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Levy Institute Publications
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Income Inequality in the United States Worsens with Each Postwar Economic Expansion, New Levy Institute Report Says
Press Release, May 10, 2017 | May 2017 | Mark PrimoffDownload:Associated Program:Author(s):Mark Primoff -
The Trump Effect: Is This Time Different?
Strategic Analysis, April 2017 | April 2017 | Michalis Nikiforos, Gennaro ZezzaFrom a macroeconomic point of view, 2016 was an ordinary year in the post–Great Recession period. As in prior years, the conventional forecasts predicted that this would be the year the economy would finally escape from the “new normal” of secular stagnation. But just as in every previous year, the forecasts were confounded by the actual result: lower-than-expected growth—just 1.6 percent.
The radical policy changes promoted by the new Trump administration dominated economic conditions in the closing quarter of the year and the first quarter of 2017. Markets have responded with exuberance since the November elections, on the expectation that the proposed policy measures would increase profitability by boosting growth and cutting personal and corporate taxes. However, an evaluation of the US economy’s structural characteristics reveals three key impediments to a robust, sustainable recovery: income inequality, fiscal conservatism, and weak net export demand. The new administration’s often conflicting policy proposals are unlikely to solve any of these fundamental problems—if anything, the situation will worsen.
Our latest Strategic Analysis provides two medium-term scenarios for the US economy. The “business as usual” baseline scenario (built on CBO estimates) shows household debt and GDP growth roughly maintaining their moribund postcrisis trends. The second scenario assumes a sharp correction in the stock market beginning in 2017Q3, combined with another round of private sector deleveraging. The results: negative growth and a government deficit of 8.3 percent by 2020—essentially a repeat of the crisis of 2007–9.Download:Associated Program:Author(s):Related Topic(s): -
Greece: Getting Out of the Recession
Strategic Analysis, September 2016 | October 2016 | Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Michalis Nikiforos, Gennaro ZezzaThe Greek government has agreed to a new round of fiscal austerity measures consisting of a sharp increase in taxes on income and property and further reductions in pension and other welfare-related expenditures. Based on our model of the Greek economy, policies aimed at reducing the government deficit will cause a recession, unless other components of aggregate demand increase enough to more than offset the negative impact of fiscal austerity on output and employment.
In this report we argue that the troika strategy of increasing net exports to restart the economy has failed, partly because of the low impact of falling wages on prices, partly because of the low trade elasticities with respect to prices, and partly because of other events that caused a sharp reduction in transport services, which used to be Greece’s largest export sector.
A policy initiative to boost aggregate demand is urgently needed, now more than ever. We propose a fiscal policy alternative based on innovative financing mechanisms, which could trigger a boost in confidence that would encourage renewed private investment.
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Destabilizing an Unstable Economy
Strategic Analysis, March 2016 | March 2016 | Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Michalis Nikiforos, Gennaro ZezzaOur latest strategic analysis reveals that the US economy remains fragile because of three persistent structural issues: weak demand for US exports, fiscal conservatism, and a four-decade trend in rising income inequality. It also faces risks from stagnation in the economies of the United States’ trading partners, appreciation of the dollar, and a contraction in asset prices. The authors provide a baseline and three alternative medium-term scenarios using the Levy Institute’s stock-flow consistent macro model: a dollar appreciation and reduced growth in US trading partners scenario; a stock market correction scenario; and a third scenario combining scenarios 1 and 2. The baseline scenario shows that future growth will depend on an increase in private sector indebtedness, while the remaining scenarios underscore the linkages between a fragile US recovery and instability in the global economy.Download:Associated Program:Author(s):Related Topic(s): -
Rising Corporate Concentration, Declining Trade Union Power, and the Growing Income Gap
e-pamphlet, March 2016 | March 2016 | Jordan BrennanAmerican Prosperity in Historical Perspective
Jordan Brennan, of Unifor and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, examines the rise of income inequality and the deceleration of economic growth in the United States in this two-part analysis. The first section explores the consolidation of corporate power, through mergers and acquisitions, between 1895 and 2013, and finds that reduced competition, declines in fixed asset investment, and the rise of practices such as stock buybacks have shifted investment away from the real economy, leading to weak economic growth and rising income inequality. The second section of Brennan’s analysis examines the interplay of labor unions, inflation, and income inequality. The author observes that the decline of unions as a countervailing force to corporate power and anti-inflationary monetary policy have shifted income away from middle- and lower-income groups. Similarly, he observes that over the past century inflation has tended to redistribute income from capital to labor—from the upper to the lower income strata. In this context, he observes that anti-inflation policy is a use of state power to effect a regressive redistribution of income.Download:Associated Program:Author(s):Jordan Brennan -
Brazil Still in Troubled Waters
Public Policy Brief No. 143, 2017 | February 2017 | Fernando J. Cardim de CarvalhoSince inheriting the Brazilian presidency five months ago, the new Temer administration has successfully ratified a constitutional amendment imposing a radical, two-decades-long public spending freeze, purportedly aimed at sparking an increase in business confidence and investment. In this policy brief, Fernando Cardim de Carvalho explains why this fiscal strategy is based not only on a flawed conception of the drivers of private-sector confidence and investment but also on a mistaken view of the roots of the current Brazilian economic crisis. The hoped-for “expansionary fiscal consolidation” is not likely to be achieved.
