Updates

  1. INET in the News in India (Feb 2024)

    Feb 14, 2024

    The media coverage of the INET team’s February 2024 visit to India. Prof. Michael Spence, Chair of the Commission on Global Economic Transformation (CGET), along with INET Governing Board Chair Dr. Rohinton Medhora, and INET President Dr. Rob Johnson, took part in this visit.

  2. Business Insider quotes and cites Lazonick’s INET-funded research on Boeing’s stock buybacks.

    Feb 12, 2024

    Business Insider quotes and cites William Lazonick’s INET-funded research on Boeing’s stock buybacks. Cross-posted in MSN, Yahoo Finance, Business News, AOL, News Break, Star News, and Web Today.

  3. The Economic Times quotes Rob Johnson’s presentation at the Global Business Summit

    Feb 12, 2024

    The Economic Times quotes Rob Johnson’s presentation at the Global Business Summit in India. Cross posted in Pune Media and BM Business News

  4. Times Now News features and quotes Rob Johnson’s presentation at the Global Business Summit

    Feb 12, 2024

    Times Now News features and quotes Rob Johnson’s presentation at the Global Business Summit in India.

  5. The White House Cites INET's Working Paper on Government Funding of Pharma R&D

    Dec 8, 2023

    The White House cited Ledley’s INET working paper on the NIH’s seed funding of FDA approved pharmaceuticals in their fact sheet on new actions to lower health care and prescription drug costs.

  6. INET Welcomes Jamie Daves as its Newest Governing Board Member

    Dec 4, 2023

    New INET Governing Board Member Announcement

  7. Lynn Parramore's Interview with Jim Chanos is Featured in a Dozen Publications

    Nov 13, 2023

    Lynn Parramore’s INET interview with Chanos is suggested reading in the FT, and has been cross-posted or summarized in the following media outlets: Naked Capitalism, MSN, Yahoo, Business Insider, AOL, Markets Insider, Latest Finance, Trade for Profit, Tech Telegraph, Best Stocks, Motor Mouth, Trading View India, Trading View, Benzinga, Hataf News, Forex TV, Business News and WN.

  8. Washington Monthly Recognizes Rob Johnson and INET’s Role in the Shift that is Underway in the Economy

    Oct 30, 2023

    Washington Monthly

  9. The Atlantic Cites Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt’s INET Working Paper on Private Equity in Healthcare

    Oct 29, 2023

    The Atlantic

  10. INET congratulates Dr. Claudia Goldin

    Oct 13, 2023

    We heartily congratulate her on receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics.

  11. INET Welcomes Dr. Neva Goodwin as its Newest Governing Board Member

    Sep 25, 2023

    New INET Governing Board Member Announcement

  12. Bentley University Study Shows NIH Investment in New Drug Approvals Is Comparable to Investment by Pharmaceutical Industry

    Apr 28, 2023

    INET-funded study: Government provides early investment in pharmaceutical innovation

  13. IJPE Article Available Now: The Roots of Right-Wing Populism - Donald Trump in 2016

    Apr 3, 2023

    Ferguson et al.’s revised INET working paper on Trump and the 2016 election is temporarily available on open access from the International Journal of Political Economy.

  14. Herman Daly (1938-2022)

    Nov 3, 2022

    The economist Herman Daly passed away on October 28, 2022. Read one of the last interviews he gave.

  15. INET Congratulates the Winners of the 2022 Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

    Oct 11, 2022

    Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, and Philip Dybvig were honored for their work on financial instability

  16. Rohinton Medhora Appointed INET Board Chair

    Oct 4, 2022

    Medhora has served on INET’s Board since 2012 and is a distinguished fellow and former president of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

  17. Michael Grubb on BBC Panorama

    Sep 5, 2022

    Michael Grubb appears on BBC Panorama to discuss his INET research on European energy markets

  18. Rob Johnson on Background Briefing with Ian Masters

    Jul 20, 2022

    Rob Johnson joins Background Briefing with Ian Masters to discuss public concern about inflation

  19. INET Research on Pharma in The American Prospect

    Jun 28, 2022

    Ekaterina Cleary, Matthew Jackson and Fred Ledley’s INET research on government innovation in pharmaceuticals was cited in The American Prospect

  20. Michael Greenberger in Salon

    Jun 17, 2022

    Michael Greenberg’s INET working paper on derivatives regulation is featured in Salon

  21. Moritz Schularick in The Economist

    May 13, 2022

    INET Fellow Moritz Schularick writes in The Economist that Germany should immediately cut off Russain gas

  22. Lynn Parramore on The Healthcare Policy Podcast

    May 5, 2022

    Lynn Parramore discusses her INET article on neoliberalism and mental health with The Healthcare Policy Podcast

  23. Lynn Parramore's Article Cited in The New Republic

    Apr 20, 2022

    Lynn Parramore’s INET article is cited in The New Republic

  24. Rob Johnson Joins WDET's "Tracked and Traced"

    Mar 9, 2022

    Rob Johnson discusses surveillance capitalism

  25. William Lazonick's INET-Funded Research Featured in The Daily Poster

    Mar 3, 2022

    The Daily Poster cites INET research on stock buybacks

  26. Review of Mangee's INET-CUP Book in Seeking Alpha

    Feb 23, 2022

    Nicholas Mangee, associate professor of finance in the Parker College of Business at Georgia Southern University, begins How Novelty and Narratives Drive the Stock Market with a statement that encompasses the problem he tackles and the compelling reason for investor interest in the new-style thinking that addresses it. This detailed stock market study attempts to extend Nobel Prize-winner Robert Shiller’s development of narrative economics, albeit Mangee’s focus is on novelty information embedded in textual news narratives. Using a set of text-based indices to capture the uncertainty and ambiguity in unscheduled news, Mangee measures the impact of news narratives on equity behavior.

  27. William Lazonick's INET-Funded Research Is Cited in Quartz

    Feb 17, 2022

    “What is the motivation for tax avoidance? To maximize profits and juice the stock price, of course. A research team led by William Lazonick at the University of Massachusetts reports in Harvard Business Review that from 2009 to 2019, S&P 500 companies spent over 90% of net income on buybacks and dividends, with the highest levels achieved after the 2017 tax cuts, in 2018 and 2019. Taking on corporate debt to finance share repurchases has become commonplace. Never mind that share buybacks deplete corporate treasuries of cash to weather setbacks and to fund productive investment in labor and R&D.”

  28. OSF and INET Complete 12 Year Collaboration on New Economic Thinking

    Jan 5, 2022

    The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and the Open Society Foundations (OSF) announced that OSF has made a gift of $23.5 million to INET. The grant marks the completion of the organizations’ 12-year collaboration.

