The failure to use fiscal policy in tandem with monetary policy means that the timid and short-sighted private sector has lacked confidence to ratchet up investment in productive, income-generating activity – as opposed to speculative activity.
Read more...Yves here. Sometimes it is best to let things speak for themselves. In that spirit, I am embedding a very important paper by the well-respected investment management firm GMO which debunks the tenets of “sound finance,” meaning the claim that governments need to balance their budgets. I expect to be referring to it regularly, particularly […]
Read more...Who has stature versus informal influence in financial economics?
Read more...Dave here. The markets have taken a beating in 2016, and while the fallacy of thinking the market=the economy seems like an oversimplification, this post provides a competing viewpoint that, without taking a position in affirmation or dissent, I thought I would offer up for discussion. For some background, you can read Edward’s other posts […]
Read more...Why economic failures argue for the need for more democratic control over policy, or at least the ability to cut the power of institutions that get it wrong.
Read more...How the struggle over who controls the commons, the monied classes or a broader group of citizens, reveals the fundamental contradictions of capitalism.
Read more...Are the eurozone’s continuing woes the result of its incomplete construction or because of policy errors in responding to the crisis?
Read more...The fundamental contradictions of neoliberal capitalism are pushing it to the breaking point.
Read more...Although the case study is the UK, this post is yet another example of how counterproductive austerity is, from both an economic and a social perspective.
Read more...A new article makes a devastating attack on a fundamental belief driving Eurozone policy, that the member economies need to be made more “competitive,” meaning labor needs to be squeezed, for the currency union to achieve more growth.
Read more...The standard empirical evaluations of labour market policy only consider the direct effects of single programmes on their participants. This column argues that this fails to capture important aspects of real-world labour market policy – policy regimes and strategies. Using Swiss data, it employs a novel empirical approach that concurrently examines the effects of supportive and punitive policies (‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’). Policy regimes are shown to exert economically relevant effects, and accounting for these effects is crucial when designing labour market policy.
Read more...How the Doomsday book,and the unit of assessment called the “hide,” suggest that medieval laborers had very civilized work weeks.
Read more...A new paper puts another nail in the coffin to the idea that lowering corporate tax rates will boost growth.
Read more...The factors that dragged down the global economy in 2015 will persist – and in some cases worsen – in the new year.
Read more...What is deflation? What has caused inflation to fall? And why is there no such thing as ‘good deflation’?
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