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PERI in the News

>> What might do with $138 billion instead of waging a disastrous war? Read Robert Pollin & Heidi Garrett-Peltier's "The Wages of Peace" in The Nation (March 13, 2008).

The Economic Policies of the Candidates in Dollars & Sense

March 13, 2008

In this month's Dollars & Sense, Robert Pollin examines the expressed and impled economic policies of the three remaining presidential candidates: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain. Pollin looks at the explicit policies mentioned in their campaign speeches and considers who they are using as economic advisors--those individuals who are most like to formulate policy in their candidate's administration.

>> Read "It's Still the Economy, Stupid" in Dollars & Sense

Cap-and-Dividend in the New York Times

January 2, 2008

In this two-part article in the New York Times' 'Dot Earth' blog, Peter Barnes is interviewed by Andrew Revkin about how a cap-and-dividend policy for carbon permits would work. Barnes' policy is based on the research presented in James Boyce and Matthew Riddle's Working Paper, "Cap and Dividend: How to Curb Global Warming while Protecting the Incomes of American Families."

 

>> Read the interview with Barnes on the New York Times website
>> Download "Cap and Dividend: How to Curb Global Warming while Protecting the Incomes of American Families"

James Boyce interviewed on Natural Assets

December 10, 2007

How can we ensure that natural assets are distributed equitably across groups? And how can the distribution of natural assets affect poverty and social equity? In this interview with C.S. Soong on his radio show, "Against the Grain," James Boyce discusses natural assets and his book of the same name.

>> Download the mp3 or podcast of "Against the Grain"

PERI's work on macroeconomic policy in Africa in the African press

November 26, 2007

Robert Pollin, James Heintz, and Mwangi wa Githinji recently travelled to Kenya to release PERI's full-length study, "An Employment-Targeted Economic Program for Africa" to policymakers, media, and the public. The report was sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme. The Kenya press took note of the release; below is a sample of the coverage.

>> Read "Working, but still living in poverty" in Business Daily Africa
>> Read Robert Pollin's article on expanding decent employment in Kenya in Business Daily
>> "Kenya: 50 Percent of Working Kenyans Poor, Says Study" in The Daily Nation
>> Download "An Employment-Targeted Economic Program for Kenya"

A few weeks earlier, James K. Boyce, director of PERI's program on development, peacebuilding, and the environment, and Leonce Ndikumana, director of PERI's African economies project, presented a keynote address on the linkages between capital flight and external borrowing to a senior policy seminar on capital flight from sub-Saharan Africa in Pretoria, South Africa. The seminar was hosted by the South African Reserve Bank h, in conjunction with the Association of African Central Bank Governors, the African Development Bank, the Bank of England, the Belgium Development Cooperation Agency and the World Bank. Their paper for the meeting documents that in recent decades Africa has been a "net creditor" to the rest of the world: the continent's private external assets exceed its public external debts.

>> Read "Corruption Rises as Africa Gains from Oil" (Reuters)
>> Download "Africa's Debt: Who Owes Whom?"

James Boyce on "Against the Grain"

September 4, 2007

James Boyce, Director of PERI's Development, Peacebuilding & the Environment Program, spoke with C.S. Soong on Pacifica Radio's "Against the Grain" on the relationship between income disparity and environmental degradation.

>> Download the audio file (this is 48M file, so it might take some time)
>> Download James Boyce's Working Paper, "Is Inequality Bad for the Environment?"
>> Go to the "Against the Grain" home page

Robert Pollin on microcredit in "Foreign Policy in Focus"

June 21, 2007

The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Mohammad Yunus, for founding the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1976, and leading a worldwide movement to provide credit in small amounts and other financial services to poor people and communities. But, within a larger context of predominant neoliberal economic policies throughout the developing world, can microcredit stand on its own as an effective tool for fighting global poverty? PERI Co-Director Robert Pollin addresses this issue in a new article for Foreign Policy in Focus. Pollin also debates Sam Daley-Harris, Director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign, on the effectiveness of microcredit as a poverty-fighting tool.

