Archive

The objective of the conference is to exchange perspectives on the risks posed by financial networks, and the role these networks play in the well-functioning of the real economy. 

Ed Pavlić discusses the role of music in communicating suffering and resistance in the African-American experience

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.

INET grantee William Lazonick explains how the Trump tax cut is resulting in buybacks on Wall Street and bonuses for CEOs

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.

Money in politics is not a strictly American phenomenon. In France, despite strong campaign finance laws, campaign donations have a direct influence on legislative and municipal election results.

Julia Cagé explains the impact of money on French elections

Banks have long had undue influence in society. But with the rapid expansion of a financial sector that transforms all debts and assets into tradable commodities, we are faced with something far worse: financial markets with an only abstract, inflated, and destabilizing relationship with the real economy. To prevent another crisis, finance must be domesticated and turned into a useful servant of society. 

Contrary to the neoclassical model’s assumptions, shifts in aggregate demand have persistent effects on GDP

The prevailing wisdom that aggregate demand ‘shocks’ determine short-run cyclical fluctuations around a supply-determined equilibrium growth rate and an associated equilibrium unemployment rate (or NAIRU) has been called into question by various streams of literature in the last decades. Specifically, a recently revived literature on hysteresis finds significant persistence in the effects of recessions and negative aggregate demand shocks (Blanchard et al. 2015; Martin et al. 2015).

Over the next year, the Bitcoin price could double, soar tenfold, or collapse by 95% or more, and no economic analysis can help predict where in that range it will lie. Like other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin serves no useful economic purpose, though in macroeconomic terms, such currencies probably also do little harm.

Nina Banks assesses the legacy of the first African-American economist in the United States

In their op-ed in the Washington Post, INET grantee William Lazonick and Rick Wartzman show how companies are spending their tax savings on investors, not workers.

Learn more about the Commission on Global Economic Transformation

The African Development Bank has laid out a plan for economic prosperity in the continent. But to get there, African countries must first confront jobless growth and underfunded infrastructure projects.