Macroeconomics

A model that captures key vulnerabilities and structural weaknesses of developing countries’ trade and production structures.

A Balance-of-Payments Constrained Growth Perspective

Why the conventional tools of the Phillips Curve, NAIRU, potential output, and money-supply growth are useless

Why does the apparently prescient and correct “key currency” view remain an embattled minority view?

Things are going to break and central banks are going to have to respond, but the mental frame that most people will be using is not well suited for understanding how the world now works

A Bank for International Settlements study says 60+ trillion dollars of off-the-books currency swaps could be a profound, systematic risk. Robert Johnson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news.

Setting the record straight and identifying less destructive pathways forward than round after round of interest rate increases.

A critical reappraisal of the case in favor of monetary tightening pressed by inflation hawks is overdue.

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

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

What Strategies can Break This Dependency?

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.

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

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.

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.

In memory of Lance Taylor

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

Contrary to the neoclassical loanable funds theory, historical bond yields show Keynes was right that “convictions” anchor long-term interest rates

Contrary to the neoclassical loanable funds theory, historical bond yields show Keynes was right that “convictions” anchor long-term interest rates

A comment on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rule “Share Repurchase Disclosure Modernization”

Business firms are not alone in making investments in the productive capabilities required to generate innovative goods and services. Household units and government agencies also make investments in productive capabilities upon which business firms rely for their own investment activities.

Economics Nobel Laureate Michael Spence discusses the profound changes that are rippling through the global economy as we emerge from the COVID recession, where economic growth will have to rely more on productivity gains instead of the incorporation of excess labor capacity and what this would mean for countries around the world.

An alternative to Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models

How could the new SDR allocation help developing countries?

How could the new SDR allocation help developing countries?

VIDEO

The INET community mourns Harcourt’s passing

By helping abate the liquidity crisis, incidences of banks becoming insolvent are reduced, and hence moral hazard in its severest form is minimized.

By helping abate the liquidity crisis, incidences of banks becoming insolvent are reduced, and hence moral hazard in its severest form is minimized.

Economists Claudia Sahm, Servaas Storm, and Pia Malaney share their views on the problem that has everyone freaking out. Here’s what it all means for your pocketbook – and your democracy.

Governments and civil society organizations must work together with UNCTAD to provide developing countries the tools — and the transformed governance regimes — they need to “build back better” through these challenging and difficult times.

Swift reorganization or liquidation of insolvent businesses is the single best policy to deal with corporate debt booms.

Swift reorganization or liquidation of insolvent businesses is the single best policy to deal with corporate debt booms.

What does Biden’s economic policy mean for the future?

Evidence from Survey Data of Inflation Forecasts

Going Down the Rabbit Hole at Jackson Hole

Occasionally, financial speculation fastens onto transformational technologies that have the potential to create a genuinely new economy.

Where are the US and Europe now and where could they be going?

What That Means For Biden’s Inflation Policy Trilemma

Is Victorian writer Walter Bagehot, whose adage “lending freely against good collateral at a penalty rate” has been gospel for central bankers, still relevant in a post-Great Financial Crisis world?

Is Victorian writer Walter Bagehot, whose adage “lending freely against good collateral at a penalty rate” has been gospel for central bankers, still relevant in a post-Great Financial Crisis world?

Despite fear-mongering about the latest Consumer Price Index, unemployment remains elevated and stimulus is needed to prevent a collapse in demand

Despite fear-mongering about the latest Consumer Price Index, unemployment remains elevated and stimulus is needed to prevent a collapse in demand

Contrary to the New Keynesian paradigm, long-term unemployment can be reversed without a significant uptick in inflation

Contrary to the New Keynesian paradigm, long-term unemployment can be reversed without a significant uptick in inflation

Mortality and economic data show how constraints to government spending and a skepticism of redistributive policies have made the pandemic far worse

Mortality and economic data show how constraints to government spending and a skepticism of redistributive policies have made the pandemic far worse

How to Get Relief to Those Who Need It. Gosia Glinska in Conversation with Anton Korinek

There are several reasons why unprecedentedly low interest rates will probably not stimulate demand and may even threaten financial stability

The New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) is a straightjacket for macroeconomics

The New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) is a straightjacket for macroeconomics

Revival of failed austerity policies of the past is simply not an option

Comment on Paul Krugman’s recent observations on US inflation

Developments in the real economy have persistently challenged central tenets of older economic thinking, such as the supposed close connection between the money supply and inflation.

The Challenge to Bidenomics

Recognizing that inflation of the value of output and its costs of production must be equal, we focus on a cost-based macroeconomic structuralist approach in contrast to micro-oriented monetarist analysis.

The economy is likely to be crippled for months and fiscal rescue on a large scale, once again, is very much necessary.

On the occasion of the ASSA 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting (Jan. 3-5), Peter Bofinger presents a “10 Best of” Mankiw list

Individual EU member states ought to issue perpetual bonds

Lance Taylor and Özlem Ömer respond to Andrew Smithers’s final comment on their working paper

The third and final round of response from Andrew Smithers on Lance Taylor’s INET working paper on the alleged “global savings glut.”

Human societies have always coevolved with technology, but how can we think of technology? Is it an external force outside our control, or do we have a say in its direction, development and deployment?

A discussion with Lance Taylor and Özlem Ömer, authors of INET’s new book Macroeconomics Inequality from Reagan to Trump

In a new book from Cambridge University Press, Lance Taylor reveals that wage repression — far more than monopoly power, offshoring or technological change — is driving rising inequality.

Financial commentator Andrew Smithers responds to Lance Taylor’s INET working paper. You may also read Taylor’s response to Smithers’s comment here.

Lance Taylor responds to Andrew Smithers’s comment on his INET working paper, “Germany and China Have Savings Gluts, the USA Is a Sump: So What?”

A “global saving glut” was invented by Ben Bernanke in 2005 as a label for positive net lending (imports exceeding exports) to the American economy by the rest of the world. However, there is a more plausible explanation for the persistent trade imbalance between the US and its major trading partners.

An alternative look at the “global savings glut”

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.

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

What counts as work and what doesn’t?

The Calamity of Germany’s Distorted Perception of Italy

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

A Report From the Front Line

A call to action for a world economy in crisis

IMPORTANT: Due to growing concerns around the coronavirus, the INET Conference, as well as these workshops will be postponed. Applicants will soon be provided further information.

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.

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

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

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

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

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