History

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.

INET interviews Luigi Pasinetti

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

The Institute is proud to welcome the revival of an indispensable resource for those seeking to understand the evolution of economics in context

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.

From 1958 onward, the back cover of Paul Samuelson’s bestselling textbook, Economics, showed a family-tree of economists. The diagram’s evolution, in particular its use of the term “mainstream economics,” reflected, and, I speculate, influenced how economists came to perceive the structure of their discipline.

I am pleased to announce that the History of Economic Thought Website is back. I am thankful for the assistance of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), which has supported its revival and made it possible.

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

Spanning centuries, this website concentrates information and resources on the history of economic thought for students, researchers and all those who are interested in learning about economics from a historical perspective.

The shift toward applied economics in the last 40 years is usually associated with the development of computers and datasets. Yet, the success of computer-based approaches is highly selective, and what computerization failed to change in economics is equally remarkable.

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.

McCloskey discusses the thesis of her recent trilogy, The Bourgeois Era, which holds that the driving force of economic growth in 17th and 18th century Europe was simply liberal ideas.

Does the technology revolution require a new social policy?

Capitalism will destroy itself, the former Greek finance minister warns, if economic calculation excludes human needs and ignores democratic verdicts

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.

How Gerald Friedman’s assessment of Bernie Sanders economic proposals prompted a rare public political spat among economists.

Axel Leijonhufvud showed economists a promising path forward. They should have taken it. Leijonhufvud passed away on May 5, 2022

Contrary to common belief, this shift is not so much caused by the refugee crisis, but rather by the historical disaster that followed the big financial crisis since 2007.

We have developed over a number of years and now make publicly available a new and unprecedented data resource for understanding levels of living, poverty, inequality and inclusivity of growth and development around the world.

The intra-EMU divergences are a feature of the system rather than just a bug.

European Union countries are facing an epic challenge of integrating more than 1 million refugees from conflict zones in the Middle East and beyond.

As the European Union Commission readies itself for a new round of budgetary recommendations, INET senior economist Orsola Costantini warns that that the debate over how those harsh fiscal constraints are to be determined is based on a formula that masks political choices as technocratic imperatives.

Democratic capitalism is an evolving system that responds to crises by radically transforming both economic relations and political institutions. The time for a new phase has come, regardless of whether “responsible” politicians are prepared to admit it.

Featuring sessions on Oil Shock and the Global Economy, Sovereign Wealth Funds, and the Political Economy of Oil.

This paper provides a careful and synthetic overview of his contributions as well as a reconstruction of Pasinetti’s philosophical approach to economics as a science meant to serve humanity.

What can we learn from the Vietnamese, Cuban, Rwandan, and Syrian refugees crisis?

Paying tribute to one of the world’s most distinguished economic historians.

Gerald Friedman responds to the Romers on the Sanders Plan.

Jamie Galbraith and I rarely agree. But we agree here.

The Romer/Romer letter to Professor Gerald Friedman marks a turning point. It concedes that there are indeed important issues at stake when evaluating the proposed economic policies of Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders. These issues go beyond the political debate and should be discussed seriously between and among professional economists.

Servaas Storm has conviction, yet his analysis throws the baby out with the bathwater.

More on substance, coherence, and relevance in the Eurozone debate.

This is a response to a critique by Paul Davidson of our 2013 book Keynes: Useful Economics for the World Economy and related work, where we describe, amongst other things, how the Swan diagram can be used to show how economies can use policy tools to achieve internal and external balance.

This paper provides critical comments on the Peter Temin - David Vines promotion of the basic Swan Diagram as (1) a policy tool to encourage any individual debtor nation experiencing balance of payment deficits to reduce its exchange rate in order to expand exports and reduce imports and (2) the Swan Diagram as a simple model for understanding Keynes’s General Theory for an Open Economy.

The world economy is just starting to recover from the most disastrous episode in the history of financial globalisation. Understanding what happened is essential.

Economic growth and rising prosperity does not happen at the moment of invention. Only an innovation policy aiming to maximise activities throughout the innovation cycle will succeed in capturing economic growth that enhance the welfare of all citizens.

