Articles

Articles and analyses from the INET community on the key economic questions of our time.

Article

Why Wages Are Stagnating in Latin America

Oct 19, 2018

William Lazonick has shown how the doctrine of “shareholder value” has hurt wages in the United States. But in Latin America, where family corporations dominate, the story is more complicated.

Article

Why Hysteria Over the Italian Budget Is Wrong-Headed

Oct 10, 2018

Reactions to the size of the proposed plan rely on discredited assumptions and betray a fundamental misunderstanding of economic growth—and austerity 

Article

Macroeconomics Predicted the Wrong Crisis

Sep 10, 2018

Distracted by the perceived threat of a Chinese savings glut, mainstream macroeconomists missed the writing on the wall of the 2008 crisis

Article

Mortgage Fraud Fueled the Financial Crisis—and Could Again

Sep 7, 2018

Both before 2008 and today, there’s a disturbing tendency in Washington to not take mortgage fraud seriously

Article

The Zero-Sum Economy

Aug 20, 2018

The anthropologist David Graeber has argued that as much as 30% of all work is performed in “bullshit jobs,” which are unnecessary to produce truly valuable goods and services but arise from competition for income and status. But the deeper problem is that more and more economic activity performs a merely distributive function.

Article

The Mechanics of Cryptocurrency

Aug 15, 2018

INET Global Commissioner Peter Bofinger breaks down cryptocurrencies, and why they’re actually far from “anonymous”

Article

Reproducibility Crisis Reaches All Randomised Controlled Trials

Jul 9, 2018

The social and medical sciences depend on randomised control trials – though they face more assumptions and biases than commonly thought.

Article

Was Martin Luther King a socialist?

Jul 5, 2018

Was Martin Luther King a socialist? New book may surprise you.

Article

Who Says Labor Laws Are “Luxuries”?

Jun 11, 2018

The World Bank and IMF say developing economies can’t afford to have strong labor laws. Actually, they can’t afford not to.