  29. William Lazonick’s INET funded research is cited in the American Prospect.

    Oct 26, 2021

    “Nobody but those top corporate executives was really paying attention to share buybacks until the middle of the last decade, when University of Massachusetts economist William Lazonick wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review documenting the surprising and depressing fact that the companies that had belonged to the Fortune 500 during the previous decade had spent so much on share buybacks and dividends that the total was either equal to or actually exceeded their profits.”

  30. INET in the News: Lynn Parramore’s INET Interview with Jim Chanos is cited by The New York Times

    Oct 22, 2021

    Paul Krugman links to INET article

  31. Thomas Ferguson is quoted in Truthout's interview with Chomsky

    Jun 17, 2021

    “The most recent study, using sophisticated AI techniques, dispels “notions that anyone’s opinion about public policy outside of the top 10 percent of affluent Americans independently helps to explain policy.” Thomas Ferguson, the leading academic scholar of the power of the “tools and tyrants” of government, concludes: “Knowing the policy area, the preferences of the top 10 percent, and the views of a handful of interest groups suffice to explain policy changes with impressive accuracy.” — Jared Rodriguez, Truthout

  32. Rob Johnson, Pia Malaney, and other INET scholars have signed a letter in the FT in response to a call for a return to austerity

    Jun 15, 2021

    “Moreover, too little government spending can increase company bankruptcies and lead to less investment in research and development, hurting the supply side of our economies — potentially exacerbating inflationary pressures. The EU has gone through a decade of demand stagnation, performing well below its productive potential. Inflationary forces of the 1970s are no longer intact, not least because of declining labour bargaining power, changing demographics, high inequality and private debt overhang. Without concerted fiscal expansion to scale-up investment and protect the vulnerable, aggregate demand will remain low and standards of living will stagnate. Instead of fetishising fiscal discipline, we should prioritise more important social, economic and environmental outcomes — like creating well-paid green jobs, lifting millions out of poverty and implementing green infrastructure projects.” — From Frank van Lerven and others, Financial Times

  33. Thomas Ferguson's research is cited in Noam Chomsky's interview with Jacobin

    Jun 11, 2021

    “Well, one place to look always is: “Where’s the money? Who funds Congress?” Actually, there’s a very fine, careful study of this by the leading scholar who deals with funding issues and politics, Thomas Ferguson. He and his colleagues did a study in which they investigated a simple question: “What’s the correlation over many years between campaign funding and electability to Congress?” The correlation is almost a straight line. That’s the kind of close correlation that you rarely get in the social sciences: greater the funding, higher the electability.” — Noam Chomsky in an interview with Jacobin

  34. Rob Johnson and other commissioners sign a public letter on the importance of coming together to fight climate change

    Jun 8, 2021

    “Overcoming the COVID-19 crisis and ensuring a rapid and equitable economic recovery are only two of the challenges we must meet in 2021. This year will also be a crucial one for achieving the goal of net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by mid-century.” — Project Syndicate

  35. Weil and Goldman’s INET working paper is summarized in Law 360

    Jun 7, 2021

    “Last year, Weil and his former top adviser, Tanya Goldman, spoke with Law360 about their “concentric circles” model, laid out in a recent working paper published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking. They propose a three-tiered system that starts with a set of core rights linked to all types of work, like basic protections against unsafe conditions, discrimination and harassment, and nonpayment. The second tier of rights includes things like collective bargaining, and access to workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance, which businesses would have to provide unless they could affirmatively prove that their workers aren’t employees. The outermost tier of rights seeks to make benefits portable for workers facing uncertainty.” — Mike LaSusa, Law 360

  36. Rob and Spence’s session at the Trento Festival is quoted in L’Adigetto

    Jun 7, 2021

    “What is the real meaning of the return of the state in a world that after the pandemic starts a boom in the technology sector with the advantages and risks that this entails? The response of the Nobel laureate in economics Michael Spence during the discussion with Robert Johnson, president of Inet (Institute for New Economic Thinking) was clear: “I believe that the return of the Statto means many things. The state is very important for social protection, to remedy the failures of the market. There will be changes in the models of globalization but people think about the state and not about globalization. And the state must be able to respond to citizens’ expectations.” And in the face of what Johnson called “growing political despair” ( even as Biden has made progress in restoring confidence in citizens after the inequalities caused by the pandemic ), a new political class is needed.” -L’Adigetto

  37. Melissa Hathaway discussed her INET article on NPR

    Jun 3, 2021

    Melissa Hathaway joined NPR to discuss cybersecurity and the growing threat of ransomware attacks.

  38. Thomas Ferguson's research is cited in Nonprofit Quarterly

    Jun 3, 2021

    “How talented is the right? Maybe not so much. The late Yale political scientist Charles Lindblom, author of the 1977 book Politics and Markets (and onetime American Political Science Association president), would have told Giridharadas that in a capitalist economy, business elites enjoy a “privileged” position. This position does not always align with party, but it alters the field of play. Lindblom’s position is backed by others. Thomas Ferguson wrote about the investment theory of politics in 1990s. In the past decade, Ben Page of Northwestern has covered similar ground.” — Steve Dubb, Nonprofit Quarterly

  39. Lynn Parramore appeared on The Zero Hour to discuss her latest INET articles

    Jun 3, 2021

    “It’s interesting he [Josephus Daniels] may not have been the most die-hard racist, but he just saw that racism is how you win elections. I think we see echoes of that today. I think it’s also notable to recall that this is the only successful insurrection on U.S soil in U.S history. People started finding out a little bit about it when the capital siege occurred because people started asking, “has an insurrection ever happened?” Actually the answer is yes, and it would be Wilmington. It’s the only time this has ever happened to a municipal government and it was the state that allowed this to happen, allowed these militias to run amok. It was the state that was really responsible at the end of the day for this violence. And there have never been any reparations of any kind even though there are people living in Wilmington today who can who can say, “my ancestor owned this plot of land that was taken.” They’ve never had any reparations. If it was a white person that could prove that, I think we would be talking about justice. But it mirrors the Tulsa situation, it was the success of black people that was the problem. Not this idea of inferiority which had been the racial mythology. it was actually the fact that black people had persevered and were very successful even in the face of all of this oppression.” ….It’s just happened time and time again in Wilmington, Tulsa, Detroit, elsewhere, that the American dream has just been incredibly elusive for black Americans through absolutely no fault of their own. What I think is pretty clearly structural racism.”— Lynn Parramore

