Macroeconomics

Europe’s new fiscal rules still bind policy to fragile estimates of potential output. For Italy, targeting lower unemployment could sustain stronger growth, improve deficit outcomes, and expose the self-defeating logic of austerity when debt is measured against a stagnating economy.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), New York, and the INET Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) are pleased to partner with the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, in organising the 6th India Public Policy Network Conference (IPPN), to be held from 8-11 June 2026 at NLSIU, Bengaluru, India.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and the Cambridge Central Asia Forum, University of Cambridge, in partnership with The Green Industrial Policy in the Age of Rare Metals: A Transregional Comparison of Growth Strategies in Rare Earth Mining Project (Funded by European Research Council (ERC) administered by University of Sussex, UK., are organizing the Research in Action Workshop 2026: The Science of Critical Minerals and the Realigning Global Order, on 27–28 April 2026 at the University of Cambridge.

The struggle over the Federal Reserve is not just a dispute about central bank independence. It is a constitutional conflict over democratic sovereignty itself: in a representative system, the power to make money belongs first to the legislature, not the executive.

As the Supreme Court’s unitary executive theory reaches the Federal Reserve, a deeper constitutional question comes into view: who holds the power to make money?

Authors Bill Bergman and Larry Feltes argue that declining public confidence in government and financial institutions is putting the U.S. economy in peril — and a crisis could come faster than you think.

Storm argues the AI data-centre investment boom is creating a bubble that will be socially and financially expensive when it pops.

Storm argues the AI data-centre investment boom is creating a bubble that will be socially and financially expensive when it pops.

Europe’s revamped fiscal rules promise discipline and stability, but Italy’s numbers tell a different story. Once realistic multipliers and hysteresis are built in, consolidation pushes debt up, growth down, and recessionary pressure outwards across the eurozone, hardly a recipe for sustainability.

Investigations into the possible effects of the fiscal consolidations required under the new European fiscal rules on Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio find that the new governance framework may lead to the pro-cyclical tightening, weaker growth and adverse debt dynamics that characterized earlier phases of EU fiscal governance.

The soaring costs of city life appear to be sending urban voters toward progressive leaders who promise relief, both in the U.S. and globally.

The idea is finally catching on, but many still miss how deeply it’s driving inflation, masking wage losses, and complicating recovery.

Hughes discusses his recent book Marketcrafters, and how markets are deliberately built with outcomes that can serve the public good – or not. He uses this lens to unpack today’s economic flashpoints, from the Fed to crypto to climate.

The Federal Reserve is experiencing something new in its history: sustained and sizable operating losses. These losses—currently running at more than $100 billion a year on an annualized basis—stem largely from the sharp rise in short-term interest rates, which has increased the interest the Fed pays on bank reserves while the income from its long-term securities portfolio remains comparatively low.

Inflation persists not just because of spending or interest rates, but because underlying social conflicts over income, expectations, and power remain unresolved.