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In the face of  laissez-faire capitalism at home and resurgent nationalism across the globe, INET offers an innovative look at the causes of—and solutions for—the problems that ail a fissuring world economy.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The corporate titans of yore once offered a sizable wage premium over smaller employers—but not anymore. What happened?

The shocking—but illustrative—example of how an Italian government agency concocted statistics to evaluate scholarship, hid them from the public, and masqueraded them as science. It’s a growing phenomenon

Behind towering figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. were the taxi dispatchers, pharmacists, grocers, and other small business owners who were instrumental in making civil rights a reality.

China is now the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter, accounting for over 25% of the global total. But the country has also demonstrated a growing understanding that a truly green economy promises to improve quality of life and create enormous opportunities for technological and political leadership.

To get justice, targets must show measurable harm. Economists can help

It wasn’t Comey or the Russians. Trump prevailed because his campaign carefully targeted key states with late infusions of big money from private equity, casinos, and other far right contributors, a remarkable wave of donations from small donors, and substantial infusions from the candidate himself.

The renowned feminist economist discusses the importance of heterodoxy, radicalism, and social justice to the discipline

Sen. Tammy Baldwin features arguments in questions to SEC nominees, pharmaceutical industry witness

Contrary to conventional wisdom, government stimulus can improve the health of the economy for years after, without inflationary side effects 

Forget the myth of a savings glut causing near-zero interest rates. We have a shortage of aggregate demand, and only public spending and raising wages will change that.

Summers discusses inequality, the GOP tax plan, and our economic future

Inequality isn’t driven by taxes—it’s driven by the power of capital in relation to workers

Skewed measures of “research output” hold back women who think differently or study smaller subfields in economics—and it’s harming the discipline as a whole

Two years after the 2015 Paris Agreement, where we stand today is better than you may think 

Austerity measures have battered the region and created instability throughout the Eurozone. Here’s one way out of the mess.

With unemployment reaching very low levels in major economies, despite low – and slowly rising – inflation, it’s time for central banks to rethink their reliance on the so-called natural rate. No numerical target for this rate can serve as an anchor for monetary policy.

From the Rust Belt to Rural America, Economic and Social Distress Helped Shape the 2016 US Presidential Election Outcome

The 2008 financial crisis was a shock to faith in entirely free financial markets. But the neoliberal assumptions underlying the previously dominant “Washington Consensus” continue to inform much Western commentary on China’s economy.

How Women Are Forced to Conform to the Research Habits and Interests of Men

How Germany, the EU and the economics field itself suffer from myopia—and what we can do about it

What can today’s economists learn from the 18th century Scottish thinkers who grappled with societal and economic change?

Animal rights, child welfare, social equality are all a direct legacy of the “cult of feeling” 

Financial Globalization and its Cryptocurrency Discontents

Once again, an out-of-control industry is threatening public health on a mammoth scale

Why it’s time to repeal the debt ceiling and replace it with a ‘truth in borrowing’ act

The Idea That Businesses Exist Solely to Enrich Shareholders Is Harmful Nonsense

The path of austerity could spread economic pain and social woes far beyond the Caribbean island, says public debt expert Martin Guzman 

In this episode of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Robert Johnson, about the political economy, inequality, and the failings of our technocratic institutions.

An examination of some little-known ways nation states and central banks prop up megabanks

New research shows that access to elite colleges varies by parents’ income—reinforcing inequality across generations 

When an economic model fails, it is reality—and the people living in it—who pay the bills while the model lives on, unscathed.

The same angst that Americans and Europeans have about the future of jobs is an order of magnitude higher in Asia.

Back-room deals on corporate tax reform won’t increase growth

The prevailing stock market ideology enriches value extractors, not value creators

As the Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow noted in 1987, computers are “everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Since then, the so-called productivity paradox has become ever more striking. Automation has eliminated many jobs. Robots and artificial intelligence now seem to promise (or threaten) yet more radical change. Yet productivity growth has slowed across the advanced economies; in Britain, labor is no more productive today than it was in 2007.

How a Banking Union Has Created Deep Divisions that Undermine the Eurozone’s Stability

Why it’s urgent that China adjust its balance of payment structure and safeguard its foreign assets

Greater efficiency, lower costs, and universal coverage make it the sustainable option, say some top economists

The famed short-seller offers a mid-2017 reality check for “fake fiscal news,” and economic pipe dreams, and sees “portents of even worse things”

Faced with rapid cost reductions for clean electricity generation, some commentators suggest that we no longer need the Paris agreement or other policy interventions, because technology alone can solve all problems.

McCloskey discusses her career, critiques of economics, and offers advice for young economists.

A new model probes why the US leads the world in jailing and imprisoning people, and what it will take to reverse course

Current proposals will worsen inequality and harm those Trump promised to protect—while further enriching the top 1%

Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) has released a new e-book, “Conversations on Dependency Theory”

Why some goods and services should stay in the public domain

This blog post looks at the aggregate picture and collates some micro evidence in a more robust estimating framework to shed light on this question.

Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord sets the US economy back

Globalization has fallen into disrepute; the myth of the prosperity and happiness-generating  free market has been dispelled. A visionary concept that provides guidance and direction is required now.

Demand, Secular Stagnation and the Vanishing Middle-Class

A look at America’s strange and dangerous approach to medicine, and how to fix it

This note comments on Eric Weinstein’s, “How and Why Government, Universities, and Industries Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers,” posted recently on INET’s website.

The reaction to repressive political conditions that prevailed in Brazil during the 1970s helped to produce a commitment to diversity and tolerance among Brazilian economists.

The energy transition is happening. But the pace of change depends on a range of technical, business, and societal factors.

