Working Papers
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Working Paper Series
The New Normal: Demand, Secular Stagnation and the Vanishing Middle-Class
May 2017
The U.S. economy is widely diagnosed with two ‘diseases’: a secular stagnation of potential U.S. growth, and rising income and job polarization. The two diseases have a common root inthe demand shortfall, originating from the ‘unbalanced’ growth between technologically ‘dynamic’ and ‘stagnant’ sectors.
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Working Paper Series
The Political Economy of Mass Incarceration: An Analytical Model
May 2017
This paper presents a model of mass incarceration in the United States, which has the largest proportion of its population imprisoned among advanced countries.
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Commentary
Marketization and Financialization
Apr 2017
How the U.S. New Economy Business Model Has Devalued Science and Engineering PhDs
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Working paper
How & Why Government, Universities, & Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists & High-Tech Workers
Mar 2017
Long term labor shortages do not happen naturally in market economies. That is not to say that they don’t exist. They are created when employers or government agencies tamper with the natural functioning of the wage mechanism.
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Symposium
Experts on Trial: A Symposium
Mar 2017
Widespread criticism of elites and their ‘experts ’ raises questions about how economists should perceive their role, and what role societies should give them. We invited four scholars to start an online conversation by sharing their perspectives
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Working Paper Series
The Equal Employment Opportunity Omission
Dec 2016
On June 2, 1965, under a mandate established by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the U.S. Congress created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce federal anti-discrimination laws related to employment. The expectation was that African Americans would be prime beneficiaries of the EEOC.
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Working Paper Series
The Value-Extracting CEO: How Executive Stock-Based Pay Undermines Investment in Productive Capabilities
Dec 2016
The business corporation is the central economic institution in a modern economy. A company’s senior executives, with the advice and support of the board of directors, are responsible for the allocation of corporate resources to investments in productive capabilities. Senior executives also advise the board on the extent to which, given the need to invest in productive capabilities, the company can afford to make cash distributions to shareholders. Motivating corporate resource-allocation decisions are the modes of remuneration that incentivize and reward the top executives of these companies. A sound analysis of the operation and performance of a modern economy requires an understanding of not only how much these executives are paid but also the ways in which the prevailing system of executive pay influences their decisions to allocate corporate resources.
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Conference paper
Tides and Prejudice: Racial Attitudes During Downturns in the United States 1979-2014
Nov 2016
This paper analyzes white attitudes towards African Americans in the United States at different points in a business cycle from 1979- 2014.
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Working Paper Series
The EuroZone “Debt” Crisis: Another “Center” – “Periphery” Crisis Under Financial Globalization?
Nov 2016
This paper analyzes the Euro crisis in light of the experience of center-periphery relations over the last 40 years of renewed financial globalization.
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Working Paper Series
The Personal Wealth Interests of Politicians and the Stabilization of Financial Markets
Oct 2016
We examine whether personal wealth interests affect politicians’ decisions about stabilizing financial markets.
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Commentary
The “Natural” Interest Rate and Secular Stagnation: Loanable Funds Macro Models Don’t Fit the Data
Oct 2016
The main point of this paper is that loanable funds macroeconomic models with their “natural” interest rate don’t fit with modern institutions and data. Before getting into the numbers, it makes sense to describe the models and how to think about macroeconomics in the first place.
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Working Paper Series
The Mismeasure of Mammon: Uses and Abuses of Executive Pay Data
Aug 2016
Report to the Institute for New Economic Thinking on the statistical measurement and policy implications of the compensation of the highest- paid U.S. corporate executives
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Working Paper Series
The performativity of potential output: Pro-cyclicality and path dependency in coordinating European fiscal policies
Aug 2016
This paper analyzes the performative impact of the European Commission’s model for estimating ‘potential output’, which is used as a yardstick for measuring the ‘structural budget balance’ of EU countries and, hence, is crucial for coordinating European fiscal policies.
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Working Paper Series
Political Lending
Aug 2016
Using a unique dataset provided by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), we document a direct channel through which financial institutions contribute to the net worth of members of the U.S. Congress, particularly those sitting on the finance committees in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
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Commentary
Why a future tax on bank credit intermediation does not offset the stimulative effect of money finance deficits
Aug 2016
This paper responds to a paper by Claudio Borio, Piti Disyatat and Anna Zabai “Helicopter Money: the Illusion of a Free Lunch”