arab Spring had produced. As reverberations of the global economic crisis have continued and the international rules of the game have fundamentally remained unchanged, the demand on post-Arab Spring governments to change policy course is high.
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Conference paper
Social Power and Development in the Middle East: a transnational perspective
Apr 2014
The chief obstacle to transformative change in the contemporary Middle East is the region-wide configuration of social power which was consolidated in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire and which survived the transition from empire to post-Ottoman independent states largely intact.
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Conference paper
The Arab revolutions: any new paths from here?
Apr 2014
While successive waves of democratization over the last half century changed the political landscape in various regions of the world, the authoritarian regimes have maintained their hold on power in the Arab region.
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The Problem of the Predator State: Fostering Innovation While Facilitating Corporate Predation
Apr 11, 2014 | 07:00—08:30
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Law and Innovation: Is Intellectual Property a Path to Progress
Apr 11, 2014 | 07:00—08:30
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Secular Stagnation? The Future Challenge for Economic Policy
Apr 11, 2014 | 03:15—05:00
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Beyond Austerity: Default, Debt Restructuring or Recovery?
Apr 10, 2014 | 07:00—08:30
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Conference paper
Pressures on Pensions
Apr 2014
Debate about the pension crises has centered on certain questions such as: Are greedy government workers bankrupting states? Arepension-slashing politicians backed by big money saving the day? Or do the budget problems of state and localgovernments have more to do with wasteful corporate subsidies than pensions? What are the real policy solutions to the pressures placed on pensions?”
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Conference paper
The Economics of Cyberwar
Apr 2014
Cyberwar is very much in the news these days. It is tempting to try to understand the economics of such an activity, if only qualitatively. What effort is required? What can such attacks accomplish? What does this say, if anything,about the likelihood of cyberwar?
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Cyber War, Cyber Space: National Security and Privacy in the Global Economy
Apr 10, 2014 | 12:45—02:15
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Innovation and Globalization: Playing Catch-up v. Pushing the Frontier
Apr 10, 2014 | 06:00—07:30
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Integration, Currency Unions, and Balance of Payments
Apr 10, 2014 | 09:00—10:45
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Explorations in New Economic Thinking
Apr 10, 2014 | 11:00—12:30
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Pressures on Pensions
Apr 10, 2014 | 07:00—08:30
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Conference paper
Profits Without Prosperity: How Stock Buybacks Manipulate the Market, and Leave Most Americans Worse Off
Apr 2014
Five years after the end of the Great Recession, corporate profits are high and the stock market is booming. Yet most Americans are not sharing in the apparent prosperity.
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Conference paper
Who should do R and who should do D?
Apr 2014
This article studies the reasons for the under-investment in research vs. development in the decentralized equilibrium and argues that this bias provides a micro-foundation for the government direct involvement in conducting applied research rather than just financing it.
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Human After All
PlenaryApr 10–12, 2014
The Institute for New Economic Thinking joined the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in holding its fifth Annual Conference from April 10 to April 12, 2014 in Toronto.
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Innovation & Financial Reform
Apr 9, 2014
Adair Turner at the Institute’s #HumanAfterAll conference in Toronto, CA (2014).
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Conference paper
The Persistence of a Reckless Banking System
Apr 2014
The fall of 2008 was scary. For most people, the aftermath of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy resembled a major earthquake with strong aftershocks. Official narratives have promoted the image of the crisis as a rare, unpreventable and unforeseen natural disaster, the “100-year flood.” Policymakers emphasize the extraordinary measures they have taken to prevent the system from collapsing and to support recovery since.
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Have We Repaired Financial Regulations since Lehman?
Apr 9, 2014 | 11:45—01:15
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Conference paper
Debt Restructuring versus Monetary Easing: The Eurozone Experiment
Mar 2014
Since the outbreak of the Greek debt crisis at the end of 2009, the Eurozone finds itself in an unprecedented debt crisis.
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Working Paper Series
Crisis and Recovery in the German Economy: The Real Lessons
Mar 2014
Owing to its strong dependence on exports, Germany was among the economies hit hardest by the financial crisis.
