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Public Policy Brief No. 148

Can We Afford the Green New Deal?

In this policy brief, Yeva Nersisyan and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray argue that assessing the “affordability” of the Green New Deal is a question of whether there are suitable and sufficient real resources than can be mobilized to implement this ambitious approach to climate policy. Only after a careful resource accounting can we address […]

Summary No. 1

Summary Winter 2020

This issue of the Summary features L. Randall Wray’s written testimony submitted for a November 20, 2019 hearing before the US House of Representatives’ Budget Committee, where he urged a reexamination of the economic impact of public debt and deficits; prepared by Wray and Yeva Nersisyan, the testimony explains why federal deficits have become the […]

Strategic Analysis

Prospects and Challenges for the US Economy

This Strategic Analysis examines the US economy’s prospects for 2020–23 and the risks that lie ahead. The baseline projection generated by the Levy Institute’s stock-flow consistent macroeconomic model shows that, given current fiscal arrangements and the slowdown in the global economy, the pace of the US recovery will slacken somewhat, with a growth rate that […]

Strategic Analysis

Greece: In Search of Investors

2019 marked the third year of the continuing economic recovery in Greece, with real GDP and employment rising, albeit at modest rates. In this Strategic Analysis we note that the expansion has mainly been driven by net exports, with tourism playing a dominant role. However, household consumption and investment are still too far below their […]

Working Paper No. 944

The Empirics of Canadian Government Securities Yields

Keynes argued that the short-term interest rate is the main driver of the long-term interest rate. This paper empirically models the relationship between short-term interest rates and long-term government securities yields in Canada, after controlling for other important financial variables. The statistical analysis uses high-frequency daily data from 1990 to 2018. It applies both the […]

Working Paper No. 943

Is China’s Low Fertility Rate Caused by the Population Control Policy?

Whether China’s low fertility rate is the consequence of the country’s strict population control policy is a puzzling question. This paper attempts to disentangle the Chinese population control policy’s impacts on the fertility rate from socioeconomic factors using the synthetic control method proposed by Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003). The results indicate that the population control […]

Book Series

A Great Leap Forward

A Great Leap Forward: Heterodox Economic Policy for the 21st Century investigates economic policy from a heterodox and progressive perspective. Author Randall Wray uses relatively short chapters arranged around several macroeconomic policy themes to present an integrated survey of progressive policy on topics of interest today that are likely to remain topics of interest for […]

Working Paper No. 942

An Empirical Stock-Flow Consistent Macroeconomic Model for Denmark

This paper emphasizes the need for understanding the interdependencies between the real and financial sides of the economy in macroeconomic models. While the real side of the economy is generally well explained in macroeconomic models, the financial side and its interaction with the real economy remains poorly understood. This paper makes an attempt to model […]

Working Paper No. 941

Wage Differential between Palestinian Non-refugees and Palestinian Refugees in the West Bank and Gaza

This paper measures the wage differential between Palestinian non-refugees and Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza over the years 1999–2012. First, the main individual and occupational differences between the two groups in the two regions are presented. Then, the wage differential is decomposed into two components: a “human capital effect, explained part” and […]

Blog

Minsky Explains Financial Instability

In this rare video from 1987 (there is very little surviving footage of Minsky discussing his work), Hyman Minsky summarizes his theory of the financial fragility at the heart of modern capitalist economies: [iframe width=”486″ height=”364″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/9mHBrixVarU” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe] This was part of an event in Bogotá, Colombia (which is [...]

Working Paper No. 940

On the “Utilization Controversy”

The critique by Gahn and González (2019) of the conclusions in Nikiforos (2016) regarding what data should be used to evaluate whether capacity utilization is endogenous to demand is weak for the following reasons: (i) The Federal Reserve Board (FRB) measure of utilization is not appropriate for measuring long-run variations of utilization because of the […]

Testimony

Statement of Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray to the House Budget Committee, US House of Representatives

On November 20, 2019, Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray testified before the House Committee on the Budget on the topic of reexamining the economic costs of debt: "In recent months a new approach to national government budgets, deficits, and debts—Modern Money Theory (MMT)—has been the subject of discussion and controversy. [. . .] In this […]