  40. Arjun Jayadev joined the T20 Forum on Social Cohesion

    May 24, 2021

    “Now it’s maybe particularly an Indian phenomenon because of the strong lockdown we had last year, but I think across the world what we’re seeing in fact is that people are trapped in poverty because of the lack of employment opportunities, lack of income support, they’re increase in indebtedness, and their earnings remain depressed. So in that sense the news is extremely bad. Also, we’re seeing huge dislocations in the labor market itself. People who finally came into the formal labor force and had some sort of formal protections are now becoming informalized or worse as is the case with women in India, just leaving the labor force. When one asks for example social cohesion what can one say –it is devastating for any kind of view of an inclusive growth process where we’re trying to encourage many people into gainful employment and to actually see their welfare rise. Of course, financial vulnerabilities have risen many fold as a result of that. In addition, one ought to underline that this thing isn’t going away. Right now in India we’re in the second wave which is quite devastating. There are the very simple and awful thoughts of just basic mortality. What it’s going to do to you know many people’s indebtedness, their ability to earn incomes because this is not limited in India for example only to let’s say the relatively elderly but across the population distribution. I think we’re just at the beginning of trying to of seeing what it will do for social cohesion or destruction more likely. I think we had a mild wave last year and what we’re going to see this year as a result… we have yet to see but it will be bad.” — Arjun Jayadev

  41. Melissa Hathaway’s INET article is cited in Bloomberg

    May 24, 2021

    “Ransomware demands have increased exponentially in the last six months, according to Melissa Hathaway, president of Hathaway Global Strategies and a former cybersecurity adviser to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The average ransom demand is now between $50 million and $70 million, Hathaway said. While those demands are often negotiated down, she said companies are frequently paying ransoms in the tens of millions of dollars, in part because cyber insurance policies cover some or all of the cost. She estimated that the average payment is between $10 million and $15 million.” — Kartikay Mehrotra and William Turton, Bloomberg

  42. David Michaels Michael’s INET funded research is featured in SciTech Daily, Focus Technica, Medical Xpress, & Scienmag

    May 24, 2021

    “This survey gives a voice to US health care workers who have been on the frontlines of COVID-19,” David Michaels, a professor of environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University and former administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said. “Health care workers have valuable first-hand knowledge about this pandemic and this report offers recommendations that could help keep the U.S. on a steady course now and in the future.” …. Michaels and Melissa Perry, a professor and chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, provided guidance in producing the report. The McElhattan Foundation and the Institute for New Economic Thinking provided financial support for the survey and the report.” — George Washington University

  43. Ledley, Cleary & Jackson’s INET working paper is cited in Missoulian

    May 19, 2021

    “But COVID vaccines are by no means unique — most medicines developed and approved in the United States involve taxpayer investment. Between 2010 and 2019, every single new medicine approved by the Food and Drug Administration included taxpayer-funded research through NIH. Drug companies patent the drugs we pay to develop and then charge us exorbitant prices for them that increase every year — sometimes twice a year.” — Terry Minow, Missoulian

  44. Melissa Hathaway’s INET article is featured in Inside Cybersecurity

    May 19, 2021

    “[T]he U.S. Department of Justice should determine and make clear that paying a ransom is illegal,” Hathaway said in an article posted May 13 by the Institute for New Economic Thinking. “This step would likely force organizations to further invest in their security and ability to withstand and recover from an incident (i.e., increase their resilience). Categorizing ransom payment as an illegal activity would also clearly remove coverage for these types of payments from insurance policies,” Hathaway wrote.” — Charlie Mitchell, Inside Cybersecurity

  45. INET Working Paper on the consolidation of the dairy industry is cited in Homeland Security Today

    May 17, 2021

    “Larger dairy farms inevitably mean a system less geographically dispersed, larger environmental challenges with farm waste, and a less resilient system. The Institute for New Economic Thinking detailed these impacts in a recent report on the pandemic’s effects on dairy farmers, Spilt Milk: COVID-19 and the Dangers of Dairy Industry Consolidation: “The COVID-19 pandemic led to the collapse in commercial demand as restaurants, caterers, schools and other institutional customers were forced to close. Dairy plants serving supermarkets and grocery stores were already operating at close to full capacity when the coronavirus struck. Capital equipment specialized to produce for commercial customers were incapable of producing for consumers served by supermarkets or food banks. Some farmers had no choice but to dump milk.”[9] For the smaller dairy farmers, international (primarily Canadian) competition and price fluctuations are daily economic challenges.” — Charles Luke, Homeland Security Today … [9] Eileen Appelbaum and Jared Gaby-Biegle, “Spilt Milk: COVID-19 and the Dangers of Dairy Industry Consolidation,” Institute for Economic and Policy Research, August 15, 2020, https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/WP_134-Appelbaum-and-Gaby-Biegel.pdf

  46. INET Working Paper on the non-inflationary effects of unemployment reductions is cited in The Worker

    May 17, 2021

    “Among those contributions, recent works highlight the deep, radical revision of axioms considered cystic: that hysteresis, the permanence of high unemployment rates over time, is a basic condition to keep inflation under control. Professors Walter Paternesi, Davide Roamniello and Antonella Stirati have empirically demonstrated that this thesis is not permanent and that long-term unemployment can be reversed without a significant spike in inflation (https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/research- papers / on-the-non-inflationary-effects-of-long-term-unemployment-reductions). Another flagship of themainstream that can fall apart.” — Carles Manera, The Worker

  47. Bloomberg Quint covers INET's Law, Economics & Policy Conference

    May 17, 2021

    “The former ambassadors were speaking on a panel discussion at the law economics policy conference titled “Strategic Patience and flexible policies: How India can rise to the China challenge” and organized by INET.” — BQ Desk, Bloomberg Quint

  48. YSI member and INET intern, Atanas Pekanov is appointed acting Deputy Prime Minister for the EFM

    May 12, 2021

    “The new acting Deputy Prime Minister for EU funds is called Atanas Pekanov. The young expert, who recently turned 30, is an economist at the Austrian Institute for Economic Research (WIFO) in Vienna, Austria, and a lecturer at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien). … Member of the Young Researchers Initiative of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.” — Darik

  49. Thomas Ferguson is quoted in Rabble on money in politics

    May 12, 2021

    “Political scientist Thomas Ferguson has documented how U.S. big business interests poured money into local and state elections to ensure positive support for their largely unpopular policies. What Ferguson calls “political investment” is the practice of spending serious sums on party competition to keep hand-picked, docile representatives in power.” — Duncan Cameron, Rabble

  50. Arjun Jayadev article in the Hindustan Times describes what is needed to quickly roll the distribution of vaccines in India

    May 10, 2021

    “Pandemic management will also have to overcome the knotty issue of political economy. The blame game between the Union and state governments over an essential commodity such as oxygen is visible in court proceedings. We need a transparent mechanism that is perceived to be fair and trusted by all the stakeholders. Apart from dealing with the allocation of vaccines and other essential medical supplies such as oxygen, this body could suggest the financing pattern for sharing the expenditure on Covid management, including vaccine procurement. … Far too many lives have been lost to Covid. But as a challenge to India (and to humanity), it is certainly not an impossible task to manage the pandemic. But this can only happen effectively with cooperation, coordination, empathy, humility and scientific knowledge. It is not too late.” — Arjun Jayadev, Hindustan Times

