Search

">

Filter by

4204 results found

Working Paper No. 641
Disaggregating the Resource Curse
The hypothesis of the natural resource curse has captivated the economics profession, and since the mid-1990s has generated a large body of policymaking initiatives aimed at dispelling the curse. In this paper, we evaluate how the effect of resource abundance on economic growth has changed since these policies were first introduced by comparing the periods […]
Working Paper No. 640
he Central Bank “Printing Press”: Boon or Bane?
In recent years, the US public debt has grown rapidly, with last fiscal year’s deficit reaching nearly $1.3 trillion. Meanwhile, many of the euro nations with large amounts of public debt have come close to bankruptcy and loss of capital market access. The same may soon be true of many US states and localities, with […]
Blog
Federal Pay Rates Frozen; How High Are They Now?
Yesterday, the Obama administration announced that it wants to freeze wages and salaries earned by federal government employees in calendar years 2011 and 2012. Most federal workers might otherwise have received a cost-of-living raise at the start of the new year. There has been some controversy about whether these workers are overpaid. In this post, [...]
Blog
American-German divide on macroeconomic policy alive and kicking
Developments surrounding the recent G-20 summit further underlined some starkly conflicting views among key global policymakers, an important “American-German divide” in matters of macroeconomic policy in particular.
Blog
Does paying interest on reserves stall growth?
In an interesting (pun intended) post (Economist’s View: Interest on Reserves and Inflation) Mark Thoma says that the Fed’s paying banks interest on their reserves does not dampen investment, for two reasons, one on the supply side and one on the demand side. On the supply side of the market for loans, Thoma points out [...]
Press Release
Jan Kregel, Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Wins Prestigious Veblen-Commons Award from Association for Evolutionary Economics
Working Paper No. 639
US “Quantitative Easing” Is Fracturing the Global Economy
The Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing is presented as injecting $600 billion into “the economy.” But instead of getting banks lending to Americans again—households and firms—the money is going abroad, through arbitrage interest-rate speculation, currency speculation, and capital flight. No wonder foreign economies are protesting, as their currencies are being pushed up.
Working Paper No. 638
Exports, Capabilities, and Industrial Policy in India
An extensive literature argues that India’s manufacturing sector has underperformed, and that the country has failed to industrialize; in particular, it has failed to take advantage of its labor-abundant comparative advantage. India’s manufacturing sector is smaller as a share of GDP than that of East Asian countries, even after controlling for GDP per capita. Hence, […]
Blog
A proposal for an equitable Social Security retirement age
This idea first occurred to me while I was in France in September. I marveled that the debate they’re having (complete with effective social mobilization), is about raising the retirement age to 62. The current Social Security retirement age is 67, and the ‘serious’ proposal from Bowles-Simpson is to index it to life expectancy. This [...]
One-Pager No. 7
Reserve Currencies and the Dollar’s Role in Containing Global Imbalances
The stability of the international reserve currency’s purchasing power is less a question of what serves as that currency and more a question of the international adjustment mechanism, as well as the compatibility of export-led development strategies with international payment balances. Export-led growth and free capital flows are the real causes of sustained international imbalances. […]
One-Pager No. 6
Minsky’s View of Capitalism and Banking in America
Before we can reform the financial system, we need to understand what banks do—or, better yet, what banks should do. Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray examines Hyman Minsky’s views on banking and the proper role of the financial system—not simply to finance investment in physical capital but to promote the “capital development” of the economy […]
Working Paper No. 637
Financial Stability, Regulatory Buffers, and Economic Growth
Over the past 40 years, regulatory reforms have been undertaken on the assumption that markets are efficient and self-corrective, crises are random events that are unpreventable, the purpose of an economic system is to grow, and economic growth necessarily improves well-being. This narrow framework of discussion has important implications for what is expected from financial […]