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1696 publications found
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Public Policy Brief No. 141
March 25, 2016
What We Could Have Learned from the New Deal in Confronting the Recent Global Recession
AbstractTo the extent that policymakers have learned anything at all from the Great Depression and the policy responses of the 1930s, the lessons appear to have been the wrong ones. In this public policy brief, Director of Research Jan Kregel explains why there is still a great deal we have to learn from the New […]
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Working Paper No. 862
March 17, 2016
Japan’s Liquidity Trap
AbstractJapan has experienced stagnation, deflation, and low interest rates for decades. It is caught in a liquidity trap. This paper examines Japan’s liquidity trap in light of the structure and performance of the country’s economy since the onset of stagnation. It also analyzes the country’s liquidity trap in terms of the different strands in the […]
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Strategic Analysis
March 07, 2016
Destabilizing an Unstable Economy
AbstractOur latest strategic analysis reveals that the US economy remains fragile because of three persistent structural issues: weak demand for US exports, fiscal conservatism, and a four-decade trend in rising income inequality. It also faces risks from stagnation in the economies of the United States’ trading partners, appreciation of the dollar, and a contraction in […]
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Working Paper No. 861
March 01, 2016
Money, Power, and Monetary Regimes
AbstractMoney, in this paper, is defined as a power relationship of a specific kind, a stratified social debt relationship, measured in a unit of account determined by some authority. A brief historical examination reveals its evolving nature in the process of social provisioning. Money not only predates markets and real exchange as understood in mainstream […]
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Working Paper No. 860
February 22, 2016
Looking Into the Abyss?
AbstractThe Brazilian economy in 2015 was afflicted by a lethal combination of decelerating activity and accelerating inflation. Expectations for 2016 are equally or even more adverse, since the effects of rising unemployment emerge only after a lag. The domestic debate has pitted analysts who believe the crisis is due exclusively to past policy mistakes against […]
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Working Paper No. 859
February 01, 2016
The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and Measuring Gender Inequality
AbstractAgainst the backdrop of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, this paper analyzes the measurement issues in gender-based indices constructed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and suggests alternatives for choice of variables, functional form, and weights. While the UNDP Gender Inequality Index (GII) conceptually reflects the loss in achievement due to inequality […]
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Working Paper No. 858
January 12, 2016
Gender Dimensions of Inequality in the Countries of Central Asia, South Caucasus, and Western CIS
AbstractThe collapse of the Soviet Union initiated an unprecedented social and economic transformation of the successor countries and altered the gender balance in a region that counted gender equality as one of the key legacies of its socialist past. The transition experience of the region has amply demonstrated that the changes in the gender balance […]
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Policy Notes No. 8
December 17, 2015
The US Census Asks About Race and Ethnicity: 1980–2020
AbstractThis policy note examines the formulation and reformulation of questions deployed by the US Census Bureau to gather information on racial and ethnic origin in recent decades. The likely outcome for the 2020 Census is that two older questions on race and Hispanic origin will be combined into a single question on ethno-racial origin. The […]
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Working Paper No. 857
December 17, 2015
Ethno-Racial Origin in US Federal Statistics: 1980–2020
AbstractThis paper describes the transformations in federal classification of ethno-racial information since the civil rights era of the 1960s. These changes were introduced in the censuses of 1980 and 2000, and we anticipate another major change in the 2020 Census. The most important changes in 1980 introduced the Hispanic Origin and Ancestry questions and the […]
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One-Pager No. 51
December 11, 2015
Completing the Single Financial Market and New Fiscal Rules for the Euro Area
AbstractUntil market participants across the euro area face a single risk-free yield curve rather than a diverse collection of quasi-risk-free sovereign rates, financial market integration will not be complete. Unfortunately, the institution that would normally provide the requisite benchmark asset—a federal treasury issuing risk-free debt—does not exist in the euro area, and there are daunting […]
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Working Paper No. 856
December 10, 2015
Redistribution in the Age of Austerity
AbstractWe examine the relationship between changes in a country’s public sector fiscal position and inequality at the top and bottom of the income distribution during the age of austerity (2006–13). We use a parametric Lorenz curve model and Gini-like indices of inequality as our measures to assess distributional changes. Based on the EU’s Statistics on […]
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Working Paper No. 855
November 30, 2015
The Two Approaches to Money
AbstractThe scientific reassessment of the economic role of the state after the crisis has renewed interest in Abba Lerner’s theory of functional finance (FF). A thorough discussion of this concept is helpful in reconsidering the debate on the nature of money and the origin of the business cycle and crises. It also allows a reevaluation […]
