Publications

1686 publications found

• Research Project Report January 02, 2008

  Joint Project of UNDP and Levy Institute on Public Employment

  Abstract

  Joint UNDP—Levy Institute Study Focuses on Employment Guarantee Strategies The recent financial turmoil has brought with it worldwide acceptance of the fact that, when markets fail, government intervention is indispensable. One manifestation of market failure, within the sphere of production, is the inability of private sector investment to absorb surplus labor. In such instances, government […]

• Working Paper December 21, 2007

  American Jewish Opinion about the Future of the West Bank

  Abstract

  American Jewish opinion about the Arab-Israel conflict matters for both American and Israeli politics as well as for American Jewish life. This paper undertakes an analysis of that opinion based on American Jewish Committee (AJC) annual polls. Recently, the AJC made the individual-level datasets for the 2000–05 period available to researchers. The paper focuses on […]

• Working Paper December 20, 2007

  Financialization

  Abstract

  Financialization is a process whereby financial markets, financial institutions, and financial elites gain greater influence over economic policy and economic outcomes. Financialization transforms the functioning of economic systems at both the macro and micro levels. Its principal impacts are to (1) elevate the significance of the financial sector relative to the real sector, (2) transfer […]

• Working Paper December 19, 2007

  Promotion Nationale

  Abstract

  Created in 1961, Promotion Nationale (PN) is an autonomous public entity in charge of mobilizing an underemployed or unemployed workforce for the implementation of labor-intensive projects, calling upon a simple technology likely to provide employment to unskilled workers. It is one of the major programs of social protection in Morocco—the oldest, most important, and best-targeted […]

• Working Paper December 13, 2007

  The Natural Instability of Financial Markets

  Abstract

  This paper contrasts the economic incentives implicit in the Keynes-Minsky approach to inherent financial market instability with the incentives behind the traditional equilibrium approach leading to market stability to provide a framework for analyzing the stability induced by the recent changes in bank regulation to modernize financial services and the evolution of financial engineering innovations […]

• Working Paper December 10, 2007

  Lessons from the Subprime Meltdown

  Abstract

  This paper uses Hyman P. Minsky’s approach to analyze the current international financial crisis, which was initiated by problems in the American real estate market. In a 1987 manuscript, Minsky had already recognized the importance of the trend toward securitization of home mortgages. This paper identifies the causes and consequences of the financial innovations that […]

• Strategic Analysis November 30, 2007

  The US Economy: Is There a Way Out of the Woods?

  Abstract

  In their latest Strategic Analysis, Distinguished Scholar Wynne Godley, President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, and Research Scholars Greg Hannsgen and Gennaro Zezza review recent events in the housing and financial markets to obtain a likely scenario for the evolution of household spending in the United States. They forecast a significant drop in borrowing and private expenditure […]

• Working Paper November 29, 2007

  Earnings Functions and the Measurement of the Determinants of Wage Dispersion

  Abstract

  This paper extends the famous Blinder and Oaxaca (1973) discrimination in several directions. First, the wage difference breakdown is not limited to two groups. Second, a decomposition technique is proposed that allows analysis of the determinants of the overall wage dispersion. The authors’ approach combines two techniques. The first of these is popular in the […]

• Working Paper November 14, 2007

  Nurkse and the Role of Finance in Development Economics

  Abstract

  Ragnar Nurkse was one the pioneers in development economics. This paper celebrates the hundredth anniversary of his birth with a critical retrospective of his overall contribution to the field, in particular his views on the importance of employment policy in mobilizing domestic resources and the difficulties surrounding the use of external resources to finance development. […]

• Working Paper November 09, 2007

  Public Employment and Women

  Abstract

  In 2002, Argentina implemented a large-scale public employment program to deal with the latest economic crisis and the ensuing massive unemployment and poverty. The program, known as Plan Jefes, offered part-time work for unemployed heads of households, and yet more than 70 percent of the people who turned up for work were women. The present […]

• Public Policy Brief October 26, 2007

  The US Credit Crunch of 2007

  Abstract

  It is now clear that most economists underestimated the widening economic impact of the credit crunch that has shaken American financial markets since at least mid-July. A credit crunch is an economic condition in which loans and investment capital are difficult to obtain; in such a period, banks and other lenders become wary of issuing […]

• Working Paper October 25, 2007

  Fiscal Deficit, Capital Formation, and Crowding Out in India

  Abstract

  This paper analyzes the real (direct) and financial crowding out in India between 1970–71 and 2002–03. Using an asymmetric vector autoregressive (VAR) model, the paper finds no real crowding out between public and private investment; rather, complementarity is observed between the two. The dynamics of financial crowding out is captured through the dual transmission mechanism […]

• Working Paper October 23, 2007

  What Are the Relative Macroeconomic Merits and Environmental Impacts of Direct Job Creation and Basic Income Guarantees?

