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BlogIncorrect Economic Historian Is Incorrect
November 20, 2012 Amity Shlaes, whose main claim to fame is an allegedly new history of the Great Depression, thinks we may be in trouble as a result of the election. Looking beyond her alarmingly alliterative title (“2013 Looks to be a Lot Like 1937 in Four Fearsome Ways!” Oooh! Scary!) she has some valid points. Of course [...] Blog -
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Fiscal Muddle
November 16, 2012 The fiscal cliff is very easy to explain. What many in Congress and the press are saying we should do about it is more confounding. If you were the sort of person who took expressions of policy preferences at face value, you would think that fiscal conservatives and deficit hawks would be ecstatic about this [...] Blog -
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In the Eurozone, Look to the Design Defects
November 15, 2012 Today Eurostat announced that the eurozone has plunged back into recession. If you’re looking for a good explanation of the eurozone’s problems, you will only get so far by looking at the policy failures of particular countries. The most fundamental problems—those that won’t go away with a mere shift in policy at the national level—are [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 735The Impact of Financial Reform on Federal Reserve Autonomy
November 14, 2012 The Federal Reserve has been criticized for not preventing the risky behavior of large financial companies prior to the financial crisis of 2008–09, for approving mergers that aggravated the “too...more Publication -
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Quantitative Easing and Bank Lending
November 13, 2012 Randall Wray on quantitative easing and the accumulation of reserves: When the Fed buys assets, it purchases them by crediting banks with reserves. So the result of QE is that the Fed’s balance sheet grows rapidly—to, literally, trillions of dollars. At the same time, banks exchange the assets they are selling (the Treasuries and MBSs [...] Blog -
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Kick the Can, Please
November 09, 2012 As Dimitri Papadimitriou recently observed, the overwhelming push for austerity in the United States is partly driven by the sense that deficit reduction simply cannot wait: Many in Washington and the media are convinced that the recovery is well underway, and if spending cuts and tax increases are delayed for even a year it will [...] Blog -
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Financial Instability Conference, Berlin
November 08, 2012 An upcoming Levy Institute conference: From November 26 to 27, the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College will gather top policymakers, economists, and analysts at the Hyman P. Minsky Conference on Financial Instability to gain a better understanding of the causes of financial instability and its implications for the global economy. The conference will address [...] Blog -
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Why You Should Be Worried About the Size of the Public Sector
November 07, 2012 Last month, numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggested that the years-long decline in public employment had finally halted, but Friday’s BLS report revealed that we moved back into negative territory in October: the public sector as a whole (federal, state, and local) shrank by 13,000 jobs. This should serve as another reminder that [...] Blog -
Public Policy Brief No. 127Δημοσιονομικές παγίδες και μακροπολιτική μετά την κρίση στην ευρωζώνη
November 07, 2012 Τους επόμενους μήνες, οι Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες πρέπει να κάνουν μια βασική επιλογή στην οικονομική τους πολιτική, μια επιλογή που θα διαμορφώσει την οικονομία των ΗΠΑ για τα επόμενα χρόνια. Οι...more Publication -
Public Policy Brief No. 127
Fiscal Traps and Macro Policy after the Eurozone Crisis
November 07, 2012 The United States must make a fundamental choice in its economic policy in the next few months, a choice that will shape the US economy for years to come. Pundits...more Publication -
Public Policy Brief No. 126
It's About "Time"
November 06, 2012 We cannot adequately assess how much or how little progress we have made in addressing the condition of the most vulnerable in our societies, or provide accurate guidance to policymakers...more Publication -
Public Policy Brief No. 126
Εργασία, οικιακή παραγωγή και χρονικές απαιτήσεις
November 06, 2012 Δεν μπορούμε να εκτιμήσουμε επαρκώς πόση πολύ ή πόση λίγη πρόοδος έχει γίνει για την αντιμετώπιση της κατάστασης των πιο ευάλωτων στις κοινωνίες μας, ή να παρέχουμε σωστή καθοδήγηση στους...more Publication -
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Fiscal Policy Debates and Macro Models Abound in the News
November 01, 2012 Many of the themes in fiscal policy, economic growth, and distribution that we have been working on here have been in the news lately. Scholars from many fields are weighing in. One common theme is dynamics and their importance: 1) Evidence of a self-reinforcing fiscal trap in operation in Britain, forwarded by the NIESR, a [...] Blog -
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Stephanie Kelton on Le Show
October 31, 2012 Research associate Stephanie Kelton made an appearance on Harry Shearer’s “Le Show” over the weekend. In the interview they managed to cover just about all of the major themes related to the debt and deficit anxiety that commands our civic dialogue (solvency constraints, inflation, interest rates, the gold standard, and so on; all the greatest [...] Blog -
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Announcing the Levy Institute Master of Science in Economic Theory and Policy
October 25, 2012 An announcement from the Levy Institute: Starting in fall 2013, the Levy Economics Institute will begin offering the Master of Science in Economic Theory and Policy, a two-year degree program designed to meet the preprofessional needs of undergraduates in economics and finance. Headed by Senior Scholar and Program Director Jan Kregel, this innovative program draws [...] Blog -
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How Profligate Was the Greek Government?
