Prime, Policy Research in Macroeconomics

Ann Pettifor’s The Coming First World Debt Crisis (Pettifor 2006) was the first book to warn of the approaching 2007 Global Financial Crisis. More than decade after that crisis, its cause—excessive private debt, created primarily to finance asset bubbles rather than productive investment—is still with us, while we are entrapped in a pandemic crisis, and on the cusp of a climatic one.Figure 1: Private debt levels over the history of capitalismLooking forward to the next ten years, and given so...

Ann Pettifor’s The Coming First World Debt Crisis (Pettifor 2006) was the first book to warn of the approaching 2007 Global Financial Crisis. More than decade after that crisis, its cause—excessive private debt, created primarily to finance asset bubbles rather than productive investment—is still with us, while we are entrapped in a pandemic crisis, and on the cusp of a climatic one. Figure 1: Private debt levels over the history of capitalism Looking forward to the next ten years, and given...

The Covid-19 crisis is deepening existing fissures and adding new threats to an already scarred and anxious world. As a localized health crisis became a global pandemic, many countries put broad swathes of their economies into a policy induced coma to halt the spread of the virus and ease the burden on overstretched health systems. As a result, the global economy will experience a recession this year on a scale not experienced since the 1930s. The damage will be both lasting and severe,...

The Covid-19 crisis is deepening existing fissures and adding new threats to an already scarred and anxious world. As a localized health crisis became a global pandemic, many countries put broad swathes of their economies into a policy induced coma to halt the spread of the virus and ease the burden on overstretched health systems. As a result, the global economy will experience a recession this year on a scale not experienced since the 1930s. The damage will be both lasting and severe,...

The Covid-19 crisis is deepening existing fissures and adding new threats to an already scarred and anxious world. As a localized health crisis became a global pandemic, many countries put broad swathes of their economies into a policy induced coma to halt the spread of the virus and ease the burden on overstretched health systems. As a result, the global economy will experience a recession this year on a scale not experienced since the 1930s. The damage will be both lasting and severe,...

As part of this series celebrating PRIME’s tenth anniversary, we are looking forward to the next ten years. This contribution by Laurie Macfarlane looks at the future role of the state. ——- John Maynard Keynes famously wrote: ​“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” For the past 40 years, society has been the slave of a not-yet-defunct set of economic ideas. These ideas have shaped the way...

Even while the economy is recast for today’s pandemic on the back of the dismal failures of the past decade, austerity is already rearing its ugly head. At one level there must be politics here. The public must not be allowed to think that socialising the economy to meet a pandemic means the economy might be socialised when the pandemic is over. Likewise, obsessing about excessive debt means the greatly more pressing and more dangerous reality of deficient expenditure is side-lined. But it’s...

As loyal readers know, we are a network of macro- and political economists and environmentalists influenced by Keynes or concerned to restore his thinking. In our mission statement, drafted back in 2010, we considered “that conventional or ‘mainstream’ economic theory has proved of almost no relevance to the ongoing and chronic failure of the global economy and to the gravest threat facing us all: climate change.” We stand by that statement.  As the globalised and financialised economy...

By T. Sabri Öncü & Ahmet ÖncüIn Memory of David Graeber (1961–2020)This article first appeared in the Indian journal, Economic and Political Weekly, on 21 November, 2020On 30 March 2020, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) called for a $2.5 trillion COVID-19 crisis package for developing countries.[1] The UNCTAD...

By T. Sabri Öncü & Ahmet Öncü In Memory of David Graeber (1961–2020) This article first appeared in the Indian journal, Economic and Political Weekly, on 21 November, 2020 under the title “A Consortium Proposal to the SDR Basket Countries” On 30 March 2020, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) called for a $2.5 trillion COVID-19 crisis package for developing countries.[1] The UNCTAD proposals were: (i) $1 trillion to be made available through the expanded use...