Articles
Articles and analyses from the INET community on the key economic questions of our time.
Waiting for the Chinese Bear Stearns
Unregulated, speculative lending markets nearly brought down the global financial system 10 years ago. Now, Western banks are exporting this failed model to the developing world.
Don't Want a Robot to Replace You? Study Tolstoy.
Economist Morton Schapiro, president of Northwestern University, and his colleague, literary critic and Slavic studies scholar Saul Morson, argue that—contrary to popular belief—studying the humanities is the key to not getting outsourced.
Even in France, Money Rules Politics
France, like many Western European countries, has strong campaign finance laws and a vibrant multiparty system. Yet even there, money has had a corrosive effect on democracy, as private donations have an outsized impact on electoral outcomes.
China’s Green Opportunity
Here’s Why Sexual Harassment Matters for Economists
To get justice, targets must show measurable harm. Economists can help
How Money Won Trump the White House
It wasn’t Comey or the Russians. Trump prevailed because his campaign carefully targeted key states with late infusions of big money from private equity, casinos, and other far right contributors, a remarkable wave of donations from small donors, and substantial infusions from the candidate himself.
Why Research and Innovation Are Vital for Southern European Economies—and Eurozone Survival
Austerity measures have battered the region and created instability throughout the Eurozone. Here’s one way out of the mess.
Nothing Natural About the Natural Rate of Unemployment
With unemployment reaching very low levels in major economies, despite low – and slowly rising – inflation, it’s time for central banks to rethink their reliance on the so-called natural rate. No numerical target for this rate can serve as an anchor for monetary policy.
Can Bitcoin Replace the Dollar?
America’s Rising, Invisible Debt
Why it’s time to repeal the debt ceiling and replace it with a ‘truth in borrowing’ act
How Economists Turned Corporations into Predators
The Idea That Businesses Exist Solely to Enrich Shareholders Is Harmful Nonsense
Is Productivity Growth Becoming Irrelevant?
As the Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow noted in 1987, computers are “everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Since then, the so-called productivity paradox has become ever more striking. Automation has eliminated many jobs. Robots and artificial intelligence now seem to promise (or threaten) yet more radical change. Yet productivity growth has slowed across the advanced economies; in Britain, labor is no more productive today than it was in 2007.