Archive

How Showering Money on Both Parties Paralyzed Regulators

Despite the accumulation of serious and unsolvable problems, the Consumer Welfare Standard survives and continues to be taught to students for reasons unrelated to theoretical consistency and empirical confirmation.

Entretien avec Gilles Yabi, directeur exécutif du Think Tank ouest-africain WATHI, sur la sécurité alimentaire en Afrique

The Consumer Welfare Standard is severely limited or defective, preventing it from being an appropriate standard for modern antitrust.

An interview with Gilles Yabi, executive director of the West African Think Tank WATHI, on food security in Africa

Evidence sharply contradicts PhRMA’s contention that its member companies need unregulated drug prices to generate profits that they then reinvest in drug innovation.

Emerging out of the COVID lockdown, inflation in the U.S. and globally has risen to the highest levels in 40 years. On December 2-3, PERI will host a conference to explore the causes of this global inflation spike. Conference participants will also provide critical perspectives on the austerity macroeconomic policies being implemented globally to control inflation and will propose alternative policies capable of managing inflation without imposing austerity and rising mass unemployment.

A Novel Account of Inflation Forecasts

“We risk a global decoupling in which East and West face off in a cold war, and Africans are caught in the middle,” says Professor Carlos Lopes in an interview with Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin

Economist Cristina Caffarra, a leader in competition and antitrust, warns that ever-expanding tech giants raise concerns about the extent of their power.

The 5th edition of the Law Economics Policy Conference (LEPC) is jointly organized by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, INET and FLAME University.

What Strategies can Break This Dependency?

Why did Corporate Democrats “cede” the economic argument? Are they really fighting inflation or trying to weaken workers’ bargaining power? INET’s Thomas Ferguson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news.

In her new book, veteran Wall Street watcher and economist Nomi Prins warns that central bank strategies deployed since the financial crisis are destroying the real economy, worsening inequality, and creating societal chaos.

Thirty Years of Indian Economic Reforms: Assessing the Growth and Development of Kerala

The current energy market structures, including the short-run-marginal-price-on-all nature of the current wholesale market, are not fit for a transition to a renewables-dominated system.

Moving away from fossil fuels, towards a system with a far greater contribution from variable renewables, means that the current system is not fit for purpose.

Quels sont les problèmes à long terme qui doivent être résolus et quelles sont les solutions disponibles?

What are the long-term problems that need to be addressed and what solutions are out there?

Economic issues are a primary part of Trump’s appeal to his base

Why to Be Wary of Another Volcker-Type Monetary Tightening

Fears of ‘stagflation’ have come back to haunt macroeconomic policy makers all over the globe

The economist Herman Daly passed away on October 28, 2022. Read one of the last interviews he gave.

The debilitating challenges women face in being heard are detrimental to economic prosperity and to democracy itself.

All things can be coded as capital, with the right legal coding.

Antitrust expert Hal Singer shows how big businesses in certain industries are taking advantage of inflation worries to jack up prices far beyond their cost increases, all the while raking in robber-baron profits.

Has the solution to global tensions been waiting at home all along?

Diamond-Dybvig-Bernanke is a flawed model of banking that has no room for a lender of last resort

In the papers of economist Charles Kindleberger, Perry Mehrling found notes on the paper that won Ben Bernanke his Nobel Prize.

Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, and Philip Dybvig were honored for their work on financial instability

Interdisciplinarity is critical in pushing the humanities to better understand humans.

How do we regulate an information utility?

Medhora has served on INET’s Board since 2012 and is a distinguished fellow and former president of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

In a new book, Alligators in the Arctic and How To Avoid Them, Peter Dorman shows how flawed academic models, faulty assumptions and unrealistic schemes grossly underestimate what’s needed to stop catastrophic warming. He argues for a straightforward carbon emission budget – plus the active citizenship required to fight big businesses that want to keep doing business as usual. Lynn Parramore explores his findings and talks to the economist about the path forward.

Thirty Years of Indian Economic Reforms: Assessing the Growth and Development of Kerala

Ying Chen discusses her work to better understand development, labor and environmental impact in the Global South, focusing in particular on the realities of Chinese economic policy as it has evolved.

Servaas Storm, Steven Fazzari, and Thomas Ferguson comment on the Inflation Reduction Act

Servaas Storm’s commentary for an INET symposium on the Inflation Reduction Act

Thomas Ferguson’s commentary for an INET symposium on the Inflation Reduction Act

Price inflation, marginal cost pricing, and principles for electricity market redesign in an era of low-carbon transition

This research project explores the factors producing “herding” in the economics profession and professional investment community with the goal of articulating policy changes appropriate to the organization of the economics profession and its practices in particular.

This research project recounts the intellectual history of the dollar as an international reserve currency, starting with World War I, which brought the international gold standard to an end, and continuing all the way up to the present global financial crisis.

This research project develops an approach to policy analysis in the context of a macroeconomic model that does not assume that people in the economy forecast the economy’s future evolution under any given policy in the same way as the policy analyst’s own model does.

This research project provides us with a greater understanding of why the Coase theorem came to captivate the minds of economics and legal scholars and how its impact on economics and law reshaped both the theoretical landscape and legal-economic policymaking.

This research project demonstrates the ways in which fact and value are entangled in economic concepts and the implications of this entanglement for the ways in which various economic problems are approached.

This research project develops, estimates, calibrates, and deploys a new class of stock flow consistent macroeconomic models to try to understand Ireland’s macroeconomic collapse since 2007.