>> Read Robert Pollin's “Microcredit:  False Hopes and Real Possibilities”
>> Read the debate between Sam Daley-Harris and Robert Pollin on microcredit

Robert Pollin interviewed about microcredit on "Against the Grain"

July 3, 2007

Listen to Robert Pollin elaborate on the pros and cons of microcredit as a poverty-fighting tool, in this interview with C.S. Soong on Pacifica Radio's "Against the Grain."

>> Download the audio file (this is a 49M file, so it might take some time)
>> Read Robert Pollin's article and debate with Sam Daley-Harris in Foreign Policy in Focus
>> Go to the "Against the Grain" home page

The Sky Trust in Newsweek Online

Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, in his online column, promotes the idea of a 'Sky Trust.' This concept, developed in two PERI working papers combines practical emmissions reductions policy with the fundamental idea of a shared public 'commons.' Read the Newsweek column here, or read the original working papers:

>> "Pie In the Sky? The Battle for Atmospheric Scarcity Rents" by Peter Barnes and Marc Breslow
>> "A Chinese Sky Trust? Distributional Impacts of Carbon charges and Revenue Recycling in China," by Mark Brenner, Matthew Riddle, and James Boyce
>> Read more about The Sky Trust at the Sky Trust network website

"Economic Prospects": Robert Pollin's column in New Labor Forum

With the Winter 2007 issue, PERI co-director Robert Pollin began a regular column in New Labor Forum under the general title of Economic Prospects. The column explores a wide range of topics, under the broad theme of how economic trends, economic policy debates, and even economic theory matter in terms of promoting the well-being of working people in the United States.

>> "A People's Economy is Possible: A Unified Economic Program for 2008"
>> "Making the Federal Minimum Wage a Living Wage”
>> "Global Outsourcing and the U.S. Working Class"
>> Go to the New Labor Forum website

Robert Pollin on the Minimum Wage in the L.A. Times

January 14, 2007

As the U.S. Congress debates the first increase in the federal minimum wage in ten years, Robert Pollin explains in the L.A. Times that the $7.25 wage under consideration merely puts working Americans almost exactly where they were in 1997 (after adjusting for inflation through 2009, when the wage hike would be implemented). This is not only a lack of real progress, but it flies in the face of dramatic increases in productivity.
Pollin goes on to explain how minimum wages can be gradually raised to approach living wages, as has been done successfully in Santa Fe, and without damage to small businesses and the local economy.

>> Read the full op-ed
>> Read more about PERI's work on minimum and living wages

Ripple Effects in Business Week

In preparation for a likely national minimum wge increase, the November 27 Business Week looks at "ripple effects"-- the increased wages seen by workers higher up the wage ladder, in response to a minimum wage hike. The article refers to PERI economist Jeannet Wicks-Lim's research on ripple effects, and is based in part on extensive conversations with her. Wicks-Lim's research is available as a PERI working paper and as an article in Dollars & Sense magazine.

>>"More Ammo For A Higher Minimum" in Business Week
>>Mandated Wage Floors and the Wage Structure (WP 116)
>>Dollars & Sense, May/June 2006

South Africa's media covers PERI's Alternative Economic Program

PERI's Robert Pollin, Leonce Ndikumana, and James Heintz are spending much of October travelling in South Africa and Kenya, talking with policy makers, NGO officials, and bankers about alternative, pro-poor economic plans for their countries. The South African media is paying attention, and recent coverage has a number of articles in South Africa's Business Day and an op ed in the Mail & Guardian, South Africa's largest newspaper, among others.

>> Review of An Employment-Targeted Economic Program for South Africa in Business Day
>> Op ed in the Mail & Guardian
>> "Unemployment level could worsen by 2014" on SABC News
>> "Researchers Urge Bold Employment Plan" in Business Report
>> Coverage of debate at  the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies / University of Cape Town Development Policy Research Unit conference in Business Report
>> "Rates 'Must Be Lower for Economy to Grow'" in Business Day (also published on AllAfrica.com, in the Sunday Times, and on iafrica.com)
>> "UN Calls for Subsidised Job Creation" in Business Day
>> Interview with Robert Pollin in Business Day
>> "Labour Laws are 'Not that Rigid'" in the Daily Dispatch (also published in the Sowetan)

>> Read more about An Employment-Targeted Economic Program for South Africa

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