  51. Daily Kos features Lynn Parramore's interview on CounterSpin

    May 9, 2021

    “Just now read this fascinating interview by Janine Jackson of fair.org (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) with Lynn Parramore of the Institute for New Economic Thinking on how hedge fund managers are damaging American companies by pushing company managements to do stock buybacks. Basically, stock buybacks force up the price of a stock, allowing shareholders to make megabucks when they sell. Such buybacks were difficult until the Reagan administration loosened the regulations in 1982. Why are stock buybacks bad ? Because they divert money from research, from new investments and innovation, and from raising wages. The interview with Lynn Parramore goes into the details.” — Daily Kos

  52. Joseph Stiglitz and Anton Korinek’s INET-funded research is cited in the NY Times

    May 5, 2021

    “In their December 2017 paper, “Artificial intelligence, worker-replacing technological progress and income distribution,” the economists Anton Korinek, of the University of Virginia, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, of Columbia — describe the potential of artificial intelligence to create a high-tech dystopian future. Korinek and Stiglitz argue that without radical reform of tax and redistribution politics, a “Malthusian destiny” of widespread technological unemployment and poverty may ensue.” — Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times

  53. NPR features INET Working Paper on the racial and gender inequality of the pandemic

    May 4, 2021

    “Researchers involved in a new study from Washington University say women could be in trouble financially for years to come because of significant job losses during the crisis. “We have to be somewhat concerned that the larger inequality effects of the current crisis could have these persistent impacts on wages and on career progress in all the groups that are disproportionately affected,” said Steven Fazzari, a professor of economics and sociology at Wash U who co-authored the study.” — Andrea Y. Henderson, St. Louis Public Radio NPR

  54. The NY Times cites INET’s report from the Commission on Global Economic Transformation

    May 3, 2021

    “Yet notable critics like Joseph Stiglitz and Jayati Ghosh, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, see woefully insufficient production by Western drug companies as a major roadblock to universal vaccination.” — Walden Bello, New York Times

  55. INET's article on the dangers of reopening schools is featured in the Santa Fe New Mexican

    May 1, 2021

    “Right after the CDC made this announcement, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, sent a letter to the Biden administration, citing a study by the Institute for Economic Thinking. … The authors of the study are Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, who did much of the research for the study and is a clinical epidemiologist and statistical geneticist and senior lecturer at the William Harvey Research Institute in London; Dr. Phillip Alveldi, CEO and chairman of Brain Works Foundry Inc, a U.S.-based developer of artificial intelligence-enhanced health care technologies and services; and Thomas Ferguson, the director of research projects for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.” — Dennis Donohue, Santa Fe New Mexican

  56. Lynn Parramore appeared on CounterSpin to discuss her INET article on hedge fund’s blocking green initiatives

    Apr 30, 2021

    “Polluting companies tell us every day how they’re invested in the future; we’ve heard corporations en masse say, “Profits, what? We’re all about the people now!” There’s a certain amount of people-who-make-the-problem-pretending-they’re-the-solution that we can see through, but there’s still plenty going on behind the scenes. We’ll talk with Lynn Parramore, senior research analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, about how hedge funds get in the way of the big changes all kinds of companies need to make to fight climate disruption.” — CounterSpin

  57. Arjun Jayadev appeared on Chayakkada Chats podcast to discuss vaccine equity

    Apr 30, 2021

    “Today joined by Dr Arjun Jayadev, who is a Professor of Economics at the School of Arts and Sciences at Azim Premji University in Bangalore, India. He was previously Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is also closely involved with the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I speak to him about the basic links between IPRs and the pandemic; the long-held orthodoxy in economic theory on the importance of IPRs, especially in areas like health; how IPRs lead to suboptimalities like hoarding of knowledge, vaccine grabs and other global inequalities; the relationship between public funding and vaccine production; whether private profits being produced from public investments; and finally, the problem of vaccine nationalism.” — Chayakkada Chats

  58. Project Syndicate cites INET’s report from the Commission on Global Economic Transformation

    Apr 30, 2021

    “To do this properly, we need to understand the structure of markets for knowledge-based products like new vaccines. Currently, we do not: the “market” is a mishmash of competition and side deals. According to a recent paper from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, governments and pharmaceutical companies last year concluded 44 bilateral COVID-19 vaccine deals, many of which have undisclosed details and poorly understood escape clauses. Poor countries were, by and large, left out.” — Kaushik Basu, Project Syndicate

  59. White’s INET working paper is cited in the Balance

    Apr 28, 2021

    “But ultra-low interest rates may be doing more harm than good, economist William White says in a working paper published last month by the Institute for New Economic Thinking. White, a former economic adviser at the Bank for International Settlements, has a number of arguments against this central bank policy. First, while lower borrowing costs do initially accomplish their goal of spurring spending, much of it is on “unproductive purchases” by both households and corporations that only wind up increasing the debt burden. Second, low interest rates can actually destabilize financial markets and the institutions surrounding them, either through inflated prices, encouraging fund managers to take on riskier investments, or hindering how banks and lenders are supposed to do business, White argues. And then there’s the exit problem. Once central banks lower interest rates, it’s very hard to tighten the flow of easy money. “Each cycle of monetary easing contributes to a buildup of undesired side effects that raises the likelihood of future instability,” White writes. “Central banks are then lured into a ‘debt trap’ where they refrain from tightening, to avoid triggering the crisis that they wish to avoid, but that restraint only makes the underlying problems worse.” — Diccon Hyatt, The Balance

  60. Storm and Naastepad’s INET working paper was cited in LSE’s blog on wages in the Eurozone

    Apr 28, 2021

    “Some authors argue that the German export success has nothing to do with wage or unit labour cost moderation and is instead due to the country’s high non-price competitiveness.” — Lucio Baccaro and Tobias Tober, LSE

  61. Thomas Ferguson's article is featured in the International Economy Magazine

    Apr 28, 2021

    “The much-touted “new thinking” on fiscal policy and debt is actually very thin and little of it is new. In the 1990s, economist Luigi Pasinetti clarified the folly of the proposed Maastricht criteria for public finances and forecast the coming disaster with those. Subsequently, many economists, including more than a few working with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, showed in detail how austerity reduces potential output over time and how absurd theories about Phillips Curve trade-offs lead to big underestimates of real rates of unemployment. Running below full employment for long periods blows big holes in public finances and thus piles on debt.” – Thomas Ferguson

  62. INET funded research was cited in the American Families Plan

    Apr 28, 2021

    “A study by Nobel Laureate James Heckman found that every dollar invested in a high-quality, birth to five program for the most economically disadvantaged children resulted in $7.30 in benefits as children grew up healthier, were more likely to graduate high school and college, were less likely to be involved in crime, and earned more as adults.” — The White House

  63. Wolff’s INET funded research on household wealth is the methodology used to determine top wealth gains during the pandemic