Price Inflation, Marginal Cost Pricing, and Principles for Electricity Market Redesign in an Era of Low-Carbon Transition

Michael Grubb appears on BBC Panorama to discuss his INET research on European energy markets

Because global warming doesn’t take a holiday

Is it good for your wallet? A climate bill in disguise? Landmark action or nothingburger? Economic experts assess the Democrats’ legislative victory for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

How big tech barons crush innovation—and how to fight back

In memory of Lance Taylor

China’s successful technological development path stands in contrast to the corporate financialization model in the United States

China’s successful technological development path stands in contrast to the corporate financialization model in the United States

Ruskin scholar Jeffrey Spear, author of “Dreams of an English Eden: Ruskin and his Tradition in Social Criticism,” discusses how the insights of a key 19th-century thinker can help us build a new paradigm for protecting the planet – and save us from ourselves.

Everyone at INET is saddened by the news that our colleague Lance Taylor passed away on Monday, August 15th, 2022. His loss leaves a giant hole in our hearts as well as in the field of economics. His talents and achievements were prodigious and we will miss his cheerful and inspiring presence. Words help little on such occasions, but we would like to extend our condolences to his wife Yvonne, and his children Signe and Ian.

Researchers find that the nation had become an outlier among other rich countries in mortality rates long before the pandemic – and that Americans are dying younger than their peers abroad.

Why are we incentivizing wealth at the expense of health?

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are considered “passive” investors and are exempt from corporate tax. But in reality, they play a very active role in reshaping whole industries, like healthcare.

The 5th UNCTAD YSI Summer School provides an opportunity to explore the Challenges and Opportunities of a New International Economic Order. The school will bring together UNCTAD experts, academics, diplomats, and young scholars from across the globe for lively and stimulating intellectual debates.

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are considered “passive” investors and are exempt from corporate tax. But in reality, they play a very active role in reshaping whole industries, like healthcare.

INET grantee Vamsi Vakulabharanam describes his work to gather parallel social threads—such as class, caste, gender and religion—to better understand the mechanisms of inequality in India, and why this can lead to better outcomes around the world.

Rob Johnson joins Background Briefing with Ian Masters to discuss public concern about inflation

The conventional measures of economic well-being are dangerously limited, and we are seeing the resulting policy consequences play out daily.

Author and law professor Maurice Stucke warns that as fundamental privacy rights vanish, your personal data can and will be used against you.

Central banks can encourage climate-friendly investments by offering financial institutions favorable haircuts on green collateral

Central banks can encourage climate-friendly investments by offering financial institutions favorable haircuts on green collateral

Stagnating real wages may have contributed to the slowdown of US productivity

A persistent regime of low wages may determine very negative long-term consequences on the economy.

We are in the midst of another global transformation, but this time we might have the tools to get it right.

Ratner and Sim’s “Who Killed the Phillips Curve – A Murder Mystery”

Pari passu clauses were deliberately crafted to gain an upper hand in sovereign bankruptcy disputes brought to the London stock exchange’s jurisdiction

Pari passu clauses were deliberately crafted to gain an upper hand in sovereign bankruptcy disputes brought to the London stock exchange’s jurisdiction

Expertise is broken. Trust is eroding. Enough is enough.

Ekaterina Cleary, Matthew Jackson and Fred Ledley’s INET research on government innovation in pharmaceuticals was cited in The American Prospect

The depth of the U.S. securities market helps ensure dollar hegemony

James K. Galbraith responds on the U.S. dollar system

New mandates must beget new organizing

Frank McCourt discusses his work to reinspire hope in the American experiment, and to build the framework necessary for that better tomorrow.

Billions living in insecurity and injustice is hardly a rational system.

Michael Greenberg’s INET working paper on derivatives regulation is featured in Salon

How can we develop a deeper, more human and multifaceted understanding of the past?

An analysis of gun lobby contributions to Republicans and Democrats

Can society continue its long-run trajectory and commit to institutional, legal, social, fiscal, and educational systems that can advance equality?

Besides the crucial COVID-19 vaccine patent waiver, far more is at stake at this ministerial than is generally known.

Evidence-based answers to the main (policy) questions concerning the return of high inflation

Are there alternative, less socially costly, ways to bring inflation down?

Columbia University’s renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs talks about the lessons he has learned from consulting with governments around the world, about how global problems, such as the war in Ukraine, will only be solved via efforts to understand the other side, never through force.

James M. Buchanan’s defenders argue he was not racist because of his ties with the anti-apartheid economist W.H. Hutt, but this defense fails miserably

Despite his opposition to South Africa’s apartheid, Hutt embraced notions of black inferiority

An obituary for Axel Leijunhufvud (Sept 6, 1933 - May 5, 2022)

Corporate responsibility needs to evolve if businesses are going to rebuild trust and provide real value for society.

Author and law professor Maurice Stucke explains why the practices of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are so dangerous and what’s really required to rein them in. Hint: Current proposals are unlikely to work.

In a harrowing new book, scholar Laura Katz Olson pulls back the curtain on a shadowy Wall Street threat that is taking over health care companies – and preying on human lives.

Over the last four decades, the US economy has done quite well for the top 1%, but it has been stagnant for most Americans. This was not an accident, nor the natural workings of the market and certainly not an inevitability. US policies have been deliberately structured since 1980 to redistribute income upwards. In other words, the system has been rigged.

Climate change is already here, and we are on a path towards catastrophic global warming. Governments have failed to curb carbon emissions, and fossil fuel production continues to increase. This is not merely a political failure; it is also a failure of economic analysis.

INET Fellow Moritz Schularick writes in The Economist that Germany should immediately cut off Russain gas

The multipolar financial world is here. The United States can survive it – but only with major political and economic changes at home. It’s time to start thinking about what those need to be.

Lynn Parramore discusses her INET article on neoliberalism and mental health with The Healthcare Policy Podcast

As women’s rights to make reproductive choices come under assault, historian John M. Riddle argues that abortion has been far more essential to human history than you might imagine.