What is the purpose of America’s universities today?

One country poses an existential threat to Europe – and it is not Greece, Italy or Spain.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick is growing frustrated with the lack of urgency on the part of Europe’s leaders in responding to the financial crisis in the euro zone.

Leijonhufvud has questioned the flawed fundamentals of economics. And he has explored the spread of contagion in undermining the web of contracts that are the basis for capitalism.

Have you ever heard the old adage about the danger of allowing foxes to guard the henhouse? Apparently the New York Fed hasn’t.

“Spain is now heading down the same path that bankrupted Ireland,” INET grantee Stephen Kinsella of the University of Limerick and Mark Blyth of Brown University warn on the Harvard Business Review’s blog.

“Spain is now heading down the same path that bankrupted Ireland,” INET grantee Stephen Kinsella of the University of Limerick and Mark Blyth of Brown University warn on the Harvard Business Review’s blog.

What is the role of Germany in Europe?

Germany should not pay for the bankruptcy of Europe, at least according Hans-Werner Sinn, head of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.

Chicago School founder Frank H. Knight had some prescient observations in the early 20th century.

Today the world lost one of its leading economic lights, as Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom passed away at the age of 78.

The refrain for some time now has been that the economy will decide the upcoming U.S. election. But Joe Stiglitz offers some much needed focus to this discussion.

“A chronic trend of this sort would indicate that the yuan was now overvalued versus the dollar,”

It’s crunch time in Europe.

Inequality isn’t just a problem for the 99%.

FT Alphaville uses a Lord of the Rings metaphor to describe the state of global currencies.

Stephen Kinsella has some advice for economists: “Sometimes, all you need is a nutter in a balloon to change your perspective. And perspective is everything.”

If proof were needed of the maxim that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the economic crisis in Europe provides it

Will China correct this imbalance by allowing the RMB to appreciate? Or will it dump dollars onto forex markets?

INET Executive Director Robert Johnson delivered a keynote address at the OECD Forum in Paristoday.

What’s wrong with our economic recovery?

Who does the economist serve: powerful interests or society?

Mathematician Michael Edesess has a dose of reality for economists.

Attendees at the book party were treated to an assortment of wine, sushi, and intriguing conversation on the rooftop of Schiffrin’s parents’ Upper West Side apartment.

“While it’s incredibly difficult to get a regulatory reform passed, it’s far easier – and more profitable to politicians – to kill it.

Being the smartest guys in the room doesn’t prevent you from making bad decisions.

Human beings aren’t mechanical. And mechanistic economic theories can’t account for uncertainty or political instability and individual creativity.

The Washington Consensus is dead.

New economic thinking is no passing fad. The movement for new economic thinking is here to stay - with broad-based, worldwide support from undergraduate and graduate students as well as both young and established professors and Nobel laureates.

how economics students have begun to push back against the stale ideas that were proven wrong during the recent financial crisis.

The Huffington Post spotlights the INET financial instability video, produced by Four Corners Media, accompanied by an extensive written introduction fromINET Executive Director Robert Johnson.

Mark Thoma has picked up on a significant aspect of this year’s INET annual conference

The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) today announced a significant infusion of funding that over the coming years will make the organization self-sustaining and enable INET to dramatically expand its global reach, scale, and scope.

Read how did the second day of the Berlin conference go

Soros’s remarks about the 2008 crash

Mark Thoma offers a thorough, nuanced take on Roman Frydman’s theory of Imperfect Knowledge Economics (IKE) and George Soros’s ideas on the inability of people to predict the outcomes of financial and social change, which Soros calls “fallibility” and “reflexivity.”

INET’s Berlin Conference, “Paradigm Lost: Rethinking Economics and Politics,” opened yesterday and continues to receive enthusiastic coverage from both local and international press.

Read how did the day of the Berlin conference go

A new interdisciplinary research center to explore and challenge conventional economic thinking has been created by the Oxford Martin School in collaboration with the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

Registration is now open for YSI Commons, at INET’s Plenary Conference, Berlin April 12-15.

We reserved 25 slots, but we got 563 applications. Something had to be done.

Is China’s manufacturing sector in decline?

The G20 must address the problem of sovereign debt.

Debt: The First 5000 Years

In Europe and the United States, political and economic breakdowns have become untenable.

A new angle on the link between property rights and economic growth

What can be done to repair economics so economists can play a productive role in helping society?