    Apr 21, 2021

    “For more on this methodology, see Wolff’s National Bureau of Economic Research paper Household Wealth Trends in the United States, 1962-2013” — Chuck Collins

  64. Arjun Jayadev appeared on CNN News 18 to discuss the latest wave of Covid spreading through India

    Apr 14, 2021

    “To go back a little bit, Covid is possibly the first global event that we’ve actually seen. One year after it really started, we are seeing all these vaccines. It is really quite incredible when you think about the scientific advancement, it has really been something quite extraordinary. But our systems of management globally of knowledge and health are weak and counterproductive and in adequate. I’d say they’re probably best described as unjust and incompetent. Let’s start with this whole question of patent rights. Right from the outset it became quite clear that it was hindering the fight against covid. From the early days if you remember N95 masks we’re a concern, then treatments like remdesivir, so it’s not only a vaccine issue. This was the basis for last years’ call for the Covid technology access pool, which was rebuffed despite widespread support. It was rebuffed by the advanced countries. It’s hard to imagine why this should be the case because such technologies for public health are massive and have positive spill over benefits. Moving now to vaccines, I think the system is even more inefficient when one considers the fact that many companies across the world received significant subsidies for vaccines. Estimates range from about $100 billion and in some cases the entire cost; Moderna and Johnson and Johnson vaccines that were paid for by a public set of money. Such is the case for having patent rights to allow for innovation completely disappears. Now the debate has moved, that it is not actually IP which is the restriction, it’s the ability to produce and manufacturing capacity. But remember eight months ago that did not exist in developed economies. People like the Moderna chief chemist said it takes about three to four months to actually set up these factories. What we should’ve had was a massive transfer in technology to places that could actually do this, completely open access to technology of all sorts, and ramping up production on a sort of global war scale. That has not happened and is it’s still not happening because of these limitations and unfortunately despite India and South Africa making the case in the WTO and despite some better noises from the Biden administration we’re really not seeing much movement.” — Arjun Jayadev

  65. Jack Gao appeared on Arirang to discuss Biden’s infrastructure plan

    Apr 12, 2021

    “There is a lot to like about with this infrastructure plan from what we already know and there seems to be a historical opportunity to get things right. Before answering your question, let me bring us to three trends just for context. Firstly, for decades we’ve had an economic model that benefited a small number of people tremendously and left behind the majority of Americans, resulting in widening inequality and decline in the middle class. The fact that a zip code could predict a lot of things; your health outcome, your lifespan, your success in life is an extremely telling example. Secondly, we’ve had the digital revolution which spanned a good part of the last 15 years that further demonstrated a lot of displacing and polarizing tendencies. If you’re in the wrong parts of the economy so to speak, it really didn’t work that much for you. Thirdly of course, we had the Covid crisis which turbocharged a lot of these trends. A lot of this is to say that sure there’s a lot of roads and bridges to fix and as well as fiscal infrastructure, but how to productively engage more Americans in the economic process through like you said job training and education, through better child care, invest in green recovery, and climate resilience these are paramount tasks.” — Jack Gao, Institute for New Economic Thinking

  66. Lynn Parramore appeared on Between the Lines to discuss the “New Koch Brothers” and stock buybacks are sabotaging America’s green new deal

    Apr 8, 2021

    “So these companies have been hamstrung by these hedge fund activists that are only interested in making a buck as quickly as possible. And they really don’t care about the long-term sustainability or health of the company. Or is it anything the company might want to do in the way of making products in the future? They’re all about the short term. So they are holding American companies back.” — Lynn Parramore

  67. Schularick, Taylor & Jorda’s INET funded research is featured in the FT

    Apr 7, 2021

    “The economists Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick, and Alan Taylor studied the sensitivity of house prices to interest rates across 14 countries and 140 years of history. They found that a 1 per cent rise in interest rates reduces the ratio of house prices to incomes by about 4 per cent. In New Zealand, for example, that ratio has risen by about half in a decade, implying a double-digit rise in interest rates to stabilise it.” — Robin Harding, FT

  68. Lynn Parramore appeared on Ian Masters to discuss her latest INET articles

    Apr 6, 2021

    Lynn Parramore appeared on Ian Masters to discuss Biden’s stimulus package and the “New Koch Brothers” wrecking America’s green new deal.

  69. Appelbaum & Batt’s INET funded research is cited in the Boston Globe

    Apr 5, 2021

    “In “Private Equity’s Engagement With Health Care: Cause for Concern?” a report to the Institute for New Economic Thinking, researchers Eileen Applebaum and Rosemary Batt found that wages dropped at urgent care centers after acquisitions by private equity companies. They were 9 to 12 percent lower than hospital wages. More consolidation and Amazon’s relentless drive to suppress costs bode more of the same.” — Brian Alexander, Boston Globe

  70. Diego Comin’s INET funded research is featured in Dartmouth News

    Mar 26, 2021

    “As consumers become richer, they spend more on services such as health and education, the demand for which is much more income elastic, and less on agriculture and manufactured goods, according to a recent study, co-led by Diego Comin, a professor of economics. The results are published in Econometrica. Until now, productivity has often been considered at least as important, if not more, than preferences, in shaping the sectoral composition of the economy. Politicians and business leaders often make claims about why certain sectors in the economy are shrinking, such as the decline in U.S. manufacturing is due to robotics or trade with China. Such assessments are flawed, as the sectoral composition of the economy is mostly driven by preferences and not by productivity, according to the study, which models long-run structural change in the economy.” — Amy Olsen, Darmouth News

  71. Senator Baldwin cites INET's working paper on pharmaceutical funding in the HELP Committee meeting

    Mar 24, 2021

    “From 2010 to 2019 the FDA approved 356 drugs. Recent research from Bentley University finds that NIH funding contributed to every single new drug approved. At a cost to the tax payer of roughly $230 billion dollars. In spite of this contribution the NIH is listed on only 27 of those patents. This suggests that while tax payers provide funding for the bulk of the early stage research they do not get patent protections supposedly secured by the by dole act. In essence American tax payers are paying the highest prices in the world for drugs they already paid to help develop.” — Senator Tammy Baldwin

  72. William Lazonick’s INET funded research is cited in Counter Punch

    Mar 22, 2021

    “As William Lazonick and other analysts have pointed out, stock buybacks artificially inflate executive pay and drain capital that could be put to productive purpose. .[xxv] — Sarah Anderson, Counter Punch [xxv] William Lazonick, “Profits Without Prosperity,” Harvard Business Review, September 2014.”

