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from Dean Baker and Arjun Jayadev On Monday, we, along with Achal Prabhala, had a column in the New York Times arguing in support of a resolution put forward before the WTO by India and South Africa, which would suspend intellectual property rights related to vaccines and treatments during the pandemic. The main point is that these rights are slowing the diffusion of life-saving medicines in a crisis. Furthermore, since much or all the cost of developing these vaccines and treatments were...

from Jayati Ghosh It was a long time coming, but the day of reckoning for the big digital companies may finally have arrived. Despite the growing monopoly power of big tech and their use of anti-competitive practices, earlier attempts to regulate them (such as an attempt by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1998 to rein in Microsoft) had only limited success. The novel coronavirus pandemic further enhanced the monopoly power of the big tech giants. Timeline and actions But now, a rash of...

Part of the recent is of International Critical Thought is dedicated to Friedriech Engels. I have contributed a piece titled ‘Once Again on the Alleged Differences between Engels and Marx‘. There are 50 free copies of the article offered by the journal via the following link:

from Lars Syll In physics, we have theories and centuries of experience and experiments that show how gravity makes bodies move. In economics, we know there is nothing equivalent. Mainstream economists necessarily have to load their theories and models with sets of auxiliary structural assumptions to get any results at all in their models. So why then do mainstream economists keep on pursuing this modelling project? Mainstream ‘as if’ models are based on the logic of idealization and a...

The GOP has crossed the Rubicon  – by New Deal democrat In the Roman Republic, military leaders automatically lost their legal authority to command at the Rubicon River in northern Italy. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his legions, it was an act of war against the Republic. With the filing of their  Amicus brief in the Supreme Court this past week, the GOP as represented by their Congressional delegation similarly finally broke...

from Asad Zaman I was overwhelmed by the level of ignorance displayed by distinguished economist Raghuram Rajan in his article entitled “How Much Debt Is Too Much?” published recently in Project Syndicate on Nov 30, 2020. I had meant to write a critique of the article, but to do so requires starting from the very beginning. In this post, I go over some basic MMT concepts, in order to prepare the ground for this critique. There are now many good videos explaining these basics. I will go...

from  Nikolaos Karagiannis and current issue of RWER “. . . The practical use of the term “neoliberal” exploded in the 1990s, when it became closely associated with two developments. One of these was financial deregulation, which would culminate in the 2008 financial crash and in the still-lingering euro debacle. The second was economic hyper-globalization, which accelerated thanks to free flows of finance and to new, more ambitious types of trade agreements. Financialization and...

The new AB commenting and posting has been up for at least a week now. I would like to hear what “you” the commenters are seeing or experiencing when you comment. Please let us know so we can correct or improve what has been changed. Letting us know what you like is helpful also. Some things I have noticed: The system is slow to get into for posting and commenting.Commenters are ending up in the trash bin where I have to go and restore their...

from Lars Syll Causal inferences can be drawn from nonexperimental data. However, no mechanical rules can be laid down for the activity. Since Hume, that is almost a truism. Instead, causal inference seems to require an enormous investment of skill, intelligence, and hard work. Many convergent lines of evidence must be developed. Natural variation needs to be identified and exploited. Data must be collected. Confounders need to be considered. Alternative explanations have to be...

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