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Public Policy Brief No. 140
November 18, 2015
The ECB, the Single Financial Market, and a Revision of the Euro Area Fiscal Rules
AbstractMario Tonveronachi, University of Siena, builds on his earlier proposal (The ECB and the Single European Financial Market) to advance financial market integration in Europe through the creation of a single benchmark yield curve based on debt certificates (DCs) issued by the European Central Bank (ECB). In this policy brief, Tonveronachi discusses potential changes to […]
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Working Paper No. 854
November 16, 2015
The Roads Not Taken
AbstractStandard presentations of stock-flow consistent modeling use specific Post Keynesian closures, even though a given stock-flow accounting structure supports various different economic dynamics. In this paper we separate the dynamic closure from the accounting constraints and cast the latter in the language of graph theory. The graph formulation provides (1) a representation of an economy […]
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Working Paper No. 853
November 09, 2015
Finance, Foreign Direct Investment, and Dutch Disease
AbstractIn recent years, Colombia has grown relatively rapidly, but it has been a biased growth. The energy sector (the “locomotora minero-energetica,” to use the rhetorical expression of President Juan Manuel Santos) grew much faster than the rest of the economy, while the manufacturing sector registered a negative rate of growth. These are classic symptoms of […]
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Book Series
November 05, 2015
Financial Regulation in the European Union
AbstractHave past and more recent regulatory changes contributed to increased financial stability in the European Union (EU), or have they improved the efficiency of individual banks and national financial systems within the EU? Edited by Rainer Kattel, Tallinn University of Technology, Director of Research Jan Kregel, and Mario Tonveronachi, University of Siena, this volume offers […]
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Book Series
November 05, 2015
Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist
AbstractPerhaps no economist was more vindicated by the global financial crisis than Hyman P. Minsky (1919–1996). Although a handful of economists raised alarms as early as 2000, Minsky’s warnings began a half century earlier, with writings that set out a compelling theory of financial instability. Yet even today he remains largely outside mainstream economics; few […]
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Policy Notes No. 7
November 04, 2015
Losing Ground
AbstractUS labor force participation has continued to fall in the wake of the Great Recession. Improvements in the US unemployment rate reflect the fact that more people are falling out of the labor force, not a stronger labor market. Controlling for changes in the demographic makeup of the workforce (i.e., gender, age, education, and race), […]
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Working Paper No. 852
October 30, 2015
The Malady of Low Global Interest Rates
AbstractLong-term interest rates in advanced economies have been low since the global financial crisis. However, in the United States the Federal Reserve could begin to hike its policy rate, the federal funds target rate, before the end of the year. In the United Kingdom, the Bank of England could follow suit. What is the outlook […]
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Working Paper No. 851
October 28, 2015
Money Creation under Full-reserve Banking
AbstractThis paper presents a stock-flow consistent model+ of full-reserve banking. It is found that in a steady state, full-reserve banking can accommodate a zero-growth economy and provide both full employment and zero inflation. Furthermore, a money creation experiment is conducted with the model. An increase in central bank reserves translates into a two-thirds increase in […]
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Working Paper No. 850
October 28, 2015
The Macroeconomics of a Financial Dutch Disease
AbstractWe describe the medium-run macroeconomic effects and long-run development consequences of a financial Dutch disease that may take place in a small developing country with abundant natural resources. The first move is in financial markets. An initial surge in foreign direct investment targeting natural resources sets in motion a perverse cycle between exchange rate appreciation […]
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Working Paper No. 849
October 23, 2015
Bank Leverage Ratios and Financial Stability
AbstractBank leverage ratios have made an impressive and largely unopposed return; they are mostly used alongside risk-weighted capital requirements. The reasons for this return are manifold, and they are not limited to the fact that bank equity levels in the wake of the global financial crisis (GFC) were exceptionally thin, necessitating a string of costly […]
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Working Paper No. 848
October 23, 2015
Is Monetary Financing Inflationary?
AbstractHistorically high levels of private and public debt coupled with already very low short-term interest rates appear to limit the options for stimulative monetary policy in many advanced economies today. One option that has not yet been considered is monetary financing by central banks to boost demand and/or relieve debt burdens. We find little empirical […]
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One-Pager No. 50
October 22, 2015
A Public Investment Priority for Job Creation in Turkey
AbstractThis one-pager presents the key findings and policy recommendations of the research project report The Impact of Public Investment in Social Care Services on Employment, Gender Equality, and Poverty: The Turkish Case, which examines the demand-side rationale for a public investment in the social care sector in Turkey—specifically, early childhood care and preschool education (ECCPE)—by […]
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