  73. Schularick, Taylor, & Jorda’s INET funded research is cited in Bloomberg on the most stable investments

    Mar 17, 2021

    “The issue is important because it tends to conflict with a hugely influential study published in 2017, called The Rate of Return on Everything, by Oscar Jorda, Katharina Knoll, Dmitry Kuvshinov, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor. This was a mightily ambitious piece of financial archaeology covering 17 countries, and it rendered the startling result that housing performed virtually as well as equities over time, but with much less volatility. The result held true for every country that Jorda and his colleagues examined.” — John Authers, Bloomberg

  74. Steven Fazzari cites his INET article in an interview at Washington University

    Mar 12, 2021

    “I believe they mostly got this right. Just before President Biden took office, I presented some thoughts on what a rescue plan should include to deal with the macroeconomic challenges of the pandemic. I emphasized four broad areas: public health spending, enhanced unemployment benefits, assistance to state and local governments, and so-called “stimulus checks” to households. The legislation the president has signed does a pretty good job in all four areas.” — Sara Savat, Washington University News Room

  75. Lynn Parramore appeared on Wort 89.9 FM to discuss her latest INET article on the “New Koch Brothers”

    Mar 11, 2021

    “Hedge fund managers are torpedoing chances for a successful Green New Deal, according to Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst for the Institute for New Economic Thinking. In her recent article “Meet the “New Koch Brothers” – the Hedge Fund Activists Wrecking America’s Green New Deal“, she talks about how corporate raiders are turning the direction of “green” corporate partners of battery development, software, wind turbines, and more away from long term energy conservation projects toward short-term money-making projects to increase the hedge fund shareholder returns.” — WORT 89.9 FM

  76. Lynn Parramore appeared on Wort 89.9 FM to discuss her latest INET article on the “New Koch Brothers”

    Mar 11, 2021

    “Hedge fund managers are torpedoing chances for a successful Green New Deal, according to Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst for the Institute for New Economic Thinking. In her recent article “Meet the “New Koch Brothers” – the Hedge Fund Activists Wrecking America’s Green New Deal“, she talks about how corporate raiders are turning the direction of “green” corporate partners of battery development, software, wind turbines, and more away from long term energy conservation projects toward short-term money-making projects to increase the hedge fund shareholder returns.” — WORT 89.9 FM

  77. Tony Lawson’s INET conference paper was cited in Econopoly

    Mar 10, 2021

    It is an attitude typical of conventional economists that sees the claim to qualify as technicians who deal with “social engineering”, on the basis of a “true” economic theory. Disrespectful of the epistemological (i.e. research methods) and even ontological principles (concerning the conception of the world). — Riccardo D’Orsi, Econopoly …. Citation: Lawson, T. (2010). Really Reorienting Modern Economics . Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), April 10.

  78. William Lazonick’s INET funded research was cited in Crenshaw’s speech at the SEC

    Mar 10, 2021

    “And what if there is a stock buyback during the period the share price is inflated? Does that harm shareholders because the company is spending money to repurchase its stock, or does it actually further benefit them by potentially raising earnings per share (EPS)?” … Citation: William Lazonick, The Financialization of the U.S. Corporation: What Has Been Lost and How It Can Be Regained, 36 Seattle U. L. Rev. 857, 859 (2013) (noting that trillions of dollars are spent on share buybacks and that “corporate executives who make these decisions are themselves prime beneficiaries of this focus on rising stock prices as a the measure of corporate performance”)

  79. Philip Mirowski’s INET working paper is suggested reading in the Daily Kos

    Mar 7, 2021

    The Political Movement That Dared Not Speak its Own Name: The Neoliberal Thought Collective Under Erasure Philip Mirowski [Institute for New Economic Thinking, August 2014] ….consider the question: how should we approach the construction of a reliable history of a group of intellectuals who have managed to turn their meditations into a political movement on a global scale? Of course this raises timeworn problems of the relationship between theory and practice; but the Neoliberal case sports a further thorny complication: while we can fairly comprehensively identify the roster of whom should be acknowledged as a part of the movement, at least from its beginnings in the 1930s until the recent past, we are confronted with the fact that, in public, they themselves roundly deny the existence of any such well-defined thought collective, and stridently denounce the label of Neoliberalism. Not only do they wash their hands of most of the documented activities of the Neoliberal Thought Collective – think of Hayek and Friedman and their denials concerning the Pinochet interlude in Chile— but their plaint is that their opponents the socialists have always gotten the better of them, and thus their political project has never enjoyed any real successes, ever, anywhere, contrary to all evidence brought to the table. They are forever the bridesmaid of conservative parties, never the bride, to hear them tell it. Given the sheer numbers of people involved, and the really astronomical sums of money, and the cultural dominance of the airwaves, this sad sack victimhood is really quite remarkable, and itself calls for serious examination. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that a political movement that dare not speak its own name has intellectual contradictions that it dare not air openly.

  80. Cai & Baker’s INET working paper is discussed in News One

    Mar 5, 2021

    “With all of that said, The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) recently published a study casting doubt about the methodology BLS uses to tabulate its unemployment data, especially when it comes to Black people. INET suggested that BLS’ data is inaccurate and downplays Black unemployment. On average, Black men’s unemployment rate is 2.8 percentage points higher than BLS data shows,” according to INET’s study, entitled, “Masking Real Unemployment: The Overall and Racial Impact of Survey Non-Response on Measured Labor Market Outcomes.” The same was true for BLS’ unemployment rate for Black women, which INET found was, on average, about 2.4 percentage points lower than its actual rate. The differences grow for younger Black males from 16 to 34 years old. INET’s findings lend some credence to a tweet from the Center for American Progress after January’s jobs report was published that said Black women, in particular, “are still being left behind by the recovery.” — Bruce C.T. Wright, News One

  81. Yahoo Money features Cai & Baker’s INET working paper

    Mar 5, 2021

    “Making matters worse, the Black unemployment rate might be much higher, according to a new analysis by the Institute for New Economic Thinking. The unemployment rate is calculated using data from the Current Population Survey. But that survey has a much lower response rate from Blacks than from white Americans, leading to more misclassifications in the official unemployment rate. For Blacks, the response rate is 72%, while the response rate is 90% for whites. Factoring that in, the unemployment rate for Black workers could be at least 2.6 percentage points higher than the monthly rate by the BLS, leaving it at 12.5% in February, the analysis found. For whites, the increase is much smaller at 0.7 percentage point. “The Current Population Survey has been missing a larger share of the population over time, particularly among Blacks,” said Baker, who is also an author of the analysis. “You have to ask what’s the situation for the people they’re not talking to.” — Denitsa Tsekova, Yahoo Money

  82. Institute for Public Accuracy summarized Lynn Parramore's article

    Mar 4, 2021

    “The piece gives a series of case studies. Parramore summarized the problem: “Players on Wall Street have been torpedoing our chances of averting environmental catastrophe for years. A group of billionaire financiers has made sure the companies the government must partner with to fight climate change are focused on one thing only – making these men (they all seem to be men) even richer. Instead of leading the world in climate change technology, firms like Apple, GE, and Intel have been pressured to become the personal piggy banks of powerful moneymen — known as hedge fund activists — who can’t see beyond the next quarterly report.” — Institute for Public Accuracy