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Is Italy's New Government Just More of the Same?
Feb 22, 2014
A showdown has taken place within Italy’s governing coalition.
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Roiling India Politics Risks Economic Reforms
Jan 24, 2014
India’s economic leaders are determined to rein in skyrocketing inflation, but the country’s volatile political landscape may prevent reforms from taking hold.
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Winter School on Law and Finance
WorkshopJan 5–8, 2014
The Institute will host the Winter School on Law and Finance at Columbia University’s Global Center in Paris on January 6-9, 2014.
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Finance to Support Growth
Dec 12, 2013
What is most demoralizing to participants in the financial markets? Falling prices? Constant volatility? How about a vacuum of trust?
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Mazzucato and Kaletsky Debate U.K. Mortgage Plan on BBC
Nov 27, 2013
The Bank of England took the first step in putting the brakes on the surging property market as it scrapped the United Kingdom’s flagship initiative that encourages mortgage lending, introduced earlier this year by Treasury minster George Osborne.
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Economic Policy Must Address Excessive Private Sector Leverage
Nov 6, 2013
Adair Lord Turner, former Chairman of Great Britain’s Financial Services Authority and current Senior Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, will argue in a keynote address to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on Thursday that central banks must be equipped in future to address the dangers of excessive private sector leverage, using both pre-emptive interest rate policy and macro-prudential policy tools.
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America’s Debt-Ceiling Debacle
Oct 22, 2013
When Greece’s sovereign-debt crisis threatened the euro’s survival, U.S. officials called their European counterparts to express bewilderment at their inability to resolve the issue.
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What You Can Do to Protect Yourself Against a Totally Unnecessary U.S. Government Default
Oct 14, 2013
If Congress and the White House fail to raise the debt ceiling this week and the United States defaults on its debt, what can we expect and how can we protect ourselves against these events?
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What is Economic Success?
Oct 11, 2013
“You are now leaving the world as you know it.”
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Trade Deals Must Allow for Regulating Finance
Oct 2, 2013
World leaders who are gathering for the APEC summit next week had hoped to be signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The pact would bring together key Pacific-rim countries into a trading bloc that the United States hopes could counter China’s growing influence in the region.
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Current Account Rebalancing Since the Crisis
Sep 19, 2013
A look at the large role the trade deficit of the United States has played since the 1980s.
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The Financial World Five Years after Lehman Brothers
Sep 16, 2013
What have we learned about the American political economy from the crisis and its aftermath?
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Conference paper
The Two Innovation Economies: Follower and Frontier
Sep 2013
Can China lead the way on innovation?
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The Good Life The Challenge of Progress in China Today
ConferenceSep 7–8, 2013
Every nation faces the challenge of imagining what a good life means. Sound nutrition, shelter, health care, personal safety, social stability, security of savings, clean air and water, and the development of children are among the elements of what many envision as vital to a happy and healthy society.
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When Is the Time for Austerity?
Jul 26, 2013
Recent austerity policies have been guided by ideology rather than research. This column discusses research that reconciles disparate estimates of fiscal multipliers in the literature. It finds that common identification assumptions are problematic. Matching methods based on propensity scores show how contractionary austerity really is, especially in economies operating below potential.
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Why Austerity Theory is the Economist's Atomic Bomb
Jul 9, 2013
Economic theories are powerful things, to be used and misused. Those who write economic theory and do economic policy need to be aware of the consequences of what they are doing.
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Aziz Premji Summer School 2013
WorkshopJul 4–11, 2013
Between July 5th and 12th, the second annual summer school in development economics, jointly sponsored by Azim Premji University and the Institute for New Economic Thinking, was held in Bangalore, India.
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The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths
Jun 12, 2013
is the public sector really sclerotic and conservative in contrast with a dynamic and innovative private sector?
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Growth, Debt, and Past versus Future: A Visual Elaboration
Jun 5, 2013
How does debt influence growth?