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Full Employment: Are We There Yet?
Public Policy Brief No. 142, 2017 | February 2017 | Flavia Dantas, L. Randall WrayFlavia Dantas and L. Randall Wray argue that the emerging conventional wisdom—that the US economy has reached full employment—is flawed. The unemployment rate is not providing an accurate picture of the health of the labor market, and the common narrative attributing shrinking labor force engagement to aging demographics is overstated. Instead, falling prime-age participation rates are the symptom of a structural inadequacy of aggregate demand—a problem of insufficient job creation and stagnant incomes that conventional public policy remedies have been unable to address. The solution to our long-running secular stagnation requires targeted, direct job creation for those at the bottom of the income scale.
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Why the Compulsive Shift to Single Payer?
Policy Note 2017/3 | July 2017 | L. Randall WrayBecause Healthcare Is Not Insurable
The growing political momentum for a universal single-payer healthcare program in the United States is due in part to Republican attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). However, according to Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray, it is Obamacare’s successes and its failures that have boosted support for a single-payer system. Even after Obamacare, the US healthcare system still has significant gaps in coverage—all while facing the highest healthcare bill in the world. In this policy note, Wray argues that the underlying challenge for a system based on private, for-profit insurance is that basic healthcare is not an insurable expense. It is time to abandon the current, overly complex and expensive payments system and reconsider single payer for all. Social Security and Medicare provide a model for reform.Download:Associated Program:Author(s):Related Topic(s): -
The Concert of Interests in the Age of Trump
Policy Note 2017/2 | July 2017 | Jan KregelIf the Trump administration is to fulfill its campaign promises to this age’s “forgotten” men and women, Director of Research Jan Kregel argues, it should embrace the broader lesson of the 1930s: that government regulation and fiscal policy are crucial in addressing changes in the economic and financial structure that have exacerbated the problems faced by struggling communities.
In this policy note, Kregel explains how overcoming the economic and financial challenges we face today, just as in the 1930s, requires avoiding what Walter Lippmann identified as an “obvious error”: the blind belief that reducing regulation and the role of government will somehow restore a laissez-faire market liberalism that never existed and is inappropriate to the changing structure of production of both the US and the global economy.
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Falling Labor Force Participation
One-Pager No. 53 | February 2017 | Flavia Dantas, L. Randall WrayDemographics or Lack of Jobs?
Aging demographics, “social shifts,” and other supply-side and institutional factors have commonly been blamed for the fall in the US labor force participation rate. However, depressed labor force participation for prime-age workers is likely due to a combination of insufficient aggregate demand, weak job creation, and stagnant wages—all of which have been persistent problems over the past three or four decades. Although insufficient aggregate demand is the main problem, general “Keynesian” pump priming is not the answer. Stimulus needs to take the form of targeted job creation to tighten labor markets for less-skilled workers.
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A Complementary Currency and Direct Job Creation Hold the Key to Greek Recovery
One-Pager No. 52 | January 2016 | Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Michalis Nikiforos, Gennaro ZezzaEven under optimistic assumptions, the policy status quo being enforced in Greece cannot be relied upon to help recover lost incomes and employment within any reasonable time frame. And while a widely discussed public investment program funded by European institutions would help, a more innovative, better-targeted solution is required to address Greece’s protracted unemployment crisis: an “employer of last resort” (ELR) plan offering paid work in public projects, financed by issuing a nonconvertible “fiscal currency”—the Geuro.
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Unemployment: The Silent Epidemic
Working Paper No. 895 | August 2017 | Pavlina R. TchernevaThis paper examines two key aspects of unemployment—its propagation mechanism and socioeconomic costs. It identifies a key feature of this macroeconomic phenomenon: it behaves like a disease. A detailed assessment of the transmission mechanism and the existing pecuniary and nonpecuniary costs of unemployment suggests a fundamental shift in the policy responses to tackling joblessness. To stem the contagion effect and its outsized social and economic impact, fiscal policy can be designed around two criteria for successful disease intervention—preparedness and prevention. The paper examines how a job guarantee proposal uniquely meets those two requirements. It is a policy response whose merits include much more than its macroeconomic stabilization features, as discussed in the literature. It is, in a sense, a method of inoculation against the vile effects of unemployment. The paper discusses several preventative features of the program.
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An Inquiry Concerning Long-term US Interest Rates Using Monthly Data
Working Paper No. 894 | August 2017 | Tanweer Akram, Huiqing LiThis paper undertakes an empirical inquiry concerning the determinants of long-term interest rates on US Treasury securities. It applies the bounds testing procedure to cointegration and error correction models within the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) framework, using monthly data and estimating a wide range of Keynesian models of long-term interest rates. While previous studies have mainly relied on quarterly data, the use of monthly data substantially expands the number of observations. This in turn enables the calibration of a wide range of models to test various hypotheses. The short-term interest rate is the key determinant of the long-term interest rate, while the rate of core inflation and the pace of economic activity also influence the long-term interest rate. A rise in the ratio of the federal fiscal balance (government net lending/borrowing as a share of nominal GDP) lowers yields on long-term US Treasury securities. The short- and long-run effects of short-term interest rates, the rate of inflation, the pace of economic activity, and the fiscal balance ratio on long-term interest rates on US Treasury securities are estimated. The findings reinforce Keynes’s prescient insights on the determinants of government bond yields.
