In this interview, PERI's newest Research Associate Lilia Costabile, Professor of Economics at the University of Naples, discusses questions that arise from her new edited volume, Institutions for Social Well Being. The book is a collection of articles assessing whether there is a trade-off between equity and efficiency in a state's decisions about social policy. Contributors draw on examples from throughout the European Union and the U.S.

>> Go to interview with Lilia Costabile

The unemployment rate is conventionally relied upon to measure employment performance, and has been the main indicator justifying deregulation and unemployment benefit reduction. In this Working Paper, David R. Howell, Anna Okatenko and Mamadou Diallo make the case that a well-functioning labor market should produce not just enough jobs, but enough decent jobs. The authors compare U.S. and French performance according to: 1) the low-wage share of employment; 2) the underemployed share of the labor force; and 3) the adequately employed share of the working age population.

The authors find that with very few exceptions, French workers of all ages, education levels, and genders have dramatically lower rates of underemployment and low-wage employment, and much higher rates of adequate employment than their U.S. counterparts. The authors conclude by recommending that indicators such as these, and not just the unemployment rate, should have a central place in discussions of national labor market reform.

>> Download “By What Measure? A Comparison of French and U.S. Labor Market Performance with New Indicators of Employment Adequacy”

With its prolonged experience of high rates of inflation (around 60-70% per year) and volatile boom-bust growth episodes, Turkey has completed no fewer than three major economic crises since 1989. The latest of these erupted in early 2001, while Turkey was following an IMF-led disinflation program. In this PERI Working Paper, Erinc Yeldan and Hasan Cömert ask how the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey’s policy objectives and strategies evolved in this period.

The CBRT has focused its policies almost exclusively on inflation targeting and interest rate smoothing. Given Turkey’s recent macroeconomic history, the CBRT’s policies provide an insteresting case study on the effects of inflation targetings. Yeldan and Cömert argue that Turkey is an example of a larger trend of central banks’ loss of autonomy, and, finding itself ineffective at directing complex levers in their domestic economies, the CBRT has relied almost entirely on inflation-targeting policies dictated by international financial institutions.

>> Download “Interest Rate Smoothing and Macroeconomic Instability under Post-Capital Account Liberalization Turkey”

This new report by Robert Pollin and Jeannette Wicks-Lim provides a snapshot of the jobs are needed to build a green economy in the U.S. The report focuses on six strategies for attacking global warming: building retrofitting, mass transit, energy-efficient automobiles, wind power, solar power, and cellulosic biomass fuels.
 
The vast majority of jobs associated with these strategies are in the areas of employment that people already work in today, in every region and state of the country. What makes these entirely familiar occupations “green jobs” is that the people working in them are contributing their everyday labors toward building a green economy.
 
The report presents data on employment in Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin, including the number of people employed in the occupations affected by our six green strategies, and what the average wages are for each of these jobs. What is clear is that millions of workers—across a wide range of familiar occupations—will benefit from the project of defeating global warming and transforming the United States into a green economy.
 
>> Read more and download “Job Opportunities for the Green Economy”