Prime, Policy Research in Macroeconomics

In the United Kingdom we face the imminent likelihood of an election in which the political choices before voters will be in clear focus, remaining within the European Union or leaving (perhaps under disastrous conditions); social democracy or deregulated capitalism; saving the environment or further destruction of it; parliamentary democracy or authoritarianism. In the context of these momentous decisions, and with Parliament prorogued again, we should reflect on a still...

T Sabri Öncü ([email protected]) is an economist based in İstanbul, Turkey. This article was first published in the Indian journal the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) on 28 September 2019.Summary: With intensifying concerns regarding the soundness and stability of the international monetary and financial system, calls for reforming it have been on the rise. One recent call was made by the Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, in August 2019, in which he suggested a...

The following hastily written piece appeared in Left Foot Forward on 25th September, 2019.The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics will be 50 years old next month. One thing unites all its winners, bar one: they have all been male.This is not just an affront to equality. In overlooking brilliant female economists, the Swedish Central Bank’s Nobel has neglected economic theory which could have helped prevent the turmoil of regular financial shocks and political trauma.The...

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics will be 50 years old next month. One thing unites all its winners, bar one: they have all been male.This is not just an affront to equality. In overlooking brilliant female economists, the Swedish Central Bank’s Nobel has neglected economic theory which could have helped prevent the turmoil of regular financial shocks and political trauma.The outstanding female economists passed over by the...

My review of John Maynard Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace  Macmillan (2019) appeared in Nature – the International Journal of Science – on 23 September, 2019.“Ann Pettifor finds astonishing contemporary resonance in John Maynard Keynes’s critique of globalization and inequity.”The Economic Consequences of the Peace John Maynard Keynes Macmillan (2019)In December 1919, John Maynard Keynes published a blistering attack on the Treaty of Versailles, signed in...

So the UK Supreme Court (a bench of 11 judges) has delivered its judgment. Unaninmously. The prorogation of Parliament, based on the unlawful advice of Prime Minister Johnson, even if in form an act of the Queen, was null and void and of no effect.A couple of weeks ago, I concluded my post on The Rogue Prorogation and the English-Scottish judicial divide with these words:Whether the (UK) Supreme Court will be willing to go quite as far in making inferences of fact so...

The following article and interview with PRIME’s director written by Hettie O’Brien, appeared in the New Statesman on 24th September, 2019. Please note the error at the end of the piece: Since the Paris Climate Agreement three years ago, J.P. Morgan Chase have reportedly lent $196 billion, not $1.96 billion to fossil fuel industries, oil, coal and gas. The figure is drawn from the Rainforest Action Network’s 2018 Report, Banking on Climate Change.Eleven years ago, a group...

This is an excerpt from a Green New Deal Report published today, 20th September, 2019 - the day children and their supporters around the world demanded urgent action on the climate emergency. The Green New Deal Report is co-authored by PRIME’s director, Ann Pettifor, and accompanies the publication of Bill tabled in parliament by Caroline Lucas MP (Green Party) and Clive Lewis MP (Labour Party). Momentum is growing worldwide for a comprehensive Green New Deal that will...

The director of PRIME is a co-author of this new report by the Green New Deal group UK, published on the day a wave of schoolstrikes swept the world - demanding action to reverse the potentially catastrophic impacts of earth systems collapse . It accompanies the publication of the Decarbonisation and Economic Strategy Bill, a Bill first tabled by Caroline Lucas MP (Green Party) and Clive Lewis MP (Labour Party) in March 2019, now published in full. It is designed to implement...

On the day that my book The Case for the Green New Deal is launched, the Guardian published the article below. In September 2007, as credit was “crunched” and the financial crisis began to unfold, a group of economists and environmentalists, including the future Green party MP Caroline Lucas, met regularly in my small London flat. Supping on comfort food and wine, we argued furiously while drafting a plan we hoped would transform the economy and protect the ecosystem. We...