Publications

333 publications found, searching for 'Economic Policy for the 21st Century '

• Working Paper No. 1102
  December 12, 2025

  No More than Double: Can a Single Rule Tame Capitalism?

  Lorenzo Esposito and Giuseppe Mastromatteo
  Abstract

  Capitalism’s defining feature—profit maximization without limits—drives instability, inequality, and environmental degradation. Traditional policies such as taxation and regulation have failed to curb this dynamic because they do not alter firms’…more

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• Working Paper No. 1101
  November 18, 2025

  Currencies Come and Go, but Employment Always Takes Root

  Esteban Cruz-Hidalgo, Stuart Medina-Miltimore, and Agustín Mario
  Abstract

  This paper explores a development strategy for peripheral economies by advocating for a paradigm shift from traditional economic models that rely on accumulating foreign reserves. It proposes the job guarantee…more

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• Working Paper No. 1097
  October 08, 2025

  How Fiscal Policy Matters: An Empirical Analysis of the “Crowding-In” Effects of Public Infrastructure Investment in India

  Venkat Hariharan Asha, Ajay Ojha, Sutharson T., and Lekha S. Chakraborty
  Abstract

  Using high-frequency data, the paper analyzes the link between public infrastructure investment and private corporate investment in India for the decade ending 2023–24. We adopt the ARDL model to investigate…more

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• Working Paper No. 1090
  August 14, 2025

  Education and Economic Isolation

  Yousuf Daas, Sameh Hallaq, Danilo Leite Dalmon, and Jennifer Olmsted
  Abstract

  This study examines the impact of the Gaza blockade on private returns to education, with a focus on regional and gender disparities in the Palestinian territories. Using data from the…more

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• Working Paper No. 1089
  August 07, 2025

  Rising Temperatures, Falling Yields: The Effect of Climate Shocks on Olive Oil Production in Palestine

  Yousuf Daas, Sameh Hallaq, Kenichi Kashiwagi, and Keiichi Ogawa
  Abstract

  This study investigates the effect of climate shocks on olive oil production in Palestine, a region acutely vulnerable to both environmental change and political instability. We estimate the influences of…more

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• Working Paper No. 1084
  July 09, 2025

  MMT: Heuristics versus Paradigm Shift?

  L. Randall Wray
  Abstract

  This is a revised version of the keynote address presented at the FDR library for the Levy Institute Summer Seminar on Money, Finance, and Public Policy on June 20th, 2025.

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• Policy Note No. 2025/4
  May 22, 2025

  Ratings Agencies Downgrade the Dollar’s Exorbitant Privilege

  L. Randall Wray
  Abstract

  They are at it again. Moody’s has finally joined the other two ratings agencies in downgrading US government debt. Standard & Poor’s downgrade was first in 2011[1], while Fitch waited…more

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• Policy Note No. 2025/2
  April 21, 2025

  Remembering Pope Francis’s Call for a Universal Basic Wage

  Pavlina R. Tcherneva
  Abstract

  On April 21, 2025, a day after Easter Sunday, the world mourned the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis. Five years earlier, on Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020—amid the devastating…more

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• Policy Note No. 2025/1
  April 21, 2025

  Trump’s Tariffs: Ending Globalization

  Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Giuliano Toshiro Yajima, and Gennaro Zezza
  Abstract

  The Trump administration is reintroducing a number of 40-year-old, Reagan-era economic and military policies, but is particularly preoccupied with the imposition of tariffs for all of the country’s imports. Trump,…more

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• Working Paper No. 1080
  April 04, 2025

  Protecting Social Security: The Case Against Extending the Full Retirement Age

  Edward Lane
  Abstract

  The Social Security “full retirement age” (FRA) is the age at which retirement income benefits are available without reduction for early commencement. Presently, that age is 67 for those born…more

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• Working Paper No. 1078
  April 01, 2025

  “A Concentration of Private Power without Equal in History”

  William Van Lear and Daniel Hutchinson
  Abstract

  This manuscript presents a detailed summary and reassessment of the 1941 final report of the Temporary National Economic Committee (TNEC). We portion the manuscript into four major parts: background, major…more

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• Public Policy Brief No. 158
  March 04, 2025

  That “Vision Thing”: Formulating a Winning Policy Agenda

  Pavlina R. Tcherneva and L. Randall Wray
  Abstract

  For a PDF version of this Public Policy Brief, please click here. There are many ways to lose a presidential election, and pundits have come up with a long list:…more

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• Working Paper No. 1074
  December 24, 2024

  Political Conflict, Green Capabilities, and Growth Patterns in a Kaleckian Small Open Economy