A new book by economist Peter Temin finds that the U.S. is no longer one country, but dividing into two separate economic and political worlds

“The humility to accept that economic propositions cannot be universal would save us from self-defeating arrogance.” Economist Amit Bhaduri adds his perspective to our Experts on Trial discussion.

In his 2017 presidential address to the National Economic Association, Professor Darrick Hamilton warned that treating economics as a morally neutral ‘science’, and the discipline’s limited attention to structural barriers and overemphasis individual agency, has resulted in bad economics, and bad policy particularly as it relates to racial disparity.

Despite dismissive comments by the U.S. Treasury Secretary, facing the challenge posed by robotics replacing human labor raises key public policy questions 

The “War on Poverty,” and the impact of public policy

The decline in productivity growth has a longer history

Brazil’s current economic scenario does not resemble the emerging economy that until recently fueled the optimism of analysts and investors.

In this comment, we explain our objections to the SEC’s current formulation of the Pay Ratio Disclosure Rule on each of three grounds: the erroneous estimation of CEO pay; the unclear specification of the “median” worker; and the risk of normalizing a pay ratio that is far too high. Then we present the latest data on the remuneration of the 500 highest-paid CEOs in the United States, demonstrating the way in which the SEC’s measure of CEO pay that enters into the CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio tends to systematically underestimate actual executive pay.

Long term labor shortages do not happen naturally in market economies.

The health crisis afflicting working-class Americans recalls similar symptoms in Russia following the collapse of communism

Taxing the use of robotics may or may not be the answer, but the question remains how to compensate for the growing inequality created by our changing economies

In the age of Adam Smith, an economics that masqueraded as natural science and excluded the human condition actually suited the interests of the landed and the wealthy

Eurocentric modernism has unhinged us from our human nature, argues Rajani Kanth in his new book

INET grantee JW Mason has been engaged in an important debate with the Financial Times’ Matthew Klein over the relationship of household debt to income inequality

To mark International Women’s Day, Neva Goodwin argues that the crisis of income insecurity and longstanding gender inequality require a form of universal basic income that recognizes and rewards the value of household labor

Widespread criticism of elites and their ‘experts ’ raises questions about how economists should perceive their role, and what role societies should give them. We invited four scholars to start an online conversation by sharing their perspectives 

Policies based on faith in the “market” as a principle of social organization have wrought havoc with a founding principle of American democracy

New findings show that hourly wage-rates in China are higher than in middle-income countries and are approaching the levels of Greece and Portugal

As part of our “Experts on Trial Series”, Antonella Palumbo argues for stripping away ‘scientific’ shibboleths that mask social and political choices

A trade war would undoubtedly hurt both sides. But there is reason to believe that the US has more to lose. If nothing else, the Chinese seem to know precisely which weapons they have available to them. China could stop purchasing US aircraft, impose an embargo.

Research by Thomas Piketty, partly funded by the Institute, shows that wealth and income gaps in China are now larger than Europe’s, and approaching those of the US

Austerity has nurtured resentments that will likely make the populist right PVV the biggest winner in the March 15 election — but without the majority or the allies needed to govern

The practical question in Washington today is not whether regulations will go, but whether anything will replace them

A presentation from The Economics of Post-Factual Democracy, the first annual conference of The Center for Information and Bubble Studies (CIBS) at The University of Copenhagen

Institute scholar Arjun Jayadev argues that while TPP is dead, its damaging legacy on intellectual property rights is likely to shape future bilateral trade agreements

In his contribution to our ongoing series “Experts on Trial”, Alessandro Roncaglia argues that viewing economists as princes or servants of power is inherently authoritarian. We should instead see the economist as a socially and politically engaged citizen

Panic over the impact on  German savers of low interest rates and looming inflation neglects to mention that very few Germans are saving much

As part of our ongoing symposium “Experts on Trial”, Professor Sheila Dow argues that if voters have grown contemptuous of economists’ expertise, that’s because economics has been misrepresented as a technical subject separate from politics and moral judgments

Research by INET-affiliated scholars shows the US lags far behind its peers on inclusive growth, suggesting inequality is not an inevitable consequence of globalization and technology

Institute Governing Board member Anatole Kaletsky argues that the Trump Administration’s policies will boost inflation and spur interest-hikes as well as a stronger dollar more rapidly than many expect, but that the European Union’s economy is on the mend

Donald Trump’s presidency is a symptom of an interregnum between economic orders – a period that will result in a new balance between state and market. While his administration’s economic policies are unlikely to provide the right answer, they may at least show the world what not to do.

Institute President Rob Johnson interviewed by the New Yorker on hedge-fund managers and the market for air strips in New Zealand

From physicists to engineers to meds to plumbers: thoughts on Esther Duflo’s ASSA 2017 lecture on rediscovering the last art of economics

Beatrice Cherrier remembers Tony Atkinson’s influential intellectual, educational and institutional contribution to the field of public economics

Viewed in historical context, the weak recovery from the 2008 crisis has been slow and painful, but a sub-5% unemployment rate and healthy job and wage growth will be among the most important legacies Obama leaves to the next president

Any effort to replace the Affordable Care Act will be confronted by the same structural imbalances in the health care economy that the legislation’s authors faced

New evidence shows personal wealth interests drive Congressional votes

As part of an International Economy symposium, INET Research Director Tom Ferguson assessed the challenge facing central bankers through the lens of the missing virtues of Dorothy’s travel companions in the Wizard of Oz

A concentration of wealth and power that created a twin crisis of representation — in politics, and in expertise — set the stage for Donald Trump’s election victory, and has put America’s founding principles at risk

Presented by Professor Dan O’Flaherty at the Institute’s conference on the economics of race in Detroit on 11 November, 2016