Levy Economics Institute Newsletter
Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
March 28, 2016
Upcoming Event
25th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference
April 12–13, 2016
25th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference
Will the Global Economic Environment Constrain US Growth and Employment?
Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

The registration deadline for the Institute’s 25th Annual Minsky Conference is April 1. Organized with underwriting support from the Ford Foundation, this year’s conference will address whether what appears to be a global economic slowdown will jeopardize the implementation and efficiency of Dodd-Frank regulatory reforms, the transition of monetary policy away from zero interest rates, and the “new” normal for fiscal policy, as well as the use of fiscal policies aimed at achieving sustainable growth and full employment. For a full list of speakers and online registration, click here.
New Publications
Jan Kregel Public Policy Brief No. 141, March 2016
What We Could Have Learned from the New Deal in Confronting the Recent Global Recession
Director of Research Jan Kregel proposes that in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008 and the recession that followed we have overlooked many of the most important lessons to be drawn from the policies introduced after the Great Depression. In his latest public policy brief Kregel surveys the economic and political climate faced by President Roosevelt in 1933. Kregel suggests that the lesson we may draw from history is that solving the banking crisis, then and now, is not the solution to our economic woes. The health of the consumer and the rejection of fiscal austerity in favor of necessary government expenditures as the appropriate policy tool to ensure stability (and not as a “necessary evil”) must be the focus of our efforts. Roosevelt succeeded in beating back the budget balancers of his day. Today, we have yet to take up this fight and so remain waiting for the economy to revive, while we have done much for Wall Street and very little for Main Street.

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Working Paper No. 862, March 2016
Working Paper No. 862, March 2016
Japan’s Liquidity Trap
Tanweer Akram

Tanweer Akram, Thrivent Financial, discusses Japan’s decades-long struggle with economic stagnation, deflation, and low interest rates: the country is caught in a liquidity trap. Akram examines Japan’s liquidity trap in light of the structure and performance of its economy since the onset of stagnation. He argues that a Keynesian perspective offers valuable lessons for both diagnosing and addressing the Japanese economy. Rather than a policy of sustained monetary or quantitative easing, as suggested by many mainstream analyses, Akram proposes an integrated Keynesian strategy that relies on fiscal policy and employment creation to induce a higher expected marginal efficiency of capital. The central bank would support this policy by stabilizing the yield curve and reducing interest rate volatility, thus quelling investors’ expectations of capital loss. Keynes’s analysis and proposal for generating effective demand, Akram concludes, may offer the most direct path out of Japan’s liquidity trap.

» Read complete text (pdf)
Media and Web Coverage

This article on the rise of Modern Money Theory, with its unconventional take on government spending in nations with their own currency, features comments by Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray.

Research Associate Pavlina R. Tcherneva discusses the eurozone’s fundamental flaw, the refugee crisis, and Brexit with Ameera David of “Boom Bust.” (Interview begins at 21:30.)
         
In This Issue
25th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference
What We Could Have Learned from the New Deal in Confronting the Recent Global Recession
Japan’s Liquidity Trap
Media and Web Coverage
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