Articles
Articles and analyses from the INET community on the key economic questions of our time.
[PART 2] U.S. Current Account Deficits and German Surpluses: The Role of Income Distribution in Global Imbalances
In our two papers, we analyze how changes in personal and functional (wages versus profits) income distribution interact to produce different macroeconomic outcomes in different countries. On the basis of a stock-flow consistent model calibrated for the United States, Germany, and China, simulations suggest that a substantial part of the increase in household debt and the decrease in the current account in the United States since the early 1980s can be explained by the interplay of rising (top-end) household income inequality and certain institutions (e.g. easy access to credit, privately financed education and health care systems).
Trust and Finance
America’s Debt-Ceiling Debacle
Economic theory declassified?
So, most Nobel Prize exegetes went a long way, this week, toward explaining that asset pricing is not primarily born out of theoretical reflection but out of prize-deserving empirical work.
Sovereigns versus banks: Crises, causes and consequences
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, few would dispute the risks of excessive borrowing. But which debts should one worry about – public or private? This column presents new research on the interplay of public and private debts since 1870 in 17 advanced economies. History demonstrates that excessive private-sector borrowing plays a greater role than fiscal profligacy in generating financial instability. However, when the credit boom collapses, the government’s capacity to alleviate the downturn is limited by the prevailing level of public debt.
A Model’s Crisis
Lehman Was Not Alone – Measuring System Risk in the 2008 Crisis
what would measures of systematic risk have indicated to Treasury Secretary Paulsen if they had been available at that time?
Bankers Will Be Let Off the Hook If We Don't Start to Take Ourselves Seriously
How can we contain institutional failure?
The Financial World Five Years after Lehman Brothers
What have we learned about the American political economy from the crisis and its aftermath?
Economic Analysis Isn’t Objective – It’s As Personal As It Gets
What happens when professionals lose touch with the people they’re supposed to serve?
Why is economic sense so often morally appalling?
what is economically correct must always be balanced with what is morally right.
What Was the Real Cost of the Great Recession?
We are coming up to the fifth anniversary of the Lehman crash in September 2008. How bad was it? Have we fixed the problems?
When Is the Time for Austerity?
Game Theory: Too Much and Too Little?
In introducing game theory (in chapters 7-9), MWG build upon the theory of rational choice by individual agents, developed previously in the book to attempt to analyze (describe, explain, and even predict?) the interactions of such agents as well as the outcomes to which they give rise. In previous chapters, MWG discuss interactions only in the form of the arms-length interactions of numerous firms and consumers in specific markets (e.g. under ‘perfect competition’, in chapters 3 and 5).