Archive

Different accounts trace populism to cultural reactions, racial or gender animosity, and/or economics. What does the empirical evidence suggest?

This paper discusses household debt as a long term phenomenon that influences economies beyond crises.1 In other words, rather than look at how household indebtedness can lead to crises, I will focus on its surprising persistence at very high levels, and its interactions along the way with other key variables, such as public policies and spending. The first section describes some stylized facts and the final section explores the macroeconomic consequences.

Support for populism is often attributed to xenophobia, racism, sexism; to anger and resentment at immigrants, racial or ethnic minorities, or “uppity” non-traditional women. According to these accounts , people who feel socially resentful may reject established politicians as favoring those “others” over people like themselves, and turn to outsider populistic leaders.

The debt-growth relationship is complex, varying across countries and being affected by global factors. While there is no simple universal threshold above which debt-to-GDP becomes a significant brake on growth, based on data from the last four decades we show that high and rising public debt burdens slow down growth in the long term.

Unpacking the Effect of Trade on Workers and Voters 

This paper discusses what we have learned about the debt build-up in advanced societies over the past century. It shows that the extraordinary growth of aggregate debt in the past century was driven by the private sector.

What role does debt play in triggering economic crises, and is the problem principally public or private sector debt?

A better set of approaches for the 21st century.

The contemporary literature on neoliberalism has grown so large as to be unwieldy. For some on the left, this has presented an occasion to denounce it altogether.

How far are economists implicated in the rise of ‘fake experts’ and ‘fake news’?

Fake news, propaganda, and “expertise”: What has happened to information in the information age?

Is Comparative Advantage the Ideology of the Comparatively Advantaged? 

The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure

Especially in the wake of the Great Recession, calls for more diversity within economics are usually limited to appealing for greater diversity in the economists’ backgrounds, while diversity of opinion and approaches is often neglected.

The Academic and Professional Performance of the Chicago School, 1960-1985