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  Policy Notes No. 4

  A Crisis in Coordination and Competence

  The ad hoc emergency approach to the current economic crisis has a great chance of wasting billions of dollars by mismatching skills and needs. According to Martin Shubik of Yale University, the current deepening recession needs a “quick fix” solution now, but a longer-fix solution must be put into place along with it. There is […]
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  Press Release

  Central Banks Should Widen Their Scope and Consider Wealth Targets to Stabilize the Economy During a Credit Crisis, New Study from the Levy Economics Institute Says

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  Working Paper No. 560

  The Social and Economic Importance of Full Employment

  Unemployment was singled out by John Maynard Keynes as one of the principle faults of capitalism; the other is excessive inequality. Obviously, there is some link between these two faults: since most people living in capitalist economies must work for wages as a major source of their incomes, the inability to obtain a job means […]
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  Strategic Analysis

  A “People First” Strategy: Credit Cannot Flow When There Are No Creditworthy Borrowers or Profitable Projects

  In 1930, John Maynard Keynes wrote: “The world has been slow to realise that we are living this year in the shadow of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern history.” The same holds true today: we are in the shadow of a global catastrophe, and we need to come to grips with the […]
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  Summary No. 2

  Summary Spring 2009

  This issue of the Summary begins with a Strategic Analysis by the Levy Institute’s Macro-Modeling Team, along with a review of the latest Federal Reserve flow-of-funds data. The authors foresee a steep rise in the private sector balance and an abrupt fall in GDP in the United States, with employment rising to 10 percent in […]
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  Working Paper No. 559

  Labor-market Performance in the OECD

  In this paper we assess the evolution of labor-market performance in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) over the last decade. We provide a survey of the literature dealing with labor-market performance in the OECD, finding that, while this literature tends to conclude that institutions are a key part of the story, the […]
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  Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 99

  The Return of Big Government

  In the current global financial crisis, economists and policymakers have reembraced Big Government as a means of preventing the reoccurrence of a debt-deflation depression. The danger, however, is that policy may not downsize finance and replace money manager capitalism. According to Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray, we need a permanently larger fiscal presence, with more […]
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  Working Paper No. 558

  Managing the Impact of Volatility in International Capital Markets in an Uncertain World

  International financial flows are the propagation mechanism for transmitting financial instability across borders; they are also the source of unsustainable external debt. Managing volatility thus requires institutions that promote domestic financial stability, ensure that domestic instability is contained, and guarantee that international institutions and rules of the game are not themselves a cause of volatility. […]
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  Policy Notes No. 3

  An Assessment of the Credit Crisis Solutions

  All of the various schemes that have been put forward to resolve the current credit crisis follow either the “business as usual” or the “good bank” model. The “business as usual” model takes different forms—insurance or guarantee of the assets or liabilities of the financial institutions, creation of a “bad bank” to buy toxic assets, […]
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  Policy Notes No. 2

  What Role for Central Banks in View of the Current Crisis?

  Central banks have an aversion to bailing out speculators when asset bubbles burst, but ultimately, as custodians of the financial system, they have to do exactly that. Their actions are justified by the goal of protecting the economy from the bursting of bubbles; while their intention may be different, the result is the same: speculators, […]
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  Press Release

  Leading Economists and Policymakers to Discuss Financial Crisis at The Levy Economics Institute’s 18th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference, in New York City, April 16–17

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  Working Paper No. 557

  Background Considerations to a Regulation of the US Financial System

  United States financial regulation has traditionally made functional and institutional regulation roughly equivalent. However, the gradual shift away from Glass-Steagall and the introduction of the Financial Modernization Act (FMA) generated a disorderly mix of functions and products across institutions, creating regulatory gaps that contributed to the recent crisis. An analysis of this history suggests that […]