Culture

Author and Jungian analyst Steven Herrmann discusses the concept of “spiritual democracy” as explored in the writings of American poets like Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson.

How can we develop a deeper, more human and multifaceted understanding of the past?

Researchers studying beasts that pass on resources and advantages to offspring have raised the old question of whether humans are destined to live in stratified conditions. Your view may depend on your relative position.

Single-family home-ownership—elusive for many today—is an aspiration we ought to abandon

The perverted dreams of western modernity and capitalism may be exhausting themselves, says author Eugene McCarraher. And that’s something to be thankful for.

Racial inequalities of wealth and income are pervasive. This episode of Debt Talks will feature a conversation with four prominent experts on the persistence of racial inequalities of wealth and income and the role of financial markets in shaping them.

What counts as work and what doesn’t?

Ben Power, who adapted the play “The Lehman Trilogy,” talks about the eponymous family’s role in the creation and destruction of American wealth

Despite the moral assurance and personal flattery that meritocracy offers to the successful, it ought to be abandoned both as a belief about how the world works and as a general social ideal.

Stigmatizing and relegating an activity to the shadows doesn’t improve anyone’s welfare

Decades before it caught on with other economists, Sadie Alexander was the first economist to recommend a government jobs guarantee in the US

Pharmaceutical pushers like Purdue “couldn’t have done their dirty work” without America’s increasingly unbalanced economy

Economic distress in rural areas and opioid exposure in cities are key indicators of overdose deaths

Economic distress in rural areas and opioid exposure in cities are key indicators of overdose deaths

Rob Johnson and Michael Sandel discuss the limits of rational choice

Greg Mankiw says there should be a market for kidneys, but not for paying drug addicts to get sterilized.

LSE Director Minouche Shafik says that for democracy to work, we must keep the market out of certain domains

Until 2008, rising home values gave the middle class a cushion amid growing income inequality. But following the financial crisis, that wealth has failed to return.

Adolph Reed, who researches race and politics, warns that “identitarian” politics can conceal the structural inequities of capitalism

Donald Trump, democracy, and how the wealthy crush the American Dream

Young scholars in the fields of behavioral and experimental economics, philosophy, and related disciplines will be given the opportunity to present their work at a workshop in New York. Samuel Bowles (Santa Fe Institute), Shaun Hargreaves Heap (King’s College London) and Mario Rizzo (New York University) will also present their work and give feedback to the young scholars.

“We don’t look after each other at all,” says Jeffrey Sachs on America today

A Nobel Prize-winning economist and the second-most-famous democratic socialist in America sit down together

Trump’s surprise win areas looked like a drug overdose map

Expanding, rather than cutting, Social Security is the solution

In China, the government uses the purses strings of state-owned enterprises to control social unrest

Behind sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll were moral values, says music industry veteran Danny Goldberg

Watch music industry veteran Shep Gordon and INET President Rob Johnson talk about how reality TV, celebrity chefs, and surfing explain American politics and economy today.

A new report examines the path to global social progress. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers

Gay men earn 20% less than straight men, but gay women earn up to 20% more than straight women. Why?

Alissa Quart’s new book chronicles the pain of a disgruntled class that could change the country’s political landscape.

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

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

This three-day summer academy and annual meeting of the Finance, Law, and Economics Working Group aims to bring together graduate students and young professionals pursuing careers in international economic law. By learning from prominent academics and practitioners in the field, participants will develop the fundamental skills to handle multi-jurisdictional and interdisciplinary issues, while broadening their networks. After successful attendance, YSI FLE will issue the corresponding certificates.

YSI is hosting sessions at the 2018 STOREP conference.

From 28-30 June the Italian Association for the History of Political Economy will be gathering in Genova to ask the question “Whatever has happened to political economy?”.  Before the start of the conference, Rethinking Economics and the YSI Philosophy of Economics Working Group will host a workshop to discuss a related question: “Whatever happened to economics?”. Professor Geoffrey Hodgson will participate in our discussion.

A light-hearted economic analysis of the World Cup

The YSI Gender and Economics Working Group will host a workshop during the pre-conference of the 27th IAFFE Annual Conference. Members of the Gender and Economics WG will also be welcomed to take part in the workshop and mentoring activities organized by IAFFE in the pre-conference.  

It’s time to connect political violence with economic violence.

To mark the release of INET’s “What Money Can’t Buy” with professor Michael Sandel, the YSI Philosophy of Economics Working Group and and Finance, Law and Economics Working Group invite young scholars working on issues related to the core issues in Michael Sandel’s lectures to present their work in a series of webinars. Professor Sandel will join the webinars to answer questions about the topics raised in his book, the video lectures and to give comment on the presentations.