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Helicopter money as a policy option
May 29, 2013
‘Helicopter money’ may in some circumstances be the only certain way to stimulate nominal demand
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Why Raising the Minimum Wage Makes Economic Sense
Apr 13, 2013
A minimum wage is a small minnow in an ocean of deficient aggregate demand
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Conference paper
Central Banks in Balance Sheet Recessions: A Search for Correct Response
Apr 2013
These are extraordinary times for central banks. Near zero interest rates and massive liquidity injections are still failing to bring life back to so many economies in the developed world.
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Conference paper
New Metrics for Economic Complexity: Measuring the Intangible Growth Potential of Countries
Apr 2013
In this paper we provide a summary and a guide to the literature for a new line of research which goes under the name of Economic Complexity and is partly performed incollaboration with INET.
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Conference paper
Economics and the Powerful: Faulty Analysis, Economic Advice, and the Imperatives of Power
Apr 2013
“Look! Up there in the sky! What is it? Is it a plane? Is it a bird?” No, it’s a distraction from the robbery that is taking place in broad daylight on the ground.
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Conference paper
The Future of Central Banking
Apr 2013
The exteriors of major central banks may be solid marble and doric columns, but, inside, monetary policy remains a work in progress.
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Economics and the Powerful: Faulty Analysis, Economic Advice and the Imperatives of Power
Apr 5, 2013 | 12:00—01:30
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Growth and Technological Change in Complex Systems
Apr 5, 2013 | 10:30—11:45
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The Future of Central Banking
Apr 5, 2013 | 02:30—04:30
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Conference paper
Poles Apart? Party Polarization and Industrial Structure in American Politics Now
Apr 2013
Only a few years ago, comparisons of American politics to opéra bouffe were not outrageously farfetched at least if you were not poor or sick.
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Conference paper
Austerity, Polarity and the Prospect of Regime Change: China
Apr 2013
Since the dawn of this millennium, and long before the current financial turmoil and the subsequent bitter pill of austerity therapy hit the Untied States and the European Union, the Chinese Communist Government has publicly recognized the monumental challenge of polarity.
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Conference paper
Assessing Development
Apr 2013
There are a number of possible purposes in assessing the level of economic development of a country or part of a country. The assessment may provide an incentive for better development, particularly if it can be compared meaningfully with assessments for other countries.
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Austerity, Polarization, and the Prospect of Social Disorder
Apr 5, 2013 | 06:50—08:20
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What is Development?
Apr 5, 2013 | 08:30—09:15
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Inequality in China, India and America: Causes and Consequences
Apr 5, 2013 | 05:15—06:45
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Conference paper
Domestic Rebalancing to Reduce Global Imbalances: The Role of Financial Market Measures
Apr 2013
“Taking advantage of the opportunity offered by the structural adjustments of the global economy…”The decisions on the four modernisations taken at the Third Plenum represented a radical change in Chinese domesticdevelopment strategy.
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Conference paper
Meritocracy Is a Good Thing
Apr 2013
Political meritocracy is the idea that a political system is designed with the aim of selecting political leaders with above average ability to make morally informed political judgments. That is, political meritocracy has two key components: (1) the political leaders have above average ability and virtue and (2) the selection mechanism is designed to choose such leaders.
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China in the World: Growth, Adjustment and Integration
Apr 4, 2013 | 11:45—01:15
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Capitalism and the Rule of Law
Apr 4, 2013 | 02:30—04:30
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Conference paper
Addressing the Crisis in the Euro Zone System
Apr 2013
The reason why the Euro zone crisis has dragged on for so long is that Europe’s leaders have focused too much on short-term measures to patch up the emergency of the moment, rather than formulating a comprehensive plan.
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Conference paper
Towards a New Monetary Constitution in Europe: The Proposal of the German Council of Economic Experts (GCEE)
Apr 2013
After the announcement of Mario Draghi, the ECB president, to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the integrity of the European Monetary Union (EMU) in July 2012 and the establishment of the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program in September 2012, the crisis of EMU is far from being resolved.
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Conference paper
Is Mercantilism Doomed to fail? China, Germany, and Japan and The Exhaustion of Debtor Countries
Apr 2013
Mercantilism, Accumulation of Foreign Exchange Reserves, and RMB Internationalization
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Conference paper
Surveillance, Regulation and Supervision -a solution for the euro?