Lessons Ignored From the 1930s

Join us for a reception at the ASSA conference in San Francisco

This research project creates a new database of international capital flows from the early 19th century, when London became the financial capital of the world, until 1931, when international capital markets collapsed.

This research project explores Chinese economic thought of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, with direct relevance to the present day, and in particular focuses on one specific thinker, Wang Yanan, and the intellectual debates he animated and in which he participated as a major theorist.

This research project investigates how economists sought to make their science more relevant to real-world issues and policy design from the mid-1960s on, by becoming “applied economists.”

This research project studies the innovation of mortgage-backed securities in the 18th century in order to understand the effects of securitization on financial and real markets.

This research project develops an intellectual biography of the Hungarian economist Tibor Scitovsky (1910-2002), who is known primarily for his path breaking 1976 book, The Joyless Economy.

Some Fundamental Keynesian and Post-Keynesian Insights, with an Analysis of Possible Mechanisms to Achieve a Sustained Recovery

A budget approach cloaked in the aura of science and technical jargon became a tool of manipulation.

Since Aristotle the question about the potential relationship between economic inequality and democratic changes has been studied and debated – but scientifically our ability as researchers to assess and understand how such complex social phenomena may be related is much more limited than recognised.

Patrick Honohan, Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, discusses the Irish banking crisis.

This paper applies Schein’s model of organizational culture to financial firms and their prudential regulators.

How might a reimagined American foreign policy both bolster the domestic economy and help build a 21st-century global economy that works for everyone?

In 2003, McCullough and Vinod wrote, “Research that cannot be replicated is not science, and cannot be trusted either as part of the profession’s accumulated body of knowledge or as a basis for policy.”(1)

Spain’s future path for economic policy will soon be decided.

Exploring inequality, gender, and the North-South divide.

How much does the standard theory of externalities and public goods really say?

I describe the American economy in the twenty-first century as a dual economy in the spirit of W. Arthur Lewis.

A gap between theory and reality has haunted economists.

We investigate the claim that the way in which debtor households service their debts matters for macroeconomic performance.

Throughout its first 10 years operation, the John Bates Clark medal was constantly challenged. Many young economists found it biased toward theory, and demanded the establishment of a distinct award for applied work.

The impact of the post-meltdown Federal Reserve policy of ultra-low interest rates and Quantitative Easing (QE) on income and wealth inequality has become an important policy and political issue.

A combination of leeway within the government and constitutional immunity during incumbency enables office holders to abuse their budget at will, which in turn creates a crisis of growth in Africa, relative to other parts of the world.

By integrating the history of industrial development in Britain and the United States with the ideas of leading economic thinkers, this essay demonstrates the absurdity of perfect competition as the ideal of economic efficiency.

This paper studies the role of credit in the business cycle, with a focus on private credit overhang.

This paper traces the evolution of the concept of the cyclically adjusted budget from the 1930s to the present.

In 1953, Oskar Morgenstern proposed to reform the eligibility criterion for fellows of the Econometric Society, in an attempt to foster empirical work.

The Institute extends its congratulations to Philip Lane, who has been named to succeed Patrick Honohan as the Irish central bank chief, and inherit his role on the council of the ECB.

This essay critically evaluates the benefits and costs of the dominant methodology in macroeconomics, the DSGE approach. Although the approach has led to great progress in some areas, it has also created biases and blind spots in the profession that hold back our understanding and our ability to govern the macroeconomy. There is great scope for progress in macroeconomics by judiciously pushing the boundaries of some of the methodological restrictions imposed by the DSGE approach.

Adair Turner discusses his new book, Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance.

John Kay shares findings from his new book, Other People’s Money, and his insights on changing the financial sector.

The World Bank’s global poverty estimates suffer from deep-seated problems arising from a single source, the lack of a standard for identifying who is poor and who is not that is consistent and meaningful.

Economists’ assumptions, even about seemingly “small” matters, make an enormous difference to global poverty estimates but their impact often goes unnoticed, and the choices made have been badly justified. We must stop pretending that the World Bank’s “$1 per day” estimates are at all reliable.