Archive

Chioma Agwuegbo of TechHer Nigeria, talks to Folashadé Soulé and Herbert Mba Aki about how the pandemic is impacting young people in Nigeria, especially young women, and how African youth are tackling the crisis.

Mainstream economics ignores historical and structural factors by design

Margaret Heffernan’s new book “Uncharted” warns against giving up the power to shape our destiny to gurus and gadgets promising false certainty.

When people recognize just how dangerous covid is, they worry more about the economy

In this conversation with Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin, Pr Njuguna Ndung’u, a Kenyan economist, Director of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), a pan-African organization devoted to the advancement of economic policy research and training in sub-Saharan Africa, and former Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya (2007-2015) analyses how the pandemic creates more fragility in African economies, but also how reforms could be implemented during this crisis; and the urgent need for investment in strong health institutional capacities

That’s the amount of buybacks U.S. corporations funneled to shareholders during the past decade—rather than invest in technologies for the common good. This article is being published jointly by INET and The American Prospect

Colleges and universities need to be saved, not only from financial ruin, but also, all too often, from themselves.

How and Why Bankers Still Enjoy a Global Rescue Network

To fulfill MLK’s vision of jobs and freedom for Black Americans, Washington must rein in corporate greed

Coming out of the Great Depression, America built a middle class, but systematic discrimination kept most African-American families from being part of it

To fight COVID-19, the EU must recognize that spending restraints have to go

Researchers reveal the enemies to stability and prosperity that threaten us all.

Gilead’s shareholders want exorbitant profits from Remdesivir, even though it was the public that enabled its development.

The Fed is taking an aggressive approach to put out the economic fires of the pandemic. But it needs to allow for flexibility as some business models irreparably change.

The speed and duration of COVID-19 economic recovery will depend on how the government will finance emergency programs.

In this conversation with Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin, Pr Takyiwaa Manuh analyses how the pandemic has disproportionately affected women at different levels especially in Ghana, and describes why governments need to focus more strongly on the gendered impacts of COVID-19 in both their sanitary and economic response.

The Occupational Safety Health Administration was created 50 years ago. Today, it’s in dire straits, say OSHA’s leaders during the Obama administration

The activist and author shares a free-ranging conversation with INET president Rob Johnson.

Do the benefits of new technologies accrue primarily to inventors, early investors, and highly skilled users, or to society more widely as their adoption generates employment growth?

COVID has meant unemployment for the many and a corporate profit-fueled windfall for the few.

Entretien avec Pr Felwine Sarr, Professeur Titulaire des Universités et agrégé en économie à l’Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis au Sénégal, pour la série d’INET sur COVID-19 et l’Afrique

An interview with Professor Felwine Sarr, Professor of Economics at the Université Gaston Berger of Saint-Louis in Senegal, for INET’s series on COVID-19 and Africa

Since the 1980s, the enemy of equal employment opportunity through upward socioeconomic mobility has been the pervasive and entrenched corporate-governance ideology and practice of maximizing shareholder value.

An interview with Dr Fatima Denton, Director of the United Nations University – Institute for Natural Resources in Africa, for INET’s series on COVID-19 and Africa

Economist Darrick Hamilton explains why confronting the racial wealth gap is the only way to address 400 years of discrimination.

Regardless of what Trump says, the economic pain of the pandemic isn’t going anywhere

Economist Darrick Hamilton explains that pursuit of profit, not hatred of black people, is the real root of discrimination.

An interview with Pr Benno Ndulu, the former Governor of the Bank of Tanzania, for INET’s series on COVID-19 and Africa

An introduction to a series of interviews conducted by Dr. Dr. Folashadé Soulé and Dr. Camilla Toulmin in support of INET’s Commission on Global Economic Transformation (CGET)

Abstract, “basic science” research is essential to drug discovery. It is also largely funded by the public sector.

A special note from INET board member john a. powell

The Great Migration brought many freedmen to the North, and the reaction to that brought the Southern Mind to northern police officers as well.

The world is on edge at the prospect of a resurgent wave of infections. Models and speculation are rife, but facts remain scarce, which is why the events in Wisconsin on April 7, and their eventual impact, are so important.

The Calamity of Germany’s Distorted Perception of Italy

Over five phased announcements last week, the Indian government set in motion an unprecedented fiscal stimulus. Gaurav Dalmia looks at India’s near-term economic challenges and offers a prescription on how privatisation can help India achieve its objectives.

John Ruskin helps shed light on what it means to have an economy that demands we die for it

To able to deal with these consequences, our crisis response now should not lock us in into a permanent state of austerity, greater inequality and heightened vulnerability to future health calamities. New-old social democratic solutions are needed more than ever before.

Once again, income earned by the many is used to save the wealth of the few.

We find empirical evidence that changes in market sentiment drive unforeseeable change in how stock returns unfold over time, thereby engendering Knightian uncertainty.

A look at the American household debt boom

How the fear-of-the-new transformed a “miracle” into an aborted attempt at catching-up

Evidence shows pharmaceutical companies won’t stop price-gouging and risking American lives for financial gain in this time of crises – unless we force them.

A Report From the Front Line

States can be sorted into two groups with statistically significantly different productivity regimes. In this sense, the US economy shows signs of dualism—which is the idea that the economy consists of heterogeneous units that exhibit different behaviors and levels of performance.

