History

A new book, The Hamilton Scheme, explores a very different founder than the one we’ve come to think we know.

By 1812 the U.S. already had more business corporations than any other country and possibly more than all other countries combined.

By 1812 the U.S. already had more business corporations than any other country, and possibly more than all other countries put together, securing its role as the world’s first “corporation nation.”

An excerpt from Revolt of the Rich: How the Politics of the 1970s Widened America’s Class Divide by David N. Gibbs, published by Columbia University Press (2024)

Wang Hui, author of The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, now available in English, provides conceptual guidance for understanding China’s intellectual progress in a conversation with INET’s Lynn Parramore.

Reinterpreting Bagehot’s mature work as the origin of the key currency tradition

Read in the context of his time, Bagehot’s book Lombard Street appears as an attempt above all to reveal the dynamic of globalization when global money was sterling.

Smith did not advocate a single-minded pursuit of profit

Historians Naomi Oreskes (Harvard University) and Erik Conway (Caltech) talk to Rob about their just released book, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market.

Perry Mehrling’s new book traces the rise of the dollar through the life and career of influential economist Charles Kindleberger

How a bleak Christian theology influenced the development of the dismal science

Why does the apparently prescient and correct “key currency” view remain an embattled minority view?

Things are going to break and central banks are going to have to respond, but the mental frame that most people will be using is not well suited for understanding how the world now works

This research project explores the factors producing “herding” in the economics profession and professional investment community with the goal of articulating policy changes appropriate to the organization of the economics profession and its practices in particular.

This research project recounts the intellectual history of the dollar as an international reserve currency, starting with World War I, which brought the international gold standard to an end, and continuing all the way up to the present global financial crisis.

This research project provides us with a greater understanding of why the Coase theorem came to captivate the minds of economics and legal scholars and how its impact on economics and law reshaped both the theoretical landscape and legal-economic policymaking.

This research project demonstrates the ways in which fact and value are entangled in economic concepts and the implications of this entanglement for the ways in which various economic problems are approached.

Pari passu clauses were deliberately crafted to gain an upper hand in sovereign bankruptcy disputes brought to the London stock exchange’s jurisdiction

Pari passu clauses were deliberately crafted to gain an upper hand in sovereign bankruptcy disputes brought to the London stock exchange’s jurisdiction

James M. Buchanan’s defenders argue he was not racist because of his ties with the anti-apartheid economist W.H. Hutt, but this defense fails miserably

Despite his opposition to South Africa’s apartheid, Hutt embraced notions of black inferiority

A new global economic system has to be based on a key principle of Bretton Woods: multilateralism

Evidence reveals our remote ancestors were neither brutes nor innocents, but complex beings whose experiments in living have much to teach us. Welcome news as disaster looms in every direction.

A response to Phillip Magness in The Wall Street Journal

The curious case of the Wall Street Journal article on Virginia and school vouchers

In the 19th Century, “hypothecations” provided investors with valuable information on sovereign fiscal resources

In the 19th Century, “hypothecations” provided investors with valuable information on sovereign fiscal resources

An excerpt from the just released book, The Outlier, by Kai Bird

The plight of white blue-collar workers is well-known, but Blacks in that category were feeling the squeeze long before their white counterparts.

How once-promising Black upward mobility reversed course, and what can be done about it

In 1898, upwardly mobile Blacks in Wilmington, NC were terrorized and slaughtered in a violent insurrection that set the stage for Jim Crow – and the next 123 years. Hardly anyone really knows about it.

Large-sale debt relief for indebted households could be a game changer.

Whether it is called “Build Back Better” or a “Green Industrial Policy” or, indeed, a Green New Deal, it is imperative to reject the false dichotomy of “jobs against climate.”

Does the COVID recession still have the potential to turn into a broader financial meltdown?

When segregationists fought against school integration, libertarian economist James Buchanan saw an opportunity for his private education plan

What is the current situation in credit markets? Will an overhang of debt on corporate balance sheets slow down the recovery from the COVID recession and be a drag on investment going forward? Does the COVID recession still have the potential to turn into a broader financial meltdown?

Lance Taylor responds to William Janeway’s essay on John Maynard Keynes and Frank Ramsey. Janeway then offers his response.

INET’s co-founder reviews new books about John Maynard Keynes and Frank Ramsey

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.

During WWII FDR mobilized private manufacturers to support the war effort. To keep Americans healthy, we need to do the same now for medical equipment

Some Personal Reflections on a Half Century of Friendship and Appreciation

In this series Polanyi reflects on an extraordinary life, and the extraordinary legacy of her family.

How Penrosian Learning Confronts the Neoclassical Fallacy

To get beyond the neoclassical fallacy, economists have to stop relying on constrained-optimization methodology

A Seminar of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, by Maria Cristina Marcuzo

Containing Slaves, Freedmen, Jim Crow laws and the Great Migration

This paper records the path by which African Americans were transformed from enslaved persons in the American economy to partial participants in the progress of the economy.

Political theorist Wendy Brown explores new threats to democracy and society

National States and Conflicting Economic Priorities in the Making of the European Monetary System

This paper analyzes the early stages of the formation of the Common Market.

This essay deals with the contradictory dynamics that engulfed Europe from 1959 to 1979, the year of the launching of the European Monetary System.

This essay deals with the EMS experience and its failure, with the Maastricht Treaty, and with the interregnum leading to the formation of the EMU in 1999.

Author Jeremy Lent argues that western conceptual frameworks with roots in the Stone Age push us towards disaster. Time to let them go?

Cambridge-INET is proud to announce a major conference on Keynes’s 1919 book.