Download:Associated Program(s):Author(s):Tanweer Akram Huiqing LiRelated Topic(s): -
Financial Regulation in the European Union
Book Series, November 2015 | November 2015Edited by Rainer Kattel, Jan Kregel, and Mario Tonveronachi
Have past and more recent regulatory changes contributed to increased financial stability in the European Union (EU), or have they improved the efficiency of individual banks and national financial systems within the EU? Edited by Rainer Kattel, Tallinn University of Technology, Director of Research Jan Kregel, and Mario Tonveronachi, University of Siena, this volume offers a comparative overview of how financial regulations have evolved in various European countries since the introduction of the single European market in 1986. The collection includes a number of country studies (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia) that analyze the domestic financial regulatory structure at the beginning of the period, how the EU directives have been introduced into domestic legislation, and their impact on the financial structure of the economy. Other contributions examine regulatory changes in the UK and Nordic countries, and in postcrisis America.
Published by: Routledge
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Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist
Book Series, November 2015 | November 2015 | L. Randall WrayBy L. Randall Wray
Perhaps no economist was more vindicated by the global financial crisis than Hyman P. Minsky (1919–1996). Although a handful of economists raised alarms as early as 2000, Minsky’s warnings began a half century earlier, with writings that set out a compelling theory of financial instability. Yet even today he remains largely outside mainstream economics; few people have a good grasp of his writings, and fewer still understand their full importance. Why Minsky Matters makes the maverick economist’s critically valuable insights accessible to general readers for the first time. Author L. Randall Wray shows that by understanding Minsky we will not only see the next crisis coming but we might be able to act quickly enough to prevent it.
As Wray explains, Minsky’s most important idea is that “stability is destabilizing”: to the degree that the economy achieves what looks to be robust and stable growth, it is setting up the conditions in which a crash becomes ever more likely. Before the financial crisis, mainstream economists pointed to much evidence that the economy was more stable, but their predictions were completely wrong because they disregarded Minsky’s insight. Wray also introduces Minsky’s significant work on money and banking, poverty and unemployment, and the evolution of capitalism, as well as his proposals for reforming the financial system and promoting economic stability.
A much-needed introduction to an economist whose ideas are more relevant than ever, Why Minsky Matters is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why economic crises are becoming more frequent and severe—and what we can do about it.
Published by: Princeton
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Summary Spring 2017
Volume 26, No. 2 | April 2017 | Michael Stephens, Elizabeth DunnThis issue of the Summary opens with a policy brief that examines the move by Brazil’s Temer administration to impose a radical, two-decades-long public spending freeze aimed at boosting business confidence and investment, and explains why this fiscal strategy is flawed.
Working papers included in this issue investigate the long-run determinants of government bond yields in India; expansionary austerity theory; the Federal Reserve’s announced policy of “normalization”; money’s role in the modern economy; the effects of the Great Recession on the well-being of different racial groups in the United States; why abstractions are necessary for understanding complex economic and social realities; and the economic impacts of expanding the social care sector in Turkey. The issue closes with a policy brief that argues that the current unemployment rate provides an inaccurate picture of the health of the labor market, and that the common narrative attributing shrinking labor force engagement to aging demographics is overstated.
INSTITUTE RESEARCH
Program: The State of the US and World Economies
- FERNANDO J. CARDIM DE CARVALHO, Brazil Still in Troubled Waters
Program: Monetary Policy and Financial Structure
- TANWEER AKRAM and ANUPAM DAS, The Long-run Determinants of Indian Government Bond Yields
- ALBERTO BOTTA, The Short- and Long-run Inconsistency of the Expansionary Austerity Theory: A Post-Keynesian/Evolutionist Critique
- JAN KREGEL, Financial Stability and Secure Currency in a Modern Context
- FLAVIA DANTAS, Normalizing the Fed Funds Rate: The Fed’s Unjustified Rationale
Program: Distribution of Income and Wealth
- THOMAS MASTERSON, AJIT ZACHARIAS, FERNANDO RIOS-AVILA, and EDWARD N. WOLFF, The Great Recession and Racial Inequality: Evidence from Measures of Economic Well-Being
- MICHALIS NIKIFOROS, Distribution-led Growth through Methodological Lenses
Program: Gender Equality and the Economy
- KIJONG KIM, İPEK İLKKARACAN, and TOLGA KAYA, Investing in Social Care Infrastructure and Employment Generation: A Distributional Analysis of the Care Economy in Turkey
Program: Employment Policy and Labor Markets
- FLAVIA DANTAS and L. RANDALL WRAY, Full Employment: Are We There Yet?
INSTITUTE NEWS
Upcoming Events
- 26th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference
- The Hyman P. Minsky Summer Seminar
Recent Levy Institute Publications