To celebrate the release of our new series “What Money Can’t Buy” join Harvard University Professor Michael Sandel and INET for a live conversation exploring the role of money and morals in today’s world.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Mayor of Newark Ras Baraka, CEO of the Campaign for Black Male Achievement Shawn Dove, Pulitzer-prize winning author Heather Ann Thompson and more discuss race and inequality in Trump’s America Friday, April 20th 5-7pm.

Training first-world children for a third-world life

The economist reflects back on the racial justice leader who showed him the limits of his academic training.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders relied on black entrepreneurs to make their work possible

The vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years later, and the relevance of his economic ideas today

In the last years of his life, King was boldly forging a radical, multi-racial movement for economic justice

The renowned linguist, cognitive scientist, and historian on where we stand as an economy, as a country, and as human beings

The assumptions economists make in their models have implications not only for policymaking and choosing what data we collect, but also for the very definition of work, says Professor Maria Floro of American University. 

Reflections on the Radical Vision of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Last Major Speech

Cuba’s entirely state-owned biopharmaceutical industry has been remarkably successful, and can serve as a model for other nations

Economist Olugbenga Ajilore shows the high cost of the American government’s arming of local police with military weapons, which has exacerbated lethal use of force against black communities

Why women experts are denied the same scholarly authority conferred to men, and what we should do about it

In the face of  laissez-faire capitalism at home and resurgent nationalism across the globe, INET offers an innovative look at the causes of—and solutions for—the problems that ail a fissuring world economy.

Ed Pavlić discusses the role of music in communicating suffering and resistance in the African-American experience

Economist Morton Schapiro, president of Northwestern University, and his colleague, literary critic and Slavic studies scholar Saul Morson, argue that—contrary to popular belief—studying the humanities is the key to not getting outsourced.

Nina Banks assesses the legacy of the first African-American economist in the United States

Behind towering figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. were the taxi dispatchers, pharmacists, grocers, and other small business owners who were instrumental in making civil rights a reality.

A large literature has detailed the seminal roles played in the Civil Rights Movement by activists, new political organizations, churches, and philanthropies. But black-owned businesses also provided a behind-the-scenes foundation for the movement’s success.

To get justice, targets must show measurable harm. Economists can help

To get justice, targets must show measurable harm: economists can help.

The renowned feminist economist discusses the importance of heterodoxy, radicalism, and social justice to the discipline

Veiling among Muslim women is modeled as a commitment mechanism that limits temptation to deviate from religious norms of behavior. 

Distinguished Scholars Including Larry Summers and Adair Turner Present Evidence of the Trend and Policy Solutions

Skewed measures of “research output” hold back women who think differently or study smaller subfields in economics—and it’s harming the discipline as a whole

The World Economic Roundtable seeks to help the business, investment, and policy communities understand ongoing changes in the world economy and to promote a discussion of ideas that can advance the goal of a widely shared global prosperity.

The History of Economic Thought and the Philosophy of Economics working groups are organising a Young Scholars Workshop on the methods and approaches to the history of economics that have consolidated during the last two decades.  

From the Rust Belt to Rural America, Economic and Social Distress Helped Shape the 2016 US Presidential Election Outcome

How Women Are Forced to Conform to the Research Habits and Interests of Men

Decomposition by such an important category as gender helps us understand the economy at the macro level, and design macroeconomic policy, better. It also provides the foundation for advocating equal gender rights and outcomes. But, where gendered policy issues arise in mainstream macroeconomics (income maldistribution, labour market composition, etc.) the subject matter is narrowed by its microfoundations, by focusing on GDP growth and on suboptimal outcomes being explained by market imperfections.

What would it look like if women and other marginalized groups could fully participate in our economy and society?

The Role These Factors Play in Shaping Economic Knowledge and Behavior

A better set of approaches for the 21st century.

Especially in the wake of the Great Recession, calls for more diversity within economics are usually limited to appealing for greater diversity in the economists’ backgrounds, while diversity of opinion and approaches is often neglected.

What Do Citations Actually Measure in Economics and How Should Economic Journals and Department Review Committees Use This Data? 

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

McCloskey discusses her career, critiques of economics, and offers advice for young economists.

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Economics is not, nor can it be, value-free.

Demand, Secular Stagnation and the Vanishing Middle-Class

How austerity policies and microfinance can bankrupt rather than empower women. Professor Girón discusses why microfinance cannot replace development banks.

A look at America’s strange and dangerous approach to medicine, and how to fix it

This paper presents a model of mass incarceration in the United States, which has the largest proportion of its population imprisoned among advanced countries.

Professor Dutt discusses how group identity is key to addressing inequality and how inequality can disrupt group identity.

The YSI Working group on Gender and Economics invites young scholars to partake in their session at the ATGENDER spring conference

In his 2017 presidential address to the National Economic Association, Professor Darrick Hamilton warned that treating economics as a morally neutral ‘science’, and the discipline’s limited attention to structural barriers and overemphasis individual agency, has resulted in bad economics, and bad policy particularly as it relates to racial disparity.