Articles

Articles and analyses from the INET community on the key economic questions of our time.

Article

Distribution Matters: Flawed Welfare Foundations in Classic Free Trade Arguments

Oct 27, 2025

The argument that free trade is always the correct policy is based on a flawed welfare analysis. Free trade results in winners and losers and economists are not competent to analyze the impact on well-being as a whole or the spillover social consequences of the discontent of the losers.

Article

Economist Chris Hughes on the Fed, Crypto, and the Danger of Trump’s Vision

Sep 24, 2025

Hughes discusses his recent book Marketcrafters, and how markets are deliberately built with outcomes that can serve the public good – or not. He uses this lens to unpack today’s economic flashpoints, from the Fed to crypto to climate.

Article

Rethinking Pharmaceutical Innovation Policy

May 19, 2025

Misaligned incentives account for many of the most troubling features of the pharmaceutical industry’s present practices and performance.

Article

Europe’s Gas Roller Coaster

May 13, 2025

A new INET Working Paper by Yaroslav Melekh, James Dixon, Katrina Salmon, and Michael Grubb, interrogates the contradictions between fossil lock-in through LNG import capacity and overcontracting, and policy-driven demand reduction. Here is a summary of the paper’s main findings.

Article

How to Reclaim America’s ‘Democracy’ From the Big Finance Oligarchy

Jan 6, 2025

Sociologist Michael A. McCarthy’s latest book shows how ordinary people can take back control of financial capitalism and make it work for them.