History

“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?

A discussion of new economic thinking over the years at Cambridge, and its recent contributions via the Cambridge-INET Institute

Adam Smith and his contemporaries were key figures of the Scottish enlightenment. How much of his real thought survives in modern economics, and has something important been lost?

Given that this is a panel on that quintessential Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith, I can think of no better way to begin my remarks than to invoke that most enlightened of modern economists, Kenneth Boulding, who in 1971 penned the delightful essay, “After Samuelson, Who Needs Adam Smith?” 

When priests and princes lost their monopoly over the big questions of human existence over the course of the Enlightenment, philosophers, poets, and ordinary people struggled to find out the answers on their own. 

Adam Smith’s modern fame as the founding father of economics has, until relatively recently, obscured the fact that he saw himself as a moral philosopher.

The road towards a decent society; lessons from classical political economy

Rob Johnson kicks off INET’s “Reawakening” conference with his take on how economists can win back the trust of a world that has rejected experts

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.

What can today’s economists learn from the 18th century Scottish thinkers who grappled with societal and economic change?

Animal rights, child welfare, social equality are all a direct legacy of the “cult of feeling” 

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

The YSI Latin America Working Group is hosting a workshop at the United Nations ECLAC Summer School on Latin American economies.

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”

McCloskey discusses her career, critiques of economics, and offers advice for young economists.

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.

The Institute of New Economic Thinking Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI) Working Group on the History of Economic Thought is organizing a YSI Workshop on Methods in the History of Economic Thought on 17 May in Antwerp, Belgium, ahead of the Annual ESHET Conference.

The Institute of New Economic Thinking Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI) Working Group on the History of Economic Thought is organizing a YSI Workshop on Institutions and Communities in the History of Economic Thought on 6 June in Madrid, Spain, ahead of the Annual ESHET Conference.

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.

The Economic History Working Group and the Financial Stability Working Group are organizing a two day seminar on May, 12th-13th in New York. The theme for the will be “Institutional responses to financial crises 1870 to 2017”.

The History Project will hold its fifth conference on May 11-12, 2017 at the University of Cambridge. The conference will be concerned with the economic history of India, particularly in relation to exchanges across frontiers, the history of the law, and the history of economic thought.

A breakup of the Euro will be too difficult and costly for member 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.

The reaction to repressive political conditions that prevailed in Brazil during the 1970s helped to produce a commitment to diversity and tolerance among Brazilian economists.

Workshop of the YSI Africa Working Group 

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.

In the age of Adam Smith, an economics that masqueraded as natural science and excluded the human condition actually suited the interests of the landed and the wealthy

Eurocentric modernism has unhinged us from our human nature, argues Rajani Kanth in his new book

Widespread criticism of elites and their ‘experts ’ raises questions about how economists should perceive their role, and what role societies should give them. We invited four scholars to start an online conversation by sharing their perspectives 

Widespread criticism of elites and their ‘experts ’ raises questions about how economists should perceive their role, and what role societies should give them. We invited four scholars to start an online conversation by sharing their perspectives 

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.