We are pleased to announce the program of INET’s annual plenary conference in Berlin.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking will host its third annual plenary conference in Berlin fromApril 12 to 14, 2012.

INET Advisors Help Answer

INET Founding Sponsor George Soros recently had a commentary piece published in the FT, where he argued against Germany’s proposed solution to the “euro crisis.”

What is missing from the Goodhart prescriptions for European fiscal governance is a more robust taxing authority, and a new Europe-wide banking and financial sector framework ought to be adopted.

Goodhart brings back on the table the 2% minimalist federal fiscal counterpart to monetary union: “As has been exemplified in the recent crisis, it is problematical to try to issue money without the power to support that via taxation. Equally without access to money (notably via taxes), the power to undertake counter-cyclical, or cross-country, stabilisation is limited. So, the second proposal is to revisit the exercise that was done, some twenty years ago, to assess what fiscal changes might be needed to accompany a single currency.”

The Globe and Mail published a long piece about the dismal science, covering a lot of ground from moral philosophy to rational expectations, from Adam Smith to this year’s Nobel laureate Thomas Sargent, from the Post-Autistic Economics movement to the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Excerpts:

INET presents you a paper that deals with the relationship between economics and the world we live in. John Kay spells out methodological critiques of economic theory in general, and of DSGE models and rational expectations in particular. The paper builds on two articles that Kay, Fellow at St. John’s College of Oxford University and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, recently published in the Financial Times (scroll down to find the links). It is concerned with the relation of quantitative models to the world in which we live, and with evergreens such as the implications of unrealistic assumptions in economic theory. Highly recommended reading. INET forwarded Kay’s paper to a handful economists and invited them to respond. In the following days, we are going to publish direct responses to the paper by a handful of prominent economists. Follow the INET Blog and stay tuned to what is going to be a healthy discussion.

A story about the rise of the modern Think Tank and how in a very strange way they have made thinking impossible.

Reminder

The Institute for New Economic Thinking and The Centre for International Governance Innovation are calling for new research proposals in areas of vital importance to the field of economics for the Fall 2011 grants cycle.

INET and CIGI Award Spring 2011 Grants: The grants offer a diversity of approaches and global perspectives that target critical issues that have been neglected by conventional economic analysis.

Anatole Kaletsky explains the recent global crisis in sweeping historical context, and points out the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity now opening up to economists - particularly the younger generation.

Deficit Fantasies in the Great Recession

What is the right way to achieve change?

It’s day two of INET’s Conference in Bretton Woods and a new energy has filled the halls and sessions with the arrival of nearly thirty student attendees.

There’s a good column at voxeu.org by INET Advisory Board Member Barry Eichengreen, where he introduces his new book, titled Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System.

In a recent piece in the Financial Times, George Soros makes the case that, to avoid a bleak future for the euro and the European Union in general, Europe should take steps to recapitalize banks before bailing out member states. In the piece, Soros discusses issues that INET is very interested in exploring further, such as the idea that flaws in macroeconomic theory helped lead to the financial crisis of 2008.

Can the Economy be Saved? The Los Angeles Times recently asked a number of economic experts about whether they thought the post-financial crisis economy can be saved, and if so, how.

Barry Eichengreen, UC Berkeley professor of economics and recent recipient of an INET grant to launch an economic history laboratory at Berkeley, has recently published an article over at Project Syndicate about the similarities between post-WWII Britain and the present day United States.

Will public deficit reduction encourage private sector growth, or undermine a needed stimulus to recovery & lead to Japan-style stagnation?

What does America need?

In a recent column in the Huffington Post, INET advisory board member Jeffrey Sachs made the case that the economic debate in Washington has become “stale” and politicized - and needs to be reframed. This is poignantly relevant to INET, as we begin to make headway on helping to create a new economic paradigm.

The New York Times has now pushed to the front page of today’s paper an issue of real relevance to INET: how new web tools are beginning to upend traditional peer review in academia.

Joseph Stiglitz, noted economist, Nobel Laureate and Institute advisor, had a letter published in the Financial Times yesterday. In it, he noted the need for new ways of thinking about economics, and how this can be achieved.

What is the relationship between debt and growth rates?

Is China growing too fast?

On July 22nd, Richard Koo, the chief economist from Nomura Research Institute, testified before Congress’ Committee on Financial Services. The subject: what the U.S. can do to avoid sinking into a depression.