  Abstract

  There is a body of literature that favors universal and unconditional public assurance policies over those that are targeted and means-tested. Two such proposals—the basic income proposal and job guarantees—are discussed here. The paper evaluates the impact of each program on macroeconomic stability, arguing that direct job creation has inherent stabilization features that are lacking […]

• Book Series October 15, 2007

  Government Spending on the Elderly

  Abstract

  The results are in: we are aging—individually and collectively, nationally and globally. In the United States, as in most countries with an advanced economy, the aging of the population will be a primary domestic public policy issue in the coming decades. According to Census Bureau estimates, the proportion of the elderly in the total population […]

• Public Policy Brief October 09, 2007

  Globalization and the Changing Trade Debate

  Abstract

  The failure of the Doha Development Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations in July 2006 was the first major collapse of a multilateral trade round since World War II. Research Associate Thomas Palley sees the failure as an event that could mark the close of a 60-year era of trade policy largely centered on […]

• Working Paper September 21, 2007

  The Right to a Job, the Right Types of Projects

  Abstract

  There is now widespread recognition that in most countries, private-sector investment has not been able to absorb surplus labor. This is all the more the case for poor unskilled people. Public works programs and employment guarantee schemes in South Africa, India, and other countries provide jobs while creating public assets. In addition to physical infrastructure, […]

• Working Paper September 13, 2007

  Minsky’s Approach to Employment Policy and Poverty

  Abstract

  While Hyman P. Minsky is best known for his work on financial instability, he was also intimately involved in the postwar debates about fiscal policy and what would become the War on Poverty. Indeed, at the University of California, Berkeley, he was a vehement critic of the policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and […]

• Working Paper September 10, 2007

  The Continuing Legacy of John Maynard Keynes

  Abstract

  This working paper examines the legacy of Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936) on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of its publication and the 60th anniversary of Keynes’s death. The paper incorporates some of the latest research by prominent followers of Keynes, presented at the 9th International Post Keynesian Conference in […]

• Working Paper September 04, 2007

  Inequality of Life Chances and the Measurement of Social Immobility

  Abstract

  This paper begins by proposing two cardinal measures of inequality in life chances. Using as its database a matrix in which the lines correspond to the social category of parents and the columns to the income distribution of their children, it then highlights the importance of the marginal distributions when comparing social immobility within two […]

• Working Paper September 03, 2007

  Endogenous Money

  Abstract

  While the mainstream long argued that the central bank could use quantitative constraints as a means to controlling the private creation of money, most economists now recognize that the central bank can only set the overnight interest rate—which has only an indirect impact on the quantity of reserves and the quantity of privately created money. […]

• Working Paper August 15, 2007

  The Fed’s Real Reaction Function

  Abstract

  Using a VAR model of the American economy from 1984 to 2003, we find that, contrary to official claims, the Federal Reserve does not target inflation or react to “inflation signals.” Rather, the Fed reacts to the very “real” signal sent by unemployment, in a way that suggests that a baseless fear of full employment […]

• Working Paper August 13, 2007

  A Post-Keynesian View of Central Bank Independence, Policy Targets, and the Rules-versus-Discretion Debate

  Abstract

  This paper addresses three issues surrounding monetary policy formation: policy independence, choice of operating targets, and rules versus discretion. According to the New Monetary Consensus, the central bank needs policy independence to build credibility; the operating target is the overnight interbank lending rate, and the ultimate goal is price stability. This paper provides an alternative […]

• Working Paper August 07, 2007

  On Various Ways of Measuring Unemployment, with Applications to Switzerland

  Abstract

  This paper begins with an examination of various ways of measuring unemployment and, borrowing ideas from the poverty measurement literature, proposes four new general unemployment indices. The first of these is parallel to the Sen poverty index; the second, to the Sen index’s generalization by Shorrocks; the third, to the FGT poverty index; and the […]

• Working Paper July 18, 2007

  The American Jewish Committee’s Annual Opinion Surveys

  Abstract

  The American Jewish Committee (AJC) surveys of Jewish opinion are unique both in being conducted annually and in the subject matter covered. This paper assesses the quality of these samples. I first summarize my earlier findings on the implications of limiting a sample to respondents who answered “Jewish” when asked a screening question about their […]