An animated look at economic history with Robert Skidelsky

An except from Galbraith’s review of Paul Davidson’s Who’s Afraid of John Maynard Keynes? Challenging Economic Governance in an Age of Growing Inequality

The New York Times’ Binyamin Appelbaum explains the role Democratic presidents, from Kennedy to Obama, in moving economic policy to the right

Economics needs to better incorporate other social sciences

The Institute for New Economic Thinking and the Italian Association for the History of Political Economy (STOREP) announce a day and a half of lectures, workshops, and debates held on the 26th and 27th of June, just before the annual STOREP conference, in Siena, Italy.

Shaped by the 2008 financial crisis, a new generation of economists is expanding the boundaries of economic thinking on credit cycles, private debt, and financial stability.

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

Returns on wealth exceed growth for more countries, more years, and more dramatically than Piketty has found

The state has long used law to back private money—with dire consequences, then and now

For all the talk of Modern Monetary Theory representing a brave new frontier, it is easy to forget that the United States has gone down this road before, when the US Federal Reserve financed the war effort in the 1940s. Then, as now, the question is not about government debt, but about the debt’s purpose and justification.

One of America’s leading socialists discusses how a collectively owned economy would be structured, the limits of the welfare state, and what Keynes understood that Marx didn’t

The Chicago School’s weakening of antitrust law hurt the economy

This paper presents an historical analysis of the antitrust laws.

Kristen Ghodsee discusses her research on how love and relationships function under socialism and capitalism, and what economists miss about the rise of right-wing populism in Eastern Europe

During her long career she illuminated many of the shortcomings of neoclassicism, and offered alternative paths

The heterodox scholar was a fierce critic of neoclassical economics. But she also insisted that economics be driven by science, not ideology.

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

John Kenneth Galbraith noted in 1973 that establishment economics had become the “invaluable ally of those whose exercise of power depends on an acquiescent public.” If anything, economists’ embrace of that role has grown stronger since then.

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

For years, governments in India and much of the developing world have followed the advice of a paper arguing that labor regulations actually hurt workers. The problem? The research was wrong.

For years, governments in India and much of the developing world have followed the advice of a paper arguing that labor regulations actually hurt workers. The problem? The research was wrong.

Starting with the literature on the estimates of the natural rate of interest, this paper critically analyzes the modern practice of identifying the benchmark rate of monetary policy with an equilibrium or neutral interest rate reflecting “fundamental forces” unaffected by monetary factors.

Chaired by Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence, INET has assembled a global team of leaders and scholars calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy

Learn about the Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and join a panel discussion on Political Economy and New Economic Thinking with Thomas Ferguson, Perry Mehrling, and Katharina Pistor.

A panel discussion on the importance of the role of the state alongside private enterprise to encourage innovative entrepreneurship, productivity and economic growth in an “Innovation Economy.”

Organized by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi in collaboration with the Institute of New Economic Thinking, New York, the aim of the Law Economics Policy Conference series is to bring together legal, economic, and public policy thinkers to consider a variety of real world issues in India in a holistic manner.

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

Microfinance and then financial inclusion have become buzzwords in international development. Such initiatives have mobilised and generated  large amounts of development funding, despite substantial amount of critique. Such critiques call for a more impartial assessment of the effectiveness of financial inclusion on the grounds that funds for microfinance, they argue, displaced development spendings on healthcare, education or infrastructure. In addition, the focus on expansion of financial markets to ‘bank’ and financially ‘include’ the poor may divert attention from more comprehensive and effective poverty reduction strategies. Critiques of this ‘way of doing development’ are often sidelined and labelled as ‘extreme’, ‘sloppy’ or ideology-driven rather than evidence-based. We believe that there is a need for contemporary development scholars from all disciplines to engage in those debates. This half-day workshop would bring in such scholars to discuss what we have learned from a decade of research on the microfinance, and how financial inclusion and the emergence of fintech may offer new opportunities - as well as risks - in for inclusive global development. 

António Guterres and CGET Commissioners discuss cooperating on inequality, climate change, multilateralism, and more

Neoclassical economics dismisses the role of money and the state in the economy. Keynes scholar Robert Skidlesky says it’s time for a re-evaluation.

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

Right-wing news sources have stopped playing by the rules of journalism

Conventional wisdom asserts that American politics is becoming more and more tribal. But the chiefs of the tribes share a lot in common: dependence on big money.

Contrary to the dominant media narrative, social issues like racism and sexism on their own can’t explain Trump’s success.

This paper critically analyzes voting patterns in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

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

The YSI Economics of Innovation, Economic Development and Africa Working Groups, in partnership with Global Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation and Competence Building Systems (GLOBELICS), Globelics Alumni, are organizing the 1st GLOBELICS Pre-Conference for Young Scholars entitled ‘Financing of Innovation and Infrastructure for Development’.

To connect across difference is the only thing that will save us from rule by the privileged few.

Investigating the history of economic thought fuels innovative thinking 

The YSI Africa Working Group is convening in Bologna, Italy in conjunction with the 13th Annual Meeting of the African Economic History Network. Our meeting in Bologna follows what promises to be a successful convention in August 2018 at the YSI Africa Convening in Harare, Zimbabwe. The YSI Africa Working Group is committed to continuing important conversations about how economic history can contribute to the study of development of Africa. We are particularly interested in thinking about the types of new approaches to the study of economics and economic history.

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

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

Ten years after the crisis, financial regulation leaves taxpayers holding the bag for banks’ safety net.

This paper concerns itself with the joint effect of implicit subsidies that are built into the US housing-finance system and financial safety net.

Steve Keen: “What an education in economics does is make you into a zealot