  83. Nina Banks INET article is cited in Nonprofit Quarterly

    Mar 3, 2021

    “Pressley’s resolution builds upon the academic intellectual framework developed by advocates like Dantas and Wray, as well as the ongoing civil rights demand for federally guaranteed jobs, which can be seen in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech) and indeed long before that. It also draws on the work of Sadie Alexander, recognized as the nation’s first Black woman economist. Speaking at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1945 (as noted by Professor Nina Banks, blogging at the Institute for New Economic Thinking), Alexander described full employment as a way to address the nation’s economic and racial imperatives.” — Marin Levine, Nonprofit Quarterly

  84. Rob Johnson joined the Background Briefing with Ian Masters

    Feb 25, 2021

    Rob Johnson appeared on the Background Briefing with Ian Masters to discuss working with Trumpsters, the source of their anguish, and important pathways to healing

  85. INET funded research articles are cited in The Conversation

    Feb 24, 2021

    Two separate INET funded research articles are cited; first from Schularick, Jordà, & Taylor on leveraged bubbles followed by Bao, Hommes, & Makarewicz on bubble formation. “Since their inception, financial markets, and to a lesser extent some real markets, have been subject to bubbles. … More recently, stock prices, but also credit, real estate, commodities, bond markets, and famously, bitcoin, are all assets that have experienced bubble episodes. Regarding cryptocurrencies, many economists also defend a permanent bubble, their fundamental value being theoretically non-existent.” …. In fact, the presence of bubbles in the markets (financial and real) seems to stem from the persistent behavior of economic agents. Experimental studies, controlling exactly the actual value, showed that participants tended to set up a bubble-like operation, with price surges and collapses very similar to real economy situations, and in no way related to a change in the market.

  86. Counterpunch cites James Galbraith’s INET article on the Texas Freeze

    Feb 23, 2021

    “Texas’ leaders knew as of 2011 … when the state went through a short severe freeze, that the system was radically unstable in extreme weather,” wrote James K. Galbraith, of the University of Texas at Austin, in the Institute for New Economic Thinking. “But they did nothing,” he wrote. “To do something, they would have had to regulate the system. And they didn’t want to regulate the system, because the providers, a rich source of campaign funding, didn’t want to be regulated and to have to spend on weatherization that was not needed – most of the time.” That’s what happens when the private sector calls the shots. Money first.” — Richard Gross, Counterpunch

  87. The Coastal Review cites INET's Working Paper on the economic history of African Americans

    Feb 23, 2021

    “Economic opportunity was further restricted by individual and institutionalized racism and political disenfranchisement. Discrimination in hiring by employers and intimidation of black workers through violence placed black workers at a direct disadvantage in the labor market,” Trevon Logan Peter Temin wrote in “Inclusive American Economic History: Containing Slaves, Freedmen, Jim Crow Laws, and the Great Migration,” a working paper written for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.” — Coastal Review

  88. Makronom cites Servass Storm’s INET working paper, Lost in Deflation

    Feb 16, 2021

    “That Italy is “lazy to reform” is probably one of the most widespread myths - and has little to do with reality. In 2015, for example, the OECD rated Italy’s reform efforts as significantly higher than those of Germany and France. The Dutch economist Servaas Storm takes the same line. In an in-depth study, he found that Italian politics as a whole adhered much more closely to the (market-liberal) economic policy guidelines of the EU than Germany and France.” — Phillip Heimberger & Nikolaus Kowall, Makronom

  89. Project Syndicate features Joseph Stiglitz INET funded research

    Feb 15, 2021

    “The Biden administration must put a high enough price on carbon pollution to encourage the scale and urgency of action needed to meet the commitments it has made to Americans and the rest of the world. The future of our planet depends on it” — Nicholas Stern & Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate

  90. William Janeway joined the European Straits podcast to discuss YSI and his work on venture capital.

    Feb 12, 2021

    — European

  91. Brad Delong recommends William Janeway’s INET Video Series: Venture Capital in the 21st Century

    Feb 12, 2021

    William Janeway: Venture Capital in the 21st Century: ‘In this eight-part lecture series, Bill Janeway investigates the relationship between venture capital and technological innovation, and the interdependent roles of entrepreneurial firms, the mission-driven State and financial speculation in the overall innovation system… LINK: https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/videos/venture-capital>

  92. Daily Kos lists Sheila Dow's INET article on the Future of Macroeconomics as suggested reading

    Feb 9, 2021

    The Future of Macroeconomics Institute for New Economic Thinking, via Naked Capitalism 2-2-21]

