Culture

Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Spence and a global team of leading thinkers are calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy

Growing income inequality is threatening the American middle class, and the middle class is vanishing before our eyes. We are still one country, but the stretch of incomes is fraying the unity of our nation.

The Precariat under Rentier Capitalism Guy Standing We are in the midst of a Global Transformation, analogous to Karl Polanyi’s Great Transformation described in his seminal 1944 book. Whereas Polanyi’s Transformation was about constructing national market systems, today’s is about the painful construction of a global market system. To use Polanyi’s term, the ‘dis-embedded’ phase has been dominated by an ideology of market liberalisation, commodification and privatisation, orchestrated by financial interests, as in his model. The similarities also extend to today’s fundamental challenge, how to construct a ‘re-embedded’ phase, with new systems of regulation, distribution and social protection.

In the economic literature, several scholars have addressed the narrative of a two-stage European crisis. In a first stage, the so-called “he-cession”, men would have been hit the most by the economic recession induced by the financial crisis. Shortly thereafter, in the “she-austerity” stage, women would have suffered the heaviest burdens of the fiscal retrenchment measures. If that were the case, the policy response to the crisis would be producing an increase in the – already high pre-existing – gender inequality.

“Dual Economy” models were developed to explain growth in the developing world. Now they appear necessary to comprehend the high income trap that afflicts the world’s most developed economies.

Rob Johnson kicks off INET’s “Reawakening” conference with his take on how economists can win back the trust of a world that has rejected experts

INET gathered hundreds of new economic thinkers in Edinburgh to discuss the past, present, and future of the economics profession.

The Festival for New Economic Thinking is a collaborative initiative of several organizations, and aims to bring together those who seek to improve how economics is taught, studied and practiced. 

Once again, an out-of-control industry is threatening public health on a mammoth scale

Rather than continue to narrow the field, economists need to ask what they’re missing

Engaging in music, literature and the arts is essential for understanding context and human behavior—which economists so often miss

YSI Philosophy of Economics working group is organising a workshop preceding the INEM conference.

Economists’ infamous failure at predicting the recent financial crisis has brought new impetus to studies on diversity in the economics profession. Such studies have underlined how diversity plays a prominent role in enriching economic analyses.

Price gouging in the US pharmaceutical drug industry goes back more than three decades.

Greater efficiency, lower costs, and universal coverage make it the sustainable option, say some top economists