Environment

The Nobel laureate economist discusses how an activist government is needed to tackle problems like climate change

John Kenneth Galbraith noted in 1973 that establishment economics had become the “invaluable ally of those whose exercise of power depends on an acquiescent public.” If anything, economists’ embrace of that role has grown stronger since then.

Wishful thinking and tinkering won’t cut it. Nothing short of a mass mobilization for deep de-carbonization across the global economy can avert the looming climate catastrophe. 

A response to economists who doubt our capacity to decarbonize while maintaining robust growth

The new IPCC Report is overly optimistic about global productivity growth and fossil fuel energy use. More dramatic, immediate action is needed

Market tweaks and incentives won’t save us from climate catastrophe. Only radical policy change will.

A new report shows an economically viable path to net-zero CO2 emissions in key industries by 2060

Economist James K. Boyce argues that the distribution of carbon tax revenue is just as important as the price itself

For the BRICS countries to not just grow their economies but also raise the standard of living of their people, inclusive growth that prioritizes poverty reduction is a must

The BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—play a crucial and growing role in the world economy. Sanjay Reddy kicks off our series exploring shifting social and economic dynamics within these countries, and what they mean for the global economy.    

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.

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.

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

The path to holding fossil fuel producers accountable for climate change & climate damages 

Climate Change and Denial

What economics can – and can’t – tell us about climate change 

A discussion with Michael Grubb, INET Grantee and Professor of Energy and Climate Change at University College of London.

What Do Citations Actually Measure in Economics and How Should Economic Journals and Department Review Committees Use This Data? 

The Implications of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative for China and the World Economy

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.

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

Ocean expert Peter Neill says the watery depths hold solutions to earth’s most pressing challenges

A discussion featuring Kenneth Smith, Head of the Trade and NAFTA Office of the Ministry of the Economy of Mexico, and Jay Pelosky, Principal of Pelosky Global Strategies.

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

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

Explore your curiosity in economics in an open and critical community.

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

Smick argues that distortions of capitalism have fed populist rebellion, and that reviving a capitalism that offers opportunity for average people to increase their earnings is an urgent priority if America’s political economy is to be stabilized.

Notes from the Institute’s Director of Research on some significant papers and contributions produced in 2016 under the INET rubric 

In the 40th anniversary year of John Kenneth Galbraith’s Age of Uncertainty, the 1970s look remarkably stable in comparison with today’s turbulent world 

A conversation with Isaac Stone Fish, Senior Fellow at the Asia Society’s Center for U.S. – China Relations and Asia Editor at Foreign Policy Magazine.

A conversation with Richard Vague, Managing Partner at Gabriel Investments and Chairman of the Governor’s Woods Foundation.

Institute grantee Boyce cited for integrating ‘ecological, developmental and justice-oriented approaches’ into economics

China is drowning in it. The whole world has too much of it. History suggests: This won’t end well.

Estimated space requirements for solar energy sufficient to power the entire world are reassuringly trivial, at 0.5-1% of global land area. For individual countries however, the challenges vary greatly, reflecting dramatic differences in population density.

A comment on Goher-Ur-Rehman Mir and Servaas Storm’s Carbon Emissions and Economic Growth: Production Based vs Consumption-Based Evidence on Decoupling

We are grateful to Michael Grubb, Annela Anger-Kraavi, Igor Bashmakov, and Richard Wood for their interesting, empirically rich and structurally insightful commentary on our paper on the production-based and the consumption-based Carbon Kuznets Curve (CKC).

We assess the Carbon-Kuznets-Curve hypothesis using internationally consistent and comparable production-based versus consumption-based CO2 emissions data for 40 countries (and 35 industries) during 1995-2007 from the World Input Output Database (WIOD).

A stark warning from Institute researchers on the probability that ‘2°C capital stock’ will be reached in 2017

The tragic crisis in Flint, Michigan, where residents have been poisoned by lead contamination, is not just about drinking water. And it’s not just about Flint. It’s about race and class, and the stark contradiction between the American dream of equal rights and opportunity for all and the American nightmare of metastasizing inequality of wealth and power.

Would having more women in leadership have prevented the financial crisis?

Many public debates about climate change now focus on the economic “costs” of taking action.

Contemporary mainstream economics has widely “poisoned the well” from which people get their ideas about the relationship between economics and ethics.

While a substantial literature in economics and finance has concluded that women are more risk averse than men, this conclusion merits reconsideration.

Will environmental limits, including limits on the climate system, slow or even halt economic growth? If not, how will the nature of economic growth have to shift?

Our shared concern – 20 years after Rio, yet poor progress towards wellbeing

Globalization has improved the living standards of hundreds of millions of people – but growing resource scarcity means it risks becoming a victim of its own success.

All cultural narratives, worldviews, religious doctrines, political ideologies, and academic paradigms are ‘social constructs.’

Many models of economic growth exclude materials from the production function. Growing environmental pressures and resource prices suggest that this may be increasingly inappropriate.

The present paradox, as ecological economist Bill Rees is fond of putting it, is simple yet profoundly troubling: “The ecologically necessary is politically infeasible, but the politically feasible is ecologically irrelevant.”

Evidence of climate change is widely accepted by scientists.

Three major crises are confronting the world. The first is the increasing and uneven burden of humans on the biosphere, and the observation that we have already surpassed the ‘safe operating space’ for humanity with respect to three planetary boundaries: climate change, the nitrogen cycle and biodiversity loss.

