Prime, Policy Research in Macroeconomics

John Maynard Keynes - for the Times Literary Supplement It was his internationalism, together with his insights into the functioning of the world’s financial architecture that first drew me to the work of John Maynard Keynes.  His genius is, perhaps, most comparable to that of Charles Darwin. But whereas Darwin is widely recognized for developing the science of evolution, Keynes’s development of the science of macroeconomics goes largely unacknowledged by a profession still...

The BoE’s decision to raise the Bank Rate to 0.75% is a mistake. It is a mistake comparable to those made by Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve in the years between 2003 and 2006.  Mark Carney It is a mistake that must be understood in a wider context. Not just the political context – which promotes...

On 19th July, 2018, the director of Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), Ann Pettifor, received the following from Professor Antonia Grunenberg of the Heinrich Boll Foundation, Bremen, Germany. Berlin, July 19, 2018Dear Mrs. Pettifor,it is my great pleasure to inform you in behalf of the international jury of  the „Hannah Arendt Prize for...

Mountains of private debt?  Image with acknowledgment to Wikimedia “Countries that underwent sharp credit booms have often experienced a crisis” (Bank of England, 2018, Chart A.28 p. 22)For policymakers, the importance of private debt was the key take home from the financial crisis. Though why it...

Image with acknowledgment to http://carolinaparrothead.blogspot.com/2016/05/breaking-camels-back.html Abstract: The world’s financial markets are hurtling towards a new phase of crises ranging from currency to balance of payments  to sovereign debt to banking crises. The monetary tightening policies of...

Much of the debate over Brexit focuses on narrowly on trade in goods.  In that debate one finds relatively little discussion of the performance of the EU internal market with regard to commodity trade (“goods”). The typical argument for the British government  negotiating a post-Brexit agreement presumes that EU internal market...

“Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money”Franklin Delano Roosevelt, inaugural address, 4 March 19331.     Introduction and overviewTen years ago the bursting of private debt ‘bubbles’ – most obviously in the US, UK and on the periphery of the EU – woke policymakers to the importance of...

Severe as it has been for the welfare of the British people, eight years of so-called austerity under three Conservative governments are but the most recent manifestation of Tory assaults on public services.  Since Margaret Thatcher became prime minister almost forty years ago, contracting the public sector has been a constant theme across Tory governments.Chart 1 shows total pubic spending as share of GDP over four decades, 1980-2017.  In the first three years of the Thatcher...

Ten years ago the judgement and competence of the economics profession was politely questioned by the Queen of England and thereafter fiercely attacked by civil society and ‘heterodox’ economists. Through all this, the profession has stood aloof - from both the heated debate, and indeed from much of the crisis itself. No...

This week a friend casually explained that he and his wife considered having a second child. But having recently moved into a new house, they were having to fork out a large share of their income on mortgage interest payments. Hearing talk of potential rate rises had therefore persuaded them not to risk another pregnancy.Such are the life-changing impacts of decisions (or non-decisions) made by a group of men (and one woman) on the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank...