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Working Paper No. 608
Assessing the Returns to Education in Georgia
The economic returns to education in transition countries have been extensively evaluated in the literature. The present study contributes to this literature by estimating the returns to education in Georgia during the last transition period 2000–04. We find very low returns to education in Georgia and little evidence of an increasing trend in the returns. […]
Public Policy Brief No. 114
Debts, Deficits, Economic Recovery, and the US Government
In this new brief, President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Research Scholar Greg Hannsgen evaluate the current path of fiscal deficits in the United States in the context of government debt and further spending, economic recovery, and unemployment. They are adamant that there is no justification for the belief that cutting spending or raising taxes will […]
Blog
High unemployment puts poor families at risk
Scholars at the Levy Institute have supported the creation of an employer-of-last-resort (ELR) program in the United States for many years. Such a program would provide a government job to any American who needed one and met a few basic requirements. (This readable policy note, along with many other Levy publications, explains the case for [...]
Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 111
Deficit Hysteria Redux?
This brief by Yeva Nersisyan and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray argues that deficits do not burden future generations with debt, nor do they crowd out private spending. The authors base their conclusions on the premise that a sovereign nation with its own currency cannot become insolvent, and that government financing is unlike that of […]
Working Paper No. 607
Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motives
Employers structure pay and employment relationships to mitigate agency problems. A large literature in economics documents how the resolution of these problems shapes personnel policies and labor markets. For the most part, the study of agency in employment relationships relies on highly stylized assumptions regarding human motivation, e.g., that employees seek to earn as much […]
Blog
Making jobs Job One
On The Daily Beast, Levy senior scholar James K. Galbraith urges action to get people working again, and smites deficit hawks who might oppose it. In the debate over stimulus versus austerity, he warns of two traps: The first is the idea that we need another “stimulus package.” How I hate that phrase! The message [...]
Working Paper No. 606
Changes in Central Bank Procedures during the Subprime Crisis and Their Repercussions on Monetary Theory
The subprime financial crisis has forced several North American and European central banks to take extraordinary measures and to modify some of their operational procedures. These changes have made even clearer the deficiencies and lack of realism in mainstream monetary theory, as can be found in both undergraduate textbooks and most macroeconomic models. They have […]
Blog
Another call for social-sector jobs
In a New York Times column, Yale’s Robert Shiller calls for a federal effort to battle unemployment by creating precisely the kind of socially beneficial jobs that some Levy Institute scholars have been recommending: Why not use government policy to directly create jobs — labor-intensive service jobs in fields like education, public health and safety, [...]
Blog
Property rules
Are we a nation of property owners? Michael Barone, of the American Enterprise Institute, says we are: The fact is that we are once again, as in the days of the early republic and not in the heyday of the Progressives and the New Dealers, a republic of property owners. Most Americans have accumulated — [...]
Blog
No stimulus is better than negative stimulus
In the Wall Street Journal, Stanford’s Robert Hall tells Jon Hilsenrath that last year’s stimulus just about made up for the cuts in state and local government spending forced by the recession (most states have balanced budget requirements, so when tax revenues dip, as they do in a recession, spending must follow). So, there was [...]
Blog
Levy president appears on Fox among the hedgehogs
With apologies to Isaiah Berlin, here is the link.
Blog
Why creating social-sector jobs is a great idea
Writing for the New York Times Economix blog, Nancy Folbre of the University of Massachusetts cites the work of Levy Institute economists in suggesting that Uncle Sam fund more home-care jobs: Four economists at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College – Rania Antonopoulos, Kijong Kim, Thomas Masterson and Ajit Zacharias – have published a policy [...]