How can we distribute growth globally when the developed world needs growth to emerge from debt overhangs and inequality between nations is still quite formidable?

In this paper we provide a summary and a guide to the literature for a new line of research which goes under the name of Economic Complexity and is partly performed incollaboration with INET.

There are a number of possible purposes in assessing the level of economic development of a country or part of a country. The assessment may provide an incentive for better development, particularly if it can be compared meaningfully with assessments for other countries.

In “The Ambivalence of Scarcity” which is my contribution to L’Enfer des choses. René Girard et la logique de l’économie, written by Jean-Pierre Dupuy and originally published in French in 1978, I attempt to apply mimetic theory to modern economics and to economicphenomena, and also to explain why economic issues and economics as a discipline occupy such an important place in the modern world.

The problem of value has always occupied a central place in economic thought and debate.

Healthy innovation economies are the main driver of prosperity in the 21st century. But the three players that have traditionally sponsored basic research and invention in those economies are no longer willing or able to perform that role.

A striking feature of the neoclassical economic theory which has been dominant in Western universities in recent years is that it has had so little to say about innovation and innovation policy which is useful for policy-makers.

It would be nonsensical to blame economists for not foreseeing the crisis; even less for causing it. It was obvious there would be a crisis. It was impossible to foresee how it would start and evolve, and at what moment these events would occur.

The developed economies of Europe, North America, and Japan are facing tremendous challenges related to indebtedness and stagnation. How will the developing economies of Asia respond to this challenge as they reorient their growth strategies to meet the rising aspirations oftheir people?

The Foundations of Economic Prosperity: The Lessons of Innovation Process and History

Innovation is essential to economic growth. However, it appears that the ways in which we pursue innovation policies have aggravated inequality. Inequality is an increasingly contentious political issue in both wealthy and emerging economies.

The logic of deep global capitalist crises needs to be incorporated centrally into an understanding of the changes in the within-country inequality levels. I present a theoretical framework that incorporates two levels of political economic processes. First,global capitalist crises lead to the creation of an institutional structure or a regime in the capitalist centers that influences inequality in these core countries and in the periphery. Second the class configuration in the non-core countries - a set of institutional arrangements that can be termed local political economy - also plays a key role in determining inequality outcomes.

The paper presents a newly compiled and improved database of national household surveys between 1988 and 2008. In 2008, the global Gini index is around 70.5 percent having declined by approximately 2 Gini points over this twenty year period. When it is adjusted for the likely under-reporting of top incomes in surveys by using the gap between national accounts consumption and survey means in combination with a Pareto-type imputation of the upper tail, the estimate is a much higher global Gini of almost 76 percent.

People adopt diverse measures to protect from contagion. I propose a taxonomy of protection technologies, and present a model to study the implications of the technology on the prevalence of infections and on welfare at different levels of exposure.

We provide an explanation for the large spatial wage disparities and low male migration in India based on the trade-off between consumption-smoothing, provided by caste-based rural insurance networks, and the income-gains from migration.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking has awarded $2 million in grants to fund 21 different projects as part of the latest round of its research grant program.

How well do our assumptions about the global challenges of energy, environment and economic development fit the facts?

This research project traces the history of German energy policy from 1945 to the present. It explores the political economy behind Germany’s transition from coal, to oil, to green energy, the crises driving these shifts, and the evolving efforts to balance affordability with security and environmental protection.

This research project investigates the air quality co-benefits of climate policy. Reduced burning of fossil fuels curbs not only CO2 emissions but also emissions of hazardous co-pollutants, such as particulate matter. The extent of air quality co-benefits relative to CO2 reduction varies across regions and pollution sources, and hence the distribution of emissions reductions matters for both efficiency and equity.

Since 2011, the Institute has partnered with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) to change the way the field approaches the interplay between economics and governance, accelerating the development of new economic thinking.

This paper discusses the main issues about increasing inequality, whether it matters and its impact on economic activity and growth. It starts by briefly considering the empirical evidence of the share of income going to the top one percent since 1945 in the advanced countries. It then considers whether this represents an increase in the productivity of the top one percent or merely an extraction of economic rent.

This research project analyses the possibility of achieving economic and financial stability, high employment, and good social outcomes, in the presence of clearly defined resource and environmental limits, even if these mean some limits to economic growth.

This research project discovers how real people, not just the abstractions of traditional economic theory, respond to various possible policy interventions aimed to bring climate change under control and thus which policies will have the biggest impact.

This research project explores the relationship between environmental regulation, innovation, and competitiveness through a meta-analysis, which extracts key implications for economic thinking and future research, and unique datasets on patented “environmental” inventions.

This research project proposes linking emission fees to actual temperatures, thereby helping to break the policy stalemate and reach agreement on an effective policy.

Repression in China today is at its most severe point since the aftermath of 1989. David Wu discusses the tensions inherent in a one-party state which is struggling to aspire toward a more predictable rule of law.

Our partnership with the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, is conducting visionary interdisciplinary research on a wide range of economic and public policy challenges.

This research project develops a comprehensive research agenda to formulate proposals that will help make the financial sector sustainable and facilitate a transition to sustainable economic development.

This research project explores the implications for the economics of gender stereotypes that consider self-interested economic behavior and risk-taking to be masculine and care and caution to be feminine.

Using data on industrial air pollution exposure in the United States, we compute three measures of environmental inequality: the Gini coefficient of exposure, the ratio of median exposure of minorities to that of non-Hispanic whites, and the ratio of median exposure of poor households to that of nonpoor households.