Seldomly updated

[unable to retrieve full-text content]

By James As I wrote a couple of years ago, I don’t post here anymore. I just have a couple of updates for people who subscribe and may be interested in my work. I upgraded my personal website to the 21st century. I have a new book! The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts is coming out on June 20 from the New Press. My co-author is Stephen Bright, a legendary death penalty lawyer (with a 4–0 record in Supreme Court...

The Honorable Janet L. Yellen U.S. Department of Treasury 1500 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, D.C. 20220                                                                                                         October 11, 2022 Dear Secretary Yellen: We are a group of economists with expertise in oil markets, international trade, and political economy, writing to express our support for the proposed price cap on Russian seaborne oil exports. As envisaged by the G7,...

By Simon Johnson, Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan School of Management The plan is based on sound economic and fiscal assumptions and allows for the implementation of policy initiatives without tax increases. This note provides my assessment of the financial viability of Stacey Abrams’ budget plan for the state of Georgia through fiscal 2028. This assessment was carried out at the request of the Stacey Abrams campaign for Georgia’s governor. Stacey...

Otmar Issing can look back on a long and consequential central banking career. Even in his retirement he is still living the part, evaluating whether his successors at the European Central Bank are pursuing stability-oriented monetary policies to his liking. His most recent critique (“‘Living in a fantasy’: euro’s founding father rebukes ECB over inflation response” https://www.ft.com/content/145b6795-2d21-48c6-984b-4b05d121ba16) shows him on the wrong side of events and debates about...

March 3, 2022: By Oleg Ustenko, economic advisor to the president of Ukraine, and Simon Johnson, MIT. Contact: [email protected]. This post is taken from a one page memo, currently circulating. Sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are not degrading Russian energy production capacity or putting enough pressure on Russian financial markets. On the contrary, the price of Brent crude has risen from $80 at the end of 2021 to $90 pre-invasion and reached $113 per...

by Lekha Chakraborty and Harikrishnan S. Omicron is a reminder that the COVID-19 pandemic is still not over. This ongoing health crisis should act as a trigger for greater investments in public health in India. Public spending on health by the union government is still below 1 percent of GDP, though the estimate has increased from 0.2 percent of GDP in 2020–21 (revised estimates) to 0.4 percent of GDP in 2021–22 (budget estimates). Strengthening investments in the healthcare sector is...

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is pleased to announce it will be holding a summer seminar June 11–18, 2022. Through lectures, hands-on workshops, and breakout groups, the seminar will provide an opportunity to engage with the theory and policy of Modern Money Theory (MMT) and the work of Institute Distinguished Scholars Hyman Minsky and Wynne Godley. Intended for those who are introducing themselves to these approaches as well as those who are looking to deepen their...

L. Randall Wray | November 10, 2021 If the global financial crisis (GFC) of the mid-to-late 2000s and the COVID crisis of the past couple of years have taught us anything, it is that Uncle Sam cannot run out of money. During the GFC, the Federal Reserve lent and spent over $29 trillion to bail out the world’s financial system,[1] and then trillions more in various rounds of “unconventional” monetary policy known as quantitative easing.[2] During the COVID crisis, the...

Lekha Chakraborty(Professor, NIPFP, and Member of Governing Board, International Institute of Public Finance, Munich) Climate change is about risks and uncertainty. How well the monetary policy stance can incorporate such risks and uncertainties is questioned by many economists. There is a broad consensus among economists that fiscal policy is capable of dealing with the climate crisis but monetary policy is not, due to the latter’s lack of tools. It is widely acknowledged that public...