Archive

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.

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.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking joined the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in holding its fifth Annual Conference from April 10 to April 12, 2014 in Toronto.

Adair Turner at the Institute’s #HumanAfterAll conference in Toronto, CA (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.

Since the outbreak of the Greek debt crisis at the end of 2009, the Eurozone finds itself in an unprecedented debt crisis.

Owing to its strong dependence on exports, Germany was among the economies hit hardest by the financial crisis.

The “economics and engineering” line of argument is part of economists’ rhetoric.

The last straw in the enduring blog debate over microfoundations has taken a decisive historical turn.

A showdown has taken place within Italy’s governing coalition.

We invited Thomas Scheiding from Cardinal Stritch University to review what we know about the scholarly communication process in economics. Tom has written forcefully on the history and economics of economic literature (see for instance, his 2009 JEM article). His latest is a study of the scholarly communication process in physics (an article in Studies).

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.

Last week the “Macroeconomics in Perspective Workshop” was held at the Department of Economics of the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL), in Louvain-la-neuve, Belgium

India’s economic leaders are determined to rein in skyrocketing inflation, but the country’s volatile political landscape may prevent reforms from taking hold.