  93. Taylor and Barbosa’s response to Krugman's inflation argument is summarized in Daily Kos

    Feb 9, 2021

    RSS PUBLISHED TO eState4Column5©2013 Political Economy Group DK PEG Anti-Capitalist Chat TAGS Culture Economy Employment Media MMT PoliticalEconomy publicpolicy stagflation WhiteHouse Share this article Let real wages (of $15+/hour) grow faster than labor productivity for some years, undoing the wage repression of the last decades. We have been misled by neoliberal economics for now many decades, it’s time to turn many things around in what is becoming a second-rated US economy, recently crippled by the malevolent and narcissistic “king of debt”. In economics, stagflation or recession-inflation is a situation in which the inflation rate is high, the economic growth rate slows, and unemployment remains steadily high. It presents a dilemma for economic policy, since actions intended to lower inflation may exacerbate unemployment. The biggest risk for the stock market in 2021 is inflation, according to Morgan Stanley. Unprecedented radical spending by the federal government and the Federal Reserve, to stave off a panic-induced market crash, helped artificially drive stocks to temporary new highs last year. www.laloftblog.com/… For some, the math bore out the possibility that exuberance was rational even if the economy is always more irrational than its math. “The Lucas fantasy of costless disinflation from credible commitments in an ergodic world of rational agents was decisively falsified long ago.” The underlying problems of supply shocks related to Trumpian idiocy atop bailing out the banksters may have made the economy much worse. The pandemic has only made a bad situation worse, or made more of us myopic in our isolation. Paul Krugman has now taken the time to question the orthodoxy of stagflation. Darn economic orthodoxy being wrong since the 1970s. Let me start with the inflation story the way most economists, myself included, have been telling. In the beginning was the Phillips curve: the apparent tradeoff, fairly visible in the data, between unemployment and inflation. In the 1960s many people looked at that tradeoff, considered the mild costs of inflation versus the benefits of lower unemployment, and argued for monetary and fiscal policies aimed at running the economy hot. But in a hugely influential speech Milton Friedman made an argument also independently made by Columbia’s Edmund Phelps: the unemployment-inflation tradeoff wasn’t real, because any sustained effort to keep unemployment low would lead not just to high inflation but to ever-accelerating inflation. They claimed, specifically, that people setting wages and prices would begin marking them up to anticipate future inflation, so that the inflation rate associated with any given unemployment rate would keep rising. They predicted, in particular, that the course of the economy over time would look something like this: https___bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com_public_images_81db75c8-59f2-4b95-a60a-fe404a50c119_914x5331.png First, a government would push unemployment down; but this would lead to ever-rising inflation, which would stay high even as the economy cooled. So it would take a sustained period of high unemployment to get inflation down again, until finally unemployment could be brought back to a sustainable level. So their analysis predicted “clockwise spirals” in unemployment and inflation. Then came the 1970s: https___bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com_public_images_1d91277a-44fe-422b-b0c3-f1dfa8fb7428_933x5501.png This sure looked like a dramatically successful out-of-sample prediction — sort of an economics version of “Light bends!” Almost everyone in the economics profession took the Friedman-Phelps analysis as confirmed. This in turn had big practical and intellectual consequences. First, governments and central banks stopped pursuing low unemployment, believing that excessively ambitious stimulus caused the stagflation of the 1970s. They began aiming for stable unemployment around the NAIRU —non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment — instead. Second, since the Friedman/Phelps prediction was based on trying to assess what rational price-setters would do, their apparent success gave a big boost to the notion that all economics should be based on maximizing behavior. Friedman always had too strong a reality sense to personally go down the rational-expectations rabbit hole that swallowed much of macroeconomics, but given the law of diminishing disciples it was bound to happen. Third, the whole affair gave a boost to conservative ideology. We had seemingly seem a demonstration of the limits to government action; also, the Chicago boys had seemingly been proved right about something big. (I remember classmates in grad school saying “They were right about this. Why don’t you think they’re right about the rest?”) Finally, the Volcker disinflation of the 1980s — using high unemployment to end high inflation — became, in many minds, the model of what responsible policymakers should do: make tough choices for the sake of the future. BUT WHAT IF WE’VE BEEN TELLING THE WRONG STORY ALL ALONG? […] But suppose something like this is true. In that case, the narrative that saw stagflation both as the cost of excessively ambitious macroeconomic policy and as a vindication of conservative economic ideas was mostly wrong. And that matters not just for history but for policy right now, which is still to some extent constrained by the fear of a 70s repeat. How do you ask someone to be the last worker to be unemployed for a mistake? paulkrugman.substack.com/… The reality in a response by Lance Taylor and Nelson Henrique Barbosa Filho is that “For practical purposes, the results mean that, for the Fed to meet its inflation target, it would be necessary to let real wages grow faster than labor productivity for some years, undoing the wage repression of the last decades. Biden’s $15 minimum-wage proposal is a correct step in that direction.” This is despite so many economists taking an opposite, more cautious position. — Daily Kos

  94. Lynn Parramore joined the This is Hell! podcast to discuss her recent article on the surge in deaths of despair amid the pandemic

    Feb 9, 2021

    “Cultural theorist Lynn Parramore on the deep social effects of economic precarity, and her article “Epidemic of Despair Could Haunt America Long After COVID” at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/epidemic-of-despair-could-haunt-america-long-after-covid” — Chuck Mertz,This is Hell!

  95. Osservatorio cites INET Working Paper on Carbon Pricing

    Feb 8, 2021

    “A recent study by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, painting a wider picture, shows that the effective reduction in emissions due to carbon pricing policy comes to between just 1 and 2.5 percent of the total.” — Ornaldo Gjergji, Osservatorio

  96. MIT News features Baron and Verner’s INET funded research into banking crises

    Feb 8, 2021

    “Panics are not needed for banking crises to have severe economic consequences,” says Emil Verner, the MIT professor who helped lead the study. “But when panics do occur, those tend to be the most severe episodes. Panics are an important amplification mechanism for banking crises, but not a necessary condition.” Indeed, in an ambitious piece of research, spanning 46 countries and going back to 1870, the study surveys banking crises that occurred with and without panics. When there is a panic and bank run, the research finds, a 30 percent decline in banking-sector equity predicts a 3.4 percent drop in real GDP (gross domestic product adjusted for inflation) after three years. But even without any creditor panic, a 30 percent decline in bank equity predicts a 2.7 percent drop in real GDP after three years.” — Peter Dizikes, MIT News

  97. Rob Johnson s quoted in Jacobin on why cable networks are hostile toward Medicare for All

    Feb 8, 2021

    “Consider the following point made by Institute for New Economic Thinking executive director Rob Johnson during a recent interview when asked about Medicare for All: “Public opinion polls show more than 70 percent of the population is in favor of Medicare for All. It’s not the population that doesn’t want it, and they’re the ultimate voters. It’s vested interests and the struggle that has to do with the relationship between money-raising campaign war chests and the probability of re-election and what you might call the refractory influence of the mainstream media, where pharmaceutical companies in particular and insurance companies as well are very big advertisers.” — Luke Savage, Jacobin

  98. Lazonick and Shin's INET funded research is cited in Naked Capitalism

    Jan 26, 2021

    “In taking over industrial companies, financial managers focus on the short run, because their salary and bonuses are based on current year’s performance. The “performance” in question is stock market performance. Stock prices have largely become independent from sales volume and profits, now that they are enhanced by corporations typically paying out some 92 percent of their revenue in dividends and stock buybacks.[6]” — Michael Hudson, Naked Capitalism [6]William Lazonick, “Profits Without Prosperity:Stock Buybacks Manipulate the Market and Leave Most Americans Worse Off,”Harvard Business Review, September 2014. And more recently, Lazonick and Jang-Sup Shin, Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the U.S. Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored(Oxford: 2020).

  99. Antonella Stirati’s INET funded book in Sinistrainrete

    Jan 25, 2021

    “in addition to the author’s interpretations, there will also be a considerable list of texts and contributions that can be useful for approaching and deepening the economic debate and the developments of the alternative and post-Keynesian theoretical approach, even in its various currents. . The not obvious presence in the public debate of these topics makes the book an important reading in order to interpret the recent economic history of our country starting from the questions that the crisis triggered by the outbreak of the pandemic and the recipes prepared by the European and national institutions pose us. , of which however no shadow is seen in political decisions, having an interpretative key that escapes the mainstream logic is, even more so in this context, of crucial importance.” — Davide Romaniello, Sinistrainrete

  100. Noam Chomsky discusses INET research into money and politics on Jacobin

    Jan 25, 2021

    “One place to look always is where’s the money? Who funds congress? Actually, there’s a very fine careful study of this by the leading scholar who deals with funding issues in politics, Thomas Ferguson. He and his colleagues did a study about a year ago a careful study in which they investigated a simple question, “what’s the correlation over the years many years between campaign funding and electability to congress?” It’s almost a straight line, it’s the kind of close correlation that you barely get in the social sciences. The greater the funding, the higher the electability. You can find a few cases here and there that aren’t right on the line, but from the standpoint of social science it’s a remarkable correlation.” — Noam Chomsky, Jacobin