A Template to Prevent a Global Debt Crisis?

With the COVID-19 death toll rising, we should question the wisdom and morality of an IP system that silently condemns millions of human beings to suffering and death every year.

Just before the crisis, European countries were designing austerity reforms that would increase inequality and reduce internal demand. Could they return?

Researchers have shown that the financial and economic impacts of denying women abortion care can last years

Contrary to pharmaceutical company claims, revenue from high insulin prices are going to shareholders, not R&D

A call to action for a world economy in crisis

Financial industry donations to members of Congress lead to the adoption of pro-bank policies

Austerity policies will slow recovery and should be rejected

Much historical commentary emphasizes how pandemics restructure long-standing social and political arrangements. The observation applies to macroeconomics as well.

Economist Gordon Lafer describes a race against the education technology industry to do what’s right for America’s kids

The scale of firm exposure to the coronavirus is unprecedented by earlier outbreaks, spans all major economies and is pervasive across all industries

What ails the EU Green Deal is exactly what troubles the Union in general — an absence of social democracy at work

During WWII FDR mobilized private manufacturers to support the war effort. To keep Americans healthy, we need to do the same now for medical equipment

Effective and quick federal policy response is critical to create conditions for a quick recovery.

Incomes Destroyed at the Bottom, Profits Supported at the Top

William Lazonick emphasizes that keeping workers productively employed is key to economic recovery from Covid-19 as well as a healthy economic future

As we face a coronavirus-induced health and economic crisis of uncertain duration, policy makers should be particularly concerned about private equity’s heightened use of debt to buy out healthcare providers and take them private, with no regulatory oversight.

It’s time for business executives, employees, and taxpayers to come together to help get us out of the pandemic and create conditions for a sustainable and equitable future

If the public is to be called upon for the second time in twelve years to bail out businesses, it should get something back for its money. Bailed out firms should be compelled to issue convertible bonds to the government.

The younger generation, already saddled with student debt and uncertain jobs, will pay a high price as the crisis unfolds.

If the European Central Bank does not jump to the aid of peripheral countries weakened by the pandemic, the Eurozone could collapse.

Establishing legal responsibility in the fissured workplace

Economist and feminist Victoria Bateman reveals some naked truths about the failings of economics.

A report from the Commission on Global Economic Transformation’s meeting in West Africa

Some Personal Reflections on a Half Century of Friendship and Appreciation

Freeing ourselves from reliance on fossil fuels is not only good for the planet and future generations. It also saves lives here and now, not just in the far future.

Lower Income Towns in New Hampshire Voted Heavily for Sanders; Richer Towns Did the Opposite.

Jonathan Haidt deploys insights from moral psychology to help us see ourselves and each other more clearly

How models treat innovation may be just as important as their assumptions about climate damages

The central bank today is not just the government’s bank, but also a bankers’ bank, a truly hybrid institution

How Penrosian Learning Confronts the Neoclassical Fallacy

Without new economic thinking, macro policy will retain its deflationary biases and secular stagnation remains the ‘normal’.

Containing Slaves, Freedmen, Jim Crow laws and the Great Migration

The AEA and the Crisis of Expertise

On the Modern Economic Theory of Incentives, Markets, and Socialism

In an economic context that remains uncertain, the biggest loser of the UK elections may well be our health and that of the environment.

The Irresistible Force Meets the Immovable Object?

A critique of Mankiw’s Macroeconomics

One thing is clear – the ‘get Brexit done’ slogan resonated in a country which had been living on a series of knife edges as one ‘crunch’ time after another came and went.

Brexit uncertainty has already taken an economic toll

Many of the challenges facing the new EU Presidency will need to be addressed not only at the European level but within a reinvigorated multilateral framework.

In her new book, Don’t Be Evil, Rana Foroohar explores how to confront companies like Google and their under-regulated stampede over all of us.

Pharmaceutical drugs are often a matter of life or death. It should be a prime objective of government policy to rid the industry of financialization.

Repeat after me: How much pipe should Fed plumbers lay if Fed plumbers like to lay pipe?

The U.S. economy is increasingly becoming a dual economy, where high productivity sectors—such as manufacturing—and high pay sectors—such as finance and professional services—co-exist with low pay and low productivity sectors that employ most workers.

Political theorist Wendy Brown explores new threats to democracy and society

To make start-ups work for everyone, we need to put power back in the hands of workers.

National States and Conflicting Economic Priorities in the Making of the European Monetary System

Trying to predict the financial future is a fool’s errand, even for a genius

Policy hype but vintage fiscal economics from Godley, Lerner, and Keynes

Big Tech companies are swallowing up nascent competitors. Why aren’t regulators paying attention?

Author Jeremy Lent argues that western conceptual frameworks with roots in the Stone Age push us towards disaster. Time to let them go?

New research shows how citation metrics create perverse incentives for corruption in economics

Summers and Stansbury mark a dramatic shift from New Keynesian orthodoxy, but only make it halfway to understanding the demand-driven nature of stagnant growth

Mott walks us through answers many careful readers of Kalecki, Keynes, Steindl, and Minsky knew all along.

An update from the meeting of the Commission on Global Economic Transformation (CGET) in Cape Town