Apr 2013
Regulation and supervision of banks and financial markets are now upgraded in the euro area. Surveillance of macroeconomic performance of all EU countries is also intensified.
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Conference paper
The European Tragedy: What Way Out?
Apr 2013
Europe can choose its musical accompaniment. In Berlin, 50 Cent’s All Things Fall Apart has just had its premiere. Or go back to Giuseppe Verdi, born two hundred years ago.
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The Euro Zone Currency System: Catalyst or Wrecking Ball of the European Union?
Apr 4, 2013 | 07:15—08:45
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The RMB and The Future of Asian Finance
Apr 4, 2013 | 05:15—06:45
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Conference paper
Renminbi Internationalization: Tempest in a Teapot?
Apr 2013
Internationalization of the renminbi is a stated goal of the Chinese government, its brief flirtation with Special Drawing Rights and an Asian Currency Unit notwithstanding. Chinese officials understand that a dollar-centric international monetary and financial system is a mixedblessing.
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Business Leaders Panel: The Future of the World and Asia's Role
Apr 4, 2013 | 04:00—05:00
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Changing of the Guard
PlenaryApr 4–7, 2013
The Institute for New Economic Thinking held its annual plenary conference in Hong Kong from April 4-7, 2013 at the InterContinental Hotel in Kowloon. The event discussed Asia’s emergence in the global economy and other core issues.
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Conference paper
Something for Everyone: Building Incentives for Innovation Ecosystems
Apr 2013
Healthy innovation economies are the main driver of prosperity in the 21st century. But the three players that have traditionally sponsored basic research and invention in those economies are no longer willing or able to perform that role.
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Growth Adjustment and Convergence in Asia: The Challenge Ahead?
Apr 3, 2013 | 08:20—09:15
The developed economies of Europe, North America, and Japan are facing tremendous challenges related to indebtedness and stagnation. How will the developing economies of Asia respond to this challenge as they reorient their growth strategies to meet the rising aspirations oftheir people?
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Innovation Systems
Apr 3, 2013 | 09:15—10:15
The Foundations of Economic Prosperity: The Lessons of Innovation Process and History
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Conference paper
Monetary and Financial Stability: Lessons from the Crisis and from classic economics texts
Apr 2013
My remarks today will be focused primarily on features of the developed world’s financial system which led to the crisis of 2008 and to the Great Recession that followed, from which we are only slowly and painfully emerging.
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Conference paper
Comments by William White on the Presentation by Lord Adair Turner
Apr 2013
In his recent lecture at the Cass Business School, Lord Turner noted that even mentioning the possibility of overt monetary financing was akin to breaking a taboo.
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Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Stability: Lessons of the Historical Experience with Fiat Money and the Implications for the Future
Apr 3, 2013 | 11:30—12:30
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Meeting New Challenges in China
Mar 27, 2013
Further system reforms will enable China to overcome middle-income trap and push forward social progress
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The Consequences of a Leaderless Economy
Mar 26, 2013
What happens when there’s no leader in the global economy?
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Russia to the Rescue of Cyprus?
Mar 20, 2013
There is a certain rich irony attached to the sight of corrupt Russian oligarchs now posing as liberal champions of the rule of law as they find themselves sucked into the maelstrom of Cyprus’s ongoing financial crisis.
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Global Inequality @Columbia
DiscussionFeb 21, 2013
The relatively new field of inequality studies is gaining increasing momentum as economic disparity grows throughout the world, in advanced countries as well as less developed ones—especially in the United States.
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Fixing finance: The missing piece in banking reform
Jan 10, 2013
Eric Beinhocker and Tony Dolphin argue that lasting reform to the financial sector will not be achieved without tackling the price rigging and anti-competitive behaviour that is rife in the industry.
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Azim Premji Winter School 2013
WorkshopJan 6–17, 2013
The Azim Premji University-Institute for Economic Thinking Advanced Graduate Workshop in Poverty, Development and Globalization is interested in identifying the complex global interactions that influence poverty and development as well as the development strategies that have proven successful in promoting equitable growth, promoting capabilities, and reducing poverty.