  José Eduardo Alatorre, Gabriel Porcile, Julia Juarez, and Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid
  Abstract

  The paper presents a Kaleckian extended model exploring sustainable development, defined as growth that is economically stable, socially inclusive, and environmentally respectful. The model links CO2 emission trends with public…more

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• Working Paper No. 1073
  December 18, 2024

  Frankenstein in Fact and Fiction

  Robert Skidelsky
  Abstract

  This paper is based on remarks delivered at the EDI Keynote Lecture at Bard College, November 19th, 2024: ‘Frankenstein in Fact and Fiction.’ View a recording of the lecture on YouTube….more

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• Working Paper No. 1070
  December 10, 2024

  Notes on Money as Technology

  Raúl A. Carrillo
  Abstract

  Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 20, June 2024 Scholars and affiliates of the Levy Economics Institute have long demonstrated a granular understanding of the “operations” of money, which…more

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• Policy Note No. 2024/3
  November 07, 2024

  Trump Wins While Americans Vote for Progressive Policies

  Pavlina R. Tcherneva
  Abstract

  On November 5, 2024, American voters sent Donald Trump back to the White House. In 2020, he lost his bid for reelection to Joe Biden, after winning in 2016 against…more

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• Policy Note No. 2024/1
  October 11, 2024

  The Boy Who Cried Wolf About Government Debt

  Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray
  Abstract

  In a New York Times editorial, David Leonhardt recounts Aesop’s apocryphal story about the boy and the wolf, warning that while deficit hawks have so far been wrong, the growing government debt will eventually bite. He reports the economic plans of both presidential candidates would add to the debt that will soon exceed GDP and grow to 130 percent of annual output under a President Harris, or 140 percent with a Trump presidency.

  The story of the boy and the wolf was a fable, although it was within the realm of possibility. The fable of the debt wolf is not. While there are real world wolves—Leonhardt mentions climate catastrophe and autocratic leaders, and the authors would add rising inequality and the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of billionaires—authors Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray assert, federal debt is not one of them.

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• Working Paper No. 1056
  October 07, 2024

  Federal Tax Transfers and Demographic Transition: Balancing Equity and Efficiency

  Lekha S. Chakraborty and Yadawendra Singh
  Abstract

  Against the backdrop of demographic transition in India, the study highlights the necessity of integrating the elderly population as a critical factor in formula-based intergovernmental fiscal transfers. The demographic transition,…more

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• Working Paper No. 1054
  June 28, 2024

  Gender-Responsive Public Financial Management: The Indian Chronology of Gender Budgeting

  Lekha S. Chakraborty
  Abstract

  Gender budgeting is a public financial management (PFM) tool, used to ensure accountability mechanisms. The analysis of “process” indicators of gender-responsive PFM (GRPFM) reveals that India has been successful in…more

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• Working Paper No. 1045
  March 07, 2024

  Social Security and Gender Inequality

  Liudmila Malyshava and B. Oak McCoy
  Abstract

  This inquiry examines the role of federal policy in gender inequality using the principles of institutional adjustment (Foster 1981; Bush 1987) in the context of the Veblenian dichotomy of habit…more

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• Working Paper No. 1042
  February 13, 2024

  Saving Social Security

  Edward Lane
  Abstract

  For more than 25 years, the Social Security Trust Fund was projected to run out of money in 2033 (give or take a few years), potentially causing benefits to be…more

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• Working Paper No. 1040
  February 02, 2024

  COP28 and Environmental Federalism: Empirical Evidence from an Emerging Economy, India

  Lekha S. Chakraborty, Amandeep Kaur, Ranjan Kumar Mohanty, Divy Rangan, and Sanjana Das
  Abstract

  Against the backdrop of COP28, this paper investigates the impact of intergovernmental fiscal transfers (IGFT) on climate change commitments in India. Within the analytical framework of environmental federalism, we tested…more

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• Working Paper No. 1041
  February 02, 2024

  Amazon Green Recovery and Labor Market in Brazil

  Luiza Nassif Pires, Gilberto Tadeu Lima, Pedro Romero Marques, Tainari Taioka, and José Bergamin
  Abstract

  Announced in June 2021, the never-implemented Green Recovery Plan for the Brazilian Legal Amazon Region (GRP) would be a green transition initiative to be carried out by the state governments…more

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• Working Paper No. 1038
  January 29, 2024

  Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren—90 Years Later

  Jörg Bibow
  Abstract

  This paper revisits Keynes’s (1930) essay titled “The economic possibilities for our grandchildren.” We discuss the three broader trends identified by Keynes that he expected would come to characterize the…more

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