INET in the News

“Structural analysis to uncover global trends is what Goodhart and Pradhan’s book does. I’m not sure I completely recommend it, as it gets a little technical in spots, but I certainly recommend learning more about their analysis. (You can hear them interviewed in the podcast, “Economics & Beyond with Rob Johnson.”)” — William Watson

“Anyone with a pulse knows that in the US today the system is rigged in favour of the wealthy and powerful. One particularly illuminating paper published this month by the Institute for New Economic Thinking quantifies the problem. Building on a persuasive 2014 data set, it shows that when opinion shifts among the wealthiest top 10 per cent of the US population, changes in policy become far more likely. Using AI and machine learning, INET academics Shawn McGuire and Charles Delahunt delved deep into the data. They found that considering the opinions of anyone outside that top 10 per cent was a far less accurate predictor of what happened to government policy. The numbers showed that: “not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy at all”.” — Rana Foroohar, The Financial Times

“A new international analysis by the Institute for New Economic Thinking found countries such as South Korea and New Zealand that focused on lockdowns early on in the pandemic, rather than preserving their economies, have gained control over the virus and are now seeing their economies grow, in contrast with the dire economic circumstances currently in the U.S.” — Mike Lugwig, Truthout

“Former Obama-era OSHA Director Dr. David Michaels and Harvard Medical School professor Gregory Wagner also released a white paper outlining immediate steps that OSHA could take to stop the spread of COVID in the workplace. The steps range from issuing an emergency workplace standard to increasing fines to involving community groups in helping target non-compliant employers to use the power of OSHA’s public affairs to publicly shame corporations that won’t comply with COVID regulations. Go to the Institute for New Economic Thinking to check out their 11-part proposal to fight COVID in the workplace under a Biden Administration” — Mike Elk

“Her omission understates drug spending by almost one-third, or about $145 billion. She claimed most drugs are developed in pharmaceutical firms, but funding from the National Institutes of Health contributed to all 356 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2019. Drug corporations take a handoff after the most risky research is done and a drug shows promise.” — David Mitchell

Robert Johnson, the head of the progressive Institute for New Economic Thinking, calls the Biden task force a “real good group.” But he then asked: “What power will they really have … after the power of money bends the best designs in a self-interested direction?”

“Dina Srinivasan, a fellow with the Thurman Project at Yale University, noted how Google’s dominance in both search and display advertising are interrelated. Google’s power in the search market is not irrelevant to the advertising business, she noted in a recent academic paper.” — Ronan Shields

“The role of money in US politics is fundamental. A recent updating of earlier research, released by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, confirms that the views of the top decile of the population largely determine policy. The inevitable frustrations of the rest give the parties their passionate voting blocs.” — Martin Wolf

“Their new working paper, just published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking in New York, gives a rigorously technical analysis of what these tools reveal, and the Institute’s research director, Thomas Ferguson, has helpfully fashioned an introduction to — and a historical context for — the McGuire-Delahunt analysis that lay readers will find easily accessible. Ferguson, himself a pioneer in social science research on political decision making, points out that “the idea that public opinion powers at least the broad direction of public policy in formally democratic countries like the United States has been an article of faith in both political science and public economics for generations.” —Sam Pizzigati

“Conveniently for present purposes, Naked Capitalism posted a piece by political scientist Thomas Ferguson on the determinants of political decision making— that is, on the ‘product’ that elected representatives produce. The punchline: ‘money,’ as defined by the interests of corporate executives and oligarchs, is the overwhelming determinant of ‘political’ outcomes. Advancing the public will— the liberal explanation; or the public interest, the explanation offered for representative democracy, have no bearing. The longstanding practice of fitting political outcomes into these theoretical frames to ‘explain’ public policies is scientific malpractice given Mr. Ferguson’s findings.” —- Rob Urie

“It looks as if Joe Biden will win a very tight electoral college victory against arguably the worst president in history in the midst of a deadly pandemic and crippled economy the incumbent has bungled disastrously. How could this election even be close? ROB JOHNSON, Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), and I talk about how we got here and what it’s going to take to move forward. As long as both parties depend on Wall Street and the 1% for funding, our real challenges - climate change, restoring the middle class, healthcare, systemic racism, etc.- will never truly be dealt with.” —- Terrence McNally

William Lazonick, president of the Academic-Industry Research Network and a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, who has devoted much of his research to the topic of buybacks, has written that the rule change “in effect gave corporations license to use open-market repurchases to manipulate the market.” … In an interview, Lazonick told Retail Dive, “These distributions to shareholders, particularly buybacks on top of dividends, are at the expense of keeping people employed, rewarding them for the work they’ve done, and investing in new products and processes.”

“Third, U.S. taxpayers foot a huge portion of the bill for basic science leading to new drugs. The National Institutes of Health is the single largest source of biomedical research in the world. In fact, NIH funding contributed to research associated with every single new drug approved by the FDA from 2010-2019, totaling $230 billion according to a recent report.”

“Executives have an interest in getting the stock price up and price gouging customers is one way they can do this,” said William Lazonick, professor emeritus of economics at University of Massachusetts and co-founder of the Academic-Industry Research Network. While many drug companies argue that they use their vast profits to fund ongoing pharmaceutical innovation, Lazonick said, “we’ve shown that most of these companies don’t do that.” Instead, the soaring prices fuel soaring stock prices and executive pay, which is often based largely on that price.” — INET Grantee William Lazonick

“Alberto Baccini, an economist at the University of Siena in Italy, says that people assessing research should be aware that the process can have an influence on academics’ behavior. ‘For each research assessment, you can find some behavior that changes in a way that is not desirable for society,’ he says. A 2019 study conducted by Baccini and colleagues found that researchers in Italy have been citing their own work or that authored by other researchers based at Italian institutions more frequently in response to a 2010 policy that is used to make decisions on promotions based on the number of citations researchers accumulate.” — INET Grantee Alberto Baccini