Prime, Policy Research in Macroeconomics

On 5th January 2018, Professor John Weeks gave this year's David Gordon Memorial Lectureat the meeting of the American Economic Association in Philadelphia, USA.  It was hosted by the Union for Radical Political Economics, and we are pleased to publish the text of the lecture, below.  It can also be downloaded as a pdf here.  David Gordon was an American economist who inter alia founded the Institute for Labor Education and Research in 1975, and later the Schwartz Center for...

In an article for the Guardian, published on Saturday, 27 January, 2018, PRIME's director drew a parallel between the Bitcoin bubble and the inflated London property market. She argued that "vast sums of money have been poured into finite supplies of bitcoins and London property. Both have consequently exploded in value, albeit over different time periods. And so both have become financialised assets that deliver capital gains far in excess of people’s ability to earn income...

Over the past decade in advanced western economies, the rate of improvement in prosperity has ground to the lowest point of the post-war period.  Stagnation is now the norm across the majority of the globe, and even in Asia more substantial gains are slowing.This position is illustrated by the comprehensive productivity...

The Financial Times questioned economists for its annual publication of economic forecasts: “With unemployment at a 40-year low, how much of a pay rise will British workers get in 2018?” (See here: https://www.ft.com/content/98ce5e72-ebd9-11e7-bd17-521324c81e23)  PRIME economists responded thus:The fall in real wages while employment has fallen and employment has risen is a consequence of sustained hyper-globalisation policy in which much of the labour force is now obliged to...

The Financial Times asked economists the following: How far will the Bank of England raise interest rates next year? Do you think they should? PRIME economists responded in this way:We think much will depend on the Federal Reserve and the ECB. The BoE will follow both, but will have time to assess the impact of global tightening. We do not think that rate rises would be wise at a time of weak demand, low productivity and heavy corporate and consumer indebtedness. Thanks to...

PRIME (Policy Research in Macroeconomics) economists were asked by the FT “How fast do you think the UK economy will grow in 2018 and how will this compare to other countries?” (See here: https://www.ft.com/content/ceb165ee-ebb5-11e7-bd17-521324c81e23)We replied as follows:The end of 2017 witnessed, in our view, the top of the global asset bubble. Rupert Murdoch’s decision to dispose of 21st Century Fox was a clear indication that the bubble had peaked. Bitcoin’s stratospheric...

Image via Wikipedia - fascists attack police, February 1934, Paris It’s good to see the latest (21 December) New York Review of Books give space to a review – by Robert Kuttner of American Prospect– of a biography of "Karl Polanyi: a Life on the Left" by Gareth Dale.  For as we have been arguing for a...

Yesterday I spoke to a group of important economists about my book The Production of Money - but omitted to make one important point. So am making it here. Savings are not needed for investment. Ever. There is absolutely no need for example, for the Chancellor to rattle the tax collection box, or cut government spending - to...

On Wednesday 29 November 2017, PRIME's director, Ann Pettifor, gave evidence at the Committee's invitation to the UK Parliament's Treasury Select Committee, together with Professor Jagjit Chadha, Director, National Institute of Economic and Social Research and Paul Johnson, Director, Institute for Fiscal Studies. A verbatim report of the discussion can be found on the Select Committee's website here. Below we publish PRIME's written evidence to the Treasury Select Committee....

What Crisis?For the last several years the media have carried reports of a crisis of low productivity plaguing the British economy, both in terms of level and rate of change.  Almost two years ago, PRIME's Jeremy Smith provided what I considered the definitive refutation of the existence of such a crisis.  But, far from ending, the “crisis” discussion has gathered pace to become a recurrent media theme.A presentation of trends in UK productivity appeared in the Civil Service...