October 24, 2012 Breezily blaming the eurozone crisis on government profligacy is a widely-used journalistic shortcut, but by now it should be clear that it’s a shortcut that doesn’t help us understand what went wrong with the euro project. It has been repeated often, though evidently not often enough, that Spain, one of the hardest hit countries, had [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 734
Η κρίση του χρηματιστικού καπιταλισμού στην ευρωπεριοχή, ελλείψεις στην αρχιτεκτονική της οικονομικής πολιτικής, και πολιτικές αποπληθωριστικής στασιμότητας
October 19, 2012 Στην εργασία αυτή, η ευρωκρίση ερμηνεύεται ως το τελευταίο επεισόδιο της κρίσης του χρηματιστικού καπιταλισμού. Αναλύονται τα κύρια χαρακτηριστικά του χρηματιστικού καπιταλισμού για τις 11 αρχικές χώρες της ευρωπεριοχής και,...more Publication -
Working Paper No. 734
The Crisis of Finance-dominated Capitalism in the Euro Area, Deficiencies in the Economic Policy Architecture, and Deflationary Stagnation Policies
October 19, 2012 In this paper the euro crisis is interpreted as the latest episode in the crisis of finance-dominated capitalism. For 11 initial Euro area countries, the major features of finance-dominated capitalism...more Publication -
One-Pager No. 35Ένα σύντομος οδηγός στις συζητήσεις γύρω από την τόνωση της οικονομίας και τη λιτότητα
October 19, 2012 Θα πρέπει να επιτρέψουμε να τεθεί σε ισχύ ο δημοσιονομικός γκρεμός, μια πολιτική που περιλαμβάνει αυτόματες περικοπές των δαπανών σε όλους τους τομείς και μεγάλες αυξήσεις στους φόρους που θα...more Publication -
One-Pager No. 35
A Brief Guide to the US Stimulus and Austerity Debates
October 19, 2012 Should we allow the fiscal cliff, with its across-the-board spending cuts and big tax increases that will affect almost every American, to take effect? Economists have been weighing in on...more Publication -
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The Debt Burden, Continued
October 18, 2012 This old post on the question of how to make sense of the claim that government debt places a net “burden” on future generations—the question of whether there’s an economic case to be made that supports the common claim that today’s public debt levels are an immoral burden on our children and grandchildren—generated a fair [...] Blog -
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The Missing Wall Street Debate
October 16, 2012 In a 90-minute debate, I’m not sure it’s possible to cover every single issue of pressing national importance and to do so in coherent detail. So the following is a complaint one could make about a number of issues that were missing from last Thursday’s VP debate, but it was a little eyebrow-raising that financial [...] Blog -
Working Paper No. 733
Innovation and Finance
October 15, 2012 Schumpeter, a century ago, argued that boom-and-bust cycles are intrinsically related to the functioning of a capitalistic economy. These cycles, inherent to the rise of innovation, are an unavoidable consequence...more Publication -
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Unemployment Figures and the Uncertain Future
October 12, 2012 We expect the unexpected at the Levy Institute. As followers of Keynes, most economists here, including this author, believe that one cannot assign exact probabilities to most important economic outcomes even, say, six months into the future. On the other hand, thinking about the economic debate on job creation, and the recent release of new [...] Blog