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BlogSolidarity in book form
June 15, 2010 Levy research scholar Thomas Masterson has co-edited a new book about the Solidarity Economy, a form of economic organization that emphasizes cooperation over competition and communal well-being over individual gain. From the back cover: “So many of us wish for something more, something different—an economy that we can feel a part of, not that makes [...] Blog -
Blog
A spectre is haunting Europe
June 15, 2010 This posting is by Levy senior scholar Philip Arestis, University of Cambridge and University of the Basque Country, and Theodore Pelagidis, European Institute, London School of Economics and University of Piraeus. A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of austerity. All the powers of old Europe have entered into an unholy alliance to exercise this spectre, [...] Blog -
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Forget about deficits. Fix the banks
June 15, 2010 Levy senior scholar James K. Galbraith argues in the Los Angeles Times this morning that deficit hawks are pursuing the wrong prey. In a nutshell: The real cause of our deficits and rising public debt is our broken banking system. The debts our economic leaders deplore were largely due to the collapse of private credit, [...] Blog -
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Wynne Godley, continued
June 14, 2010 The Economist’s obituary for the late Wynne Godley generated a couple of worthwhile letters. A key passage: Your obituary of Wynne Godley (May 29th) did an injustice to his considerable intellectual achievements in macroeconomics and his courage in going against the orthodoxy that has ruled the economics profession for the past three decades. You can read [...] Blog -
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Review: Plumbing the Squam Lake Report
June 14, 2010 The Squam Lake Report (Princeton University Press) is a set of recommendations by 15 leading economists on reforming the financial system. Considering the magnitude of the recent financial crisis, it is surprising how little change the book proposes. Certainly, the first step in devising a set of recommendations for reform is to understand what went [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 602Fiscal Responsibility: What Exactly Does It Mean?
June 11, 2010 The use of government fiscal stimulus to support the economy in the recent economic crisis has brought increases in government deficits and increased government debt. This has produced an interest...more Publication -
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Greek default widely expected
June 09, 2010 Bloomberg polled international subscribers to its Bloomberg Professional Service and found that 73 percent expect a Greek default. These subscribers are described as decision-makers in finance, economics etc. The full story is here. You can also read the poll and results for yourself by clicking on the “attachment” tab at the top of the window. [...] Blog -
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Wynne Godley was right
June 09, 2010 In a sobering column in the Financial Times, Edward Chancellor reminds us that the late Wynne Godley was right in predicting that large private deficits in the U.S. would lead to trouble–and that the Eurozone, when it was formed, might become a tragic disinflationary trap. The end of the column is particularly noteworthy: He went [...] Blog -
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When do deficits matter?
June 08, 2010 Nervous financial markets and waves of fiscal austerity spreading across Europe raise an important question: when does a country’s budget deficit become a problem? The easy answer, of course, is that a deficit is too large when it can no longer be financed. But by that time it’s too late, so it’s important to ask [...] Blog -
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Maybe Keynes hasn’t been translated yet
June 08, 2010 The Germans too are embarking on a fiscal austerity program, and consumers aren’t spending there either. Blog -
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Austerity Britain
June 07, 2010 David Cameron, the new PM, warns that the nation’s fiscal hole is even deeper than it seemed, and that savage spending cuts will be required. An important union leader calls Cameron’s speech “a chilling attack on the public sector, public sector workers, the poor, the sick and the vulnerable.” The full (and sobering) story is [...] Blog -
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Men not working
June 04, 2010 The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its May employment situation report today and the news was mostly grim. Sure, unemployment dropped to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent. But don’t get too excited, because almost all the new jobs created in May were for census-takers, and these folks will be unemployed again soon. In more bad [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 601
Too Big to Fail in Financial Crisis
June 04, 2010 Regulatory forbearance and government financial support for the largest US financial companies during the crisis of 2007–09 highlighted a "too big to fail" problem that has existed for decades. As...more Publication -
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One less worry
June 01, 2010 The world has its usual cornucopia of troubles, but if you were worried about federal deficits, you can at least set those aside and focus on unemployment, oil spills and other here-and-now concerns. That’s the message of Levy Senior Scholar James K. Galbraith in this lively interview with Ezra Klein. Galbraith offers this historical perspective: [...] Blog -
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Greek for “default”
June 01, 2010 As the European financial crisis continues to percolate, by now a few irreducible facts are distressingly clear: First, Greece has no hope of repaying its debts as they are now constituted. Thus, the much-contested 110 billion euro bailout plan and the wider subsequent trillion-dollar bailout proferred by the Eurozone countries and the IMF are doomed [...] Blog -
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A plague of debt
June 01, 2010 The Financial Times reports that the European Central Bank (ECB) has warned of a “financial contagion” risk from concerns about the debt of some European governments. Many readers of this blog will recall that a similar concern was important in the late 1990s, when debt and currency problems seemed to spread among Asian and Latin [...] Blog -
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Wynne Godley, continued
May 30, 2010 The Economist has published this obituary of the late economist, whose career included a lengthy stint as head of the Levy Institute’s Macro-Modeling Team. In the small world dept.: After a spell in business and a few years at the Treasury, he was enticed to King’s College, Cambridge, which 61 years earlier another economist-aesthete, John [...] Blog -
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Why do women earn less?
May 28, 2010 In a paper called “Gender Segregation by the Clock,” Casey B. Mulligan of the University of Chicago has come out with some interesting new research on gender inequality in the labor market. It is a fascinating study showing that women are more likely to choose a regular 9 to 5 job. Prof. Mulligan says this may contribute [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 600
Time and Poverty from a Developing Country Perspective
May 26, 2010 This study is concerned with the measurement of poverty in the context of developing countries. We argue that poverty rankings must take into account time use dimensions of paid and...more Publication -
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The rain in Spain
May 25, 2010 A new report from the International Monetary Fund has turned attention, at least temporarily, from Greece to the larger potential problem of Spain, where unemployment is roughly 20 percent. A nice (if unsettling) summary: Spain’s economy needs far-reaching and comprehensive reforms. The challenges are severe: a dysfunctional labor market, the deflating property bubble, a large [...] Blog -
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Promises, promises, and more promises
May 21, 2010 From today’s NY Times: The cost of public pensions has been systemically underestimated nationwide for more than two decades, say some analysts. By these estimates, state and local officials have promised $5 trillion worth of benefits while thinking they were committing taxpayers to roughly half that amount. As Dimitri Papadimitriou said on this blog recently, we [...] Blog -
One-Pager No. 3“The Spectre of Banking”
May 20, 2010 A year and a half after the collapse in the financial markets, the debate about necessary “reforms” is still in its early stages, and none of the debaters seriously claims...more Publication -
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Funding child labor
May 19, 2010 The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth has issued a report on an unintended consequence of women-empowering microfinance: an increase in child labor. The report underscores the importance of unpaid work–work performed mostly by women. A development program, small or big, should consider the constraint that unpaid care duties impose on women, and provide assistance through [...] Blog -
One-Pager No. 2
Reforms Without Politicians
May 19, 2010 Congress is currently debating new regulations for financial institutions in an effort to avoid a repeat of the recent crisis that brought the banking system to the brink. Some of...more Publication