Prime, Policy Research in Macroeconomics

“Financial Assets = Liabilities.” It’s one of the great accounting-identity truisms of economic understanding — both among traditional, mainstream economists, and even (especially) among many heterodox, “accounting based” practitioners. It seems obvious: When a company issues and sells bonds, it posts a liability to its balance sheet; the bond buyers hold financial assets on theirs.[1] The problem is, that truism isn’t even close to true. The most obvious example is corporate...

Steve Roth ([email protected]) is a serial entrepreneur and the publisher of Evonomics.com. T. Sabri Öncü ([email protected]) is an economist based in İstanbul, Turkey. A slightly edited version of this article first appeared in the Indian journal, Economic and Political Weekly on 11 July 2020. “Financial Assets = Liabilities.” It’s one of the great accounting-identity truisms of economic understanding — both among traditional, mainstream...

Late last month, pioneering socialist economist John Weeks passed away. Ann Pettifor remembers her colleague and friend – and his contributions to left-wing politics. This piece first appeared in Tribune magazine on 08 August, 2020. Please note correction at the end of this piece. John Weeks, brilliant Left economist and public intellectual, would have been well pleased that three days after his death the Financial Times published a letter he had signed attacking the Office for Budget...

Late last month, pioneering socialist economist John Weeks passed away. Ann Pettifor remembers her colleague and friend – and his contributions to left-wing politics. This piece first appeared in Tribune magazine on 08 August, 2020. Please note correction at the end of this piece. John Weeks, brilliant Left economist and public intellectual, would have been well pleased that three days after his death the Financial Times published a letter he had signed attacking the...

This review of books to inspire a green transformation appeared in The Guardian on 18 July, 2020. Everyday life has been upended by the pandemic, but the Arctic heatwave is a reminder that the climate crisis still poses an urgent threat to humanity. We will need resolve, ambition and optimism as we emerge from lockdown, so we can forge the green recovery that is so crucial. One book that has sustained my faith in the future is Herman E Daly and John B Cobb’s hopeful...

  This review of books to inspire a green transformation appeared in The Guardian on 18 July, 2020. Everyday life has been upended by the pandemic, but the Arctic heatwave is a reminder that the climate crisis still poses an urgent threat to humanity. We will need resolve, ambition and optimism as we emerge from lockdown, so we can forge the green recovery that is so crucial. One book that has sustained my faith in the future is Herman E Daly and John B Cobb’s hopeful vision, For the Common...

The following debate between Paul Wallace and Ann Pettifor appeared in Prospect magazine on 10 July, 2020.Is our capitalist economy an unparalleled engine of prosperity, or a human and ecological disaster? Two contributors debate whether the system is worth savingYes—Paul Wallace It is tempting, when living through a once-in-a-century event such as the coronavirus pandemic, to say everything must change: that it’s time to tear up the rulebook and to create a completely new...

The following debate between Paul Wallace and Ann Pettifor appeared in Prospect magazine on 10 July, 2020. Is our capitalist economy an unparalleled engine of prosperity, or a human and ecological disaster? Two contributors debate whether the system is worth saving Yes—Paul Wallace It is tempting, when living through a once-in-a-century event such as the coronavirus pandemic, to say everything must change: that it’s time to tear up the rulebook and to create a completely new kind of economy....

This article appeared in a special, June 2020 edition of the Real-World Economics Review that majored on The Inequality Crisis. Today as the world endures the crisis of a global pandemic, “an old order is ending in convulsions”. So writes Rebecca Spang, historian of the French revolution in The Atlantic (Spang, 2020). In the 1790s, money, debt and...

This article appeared in a special, June 2020 edition of the Real-World Economics Review that majored on The Inequality Crisis. Today as the world endures the crisis of a global pandemic, “an old order is ending in convulsions”. So writes Rebecca Spang, historian of the French revolution in The Atlantic (Spang, 2020). In the 1790s, money, debt and the non-payment of taxes by France’s rentiers, played a critical role in revolutionizing France. Today purveyors of money and debt – creditors,...