Working Papers
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Conference paper
The Economics of Cyberwar
Apr 2014
Cyberwar is very much in the news these days. It is tempting to try to understand the economics of such an activity, if only qualitatively. What effort is required? What can such attacks accomplish? What does this say, if anything,about the likelihood of cyberwar?
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Conference paper
Profits Without Prosperity: How Stock Buybacks Manipulate the Market, and Leave Most Americans Worse Off
Apr 2014
Five years after the end of the Great Recession, corporate profits are high and the stock market is booming. Yet most Americans are not sharing in the apparent prosperity.
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Conference paper
Who should do R and who should do D?
Apr 2014
This article studies the reasons for the under-investment in research vs. development in the decentralized equilibrium and argues that this bias provides a micro-foundation for the government direct involvement in conducting applied research rather than just financing it.
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Conference paper
The Persistence of a Reckless Banking System
Apr 2014
The fall of 2008 was scary. For most people, the aftermath of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy resembled a major earthquake with strong aftershocks. Official narratives have promoted the image of the crisis as a rare, unpreventable and unforeseen natural disaster, the “100-year flood.” Policymakers emphasize the extraordinary measures they have taken to prevent the system from collapsing and to support recovery since.
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Conference paper
Is Innovation a Good Thing? The Innovation Gap in Pink and Black
Apr 2014
Innovation, the commercialization of invention, is both desirable and necessary for growth and higher living standards in modern economies. Innovation’s contribution to the economy is being measured increasingly more precisely, and its contribution has been assessed aseconomically important and growing.
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Grantee paper
Fiscal and Monetary Policies in Complex Evolving Economies
Mar 2014
In this paper we explore the effects of alternative combinations of fiscal and monetary policies under different income distribution regimes.
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Grantee paper
Minsky Financial Instability, Interscale Feedback, Percolation and Marshall-Walras Disequilibrium
Mar 2014
We study analytically and numerically Minsky instability as a combination of top-down, bottom-up and peer-to-peer positive feedback loops.
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Conference paper
Debt Restructuring versus Monetary Easing: The Eurozone Experiment
Mar 2014
Since the outbreak of the Greek debt crisis at the end of 2009, the Eurozone finds itself in an unprecedented debt crisis.
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Working Paper Series
Crisis and Recovery in the German Economy: The Real Lessons
Mar 2014
Owing to its strong dependence on exports, Germany was among the economies hit hardest by the financial crisis.
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Grantee paper
Greenhouse Gas and Cyclical Growth
Feb 2014
A growth model incorporating dynamics of capital per capita, atmospheric CO2 concentration, and labor and energy productivity is described.
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Grantee paper
Varieties of Keynesianism
Feb 2014
Recent claims, particularly in Paul Krugman’s column and blog, on the superiority of the Hicks-Modigliani version of Keynesian economics calls for a re-thinking of the issues raised in the early controversies over what Joan Robinson called “bastard Keynesianism”.
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Working Paper Series
Sovereigns versus Banks: Credit, Crises and Consequences
Feb 2014
Two separate narratives have emerged in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. One interpretation speaks of private financial excess and the key role of the banking system in leveraging and deleveraging the economy. The other emphasizes the public sector balance sheet over the private and worries about the risks of lax fiscal policies. However, the two may interact in important and understudied ways.
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Working Paper Series
Unemployment and Innovation
Jan 2014
This paper analyzes equilibrium, dynamics, and optimal decisions on the factor bias of innovation in a model of induced innovation.
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Conference paper
Income Distribution and the Current Account: A Sectoral Perspective
Dec 2013
We analyse the link between income distribution and the current account for the period 1972-2007. We find that rising (top-end) personal inequality leads to a decrease of the current account, ceteris paribus.
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Grantee paper
Inequality, Financialization, and the Growth of Household Debt in the U.S., 1989-2007
Nov 2013
Household indebtedness in the United States grew dramatically during the decades leading up to the financial crisis.