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January 2009 -- With the deterioration of economic conditions in recent months, public investment is back on the policy agenda, as a job-creation program linked to the need to revitalize the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. This report examines the employment impacts of an expanded infrastructure investment program and what it would take to create millions of jobs. It assesses the long-run impacts of such a program on productivity and economic growth, and offers brief observations on U.S. competitiveness and environmental sustainability that emerge from the findings. 

>> Download "How Infrastructure Investments Support the U.S. Economy"

January 2009 -- The Obama administration and Congress will soon be debating plans to revive the U.S. economy. To contribute to this debate, the progressive economists  who recently issued "Principles For Economic Recovery And Financial Reconstruction From Progressive Economists," now add a more complete statement: "Progressive Program for Economic Recovery and Financial Reconstruction."

These documents argue that a successful economic program must reject the policies that contributed to the current economic crisis, and lays out, instead, a set of five guidelines around which to constructa sustainable and equitable economic future.

>> Download "Progressive Program for Economic Recovery and Financial Reconstruction"
>> Download "Principles For Economic Recovery And Financial Reconstruction From Progressive Economists"
>> Add your name to the lists of signatories

January 2009 -- For the past ten years, PERI's staff economists and our colleagues from around the world have been writing critically about the financial markets. Below we list a selection of this work. In these working papers, articles, books and conference proceedings can be found a range of insights on the origins of the October 2008 crisis, along with suggestions for creating and regulating a more workable, stable, and equitable financial marketplace.

>> Go to the Regulation of Financial Markets page

In this brief for the International Poverty Centre, Robert Pollin, Gerald Epstein, and James Heintz describe several alternatives to neoliberal economic policies for sub-Saharan Africa. They argue that policymakers should pursue specific measures to control inflationary pressures resulting from supply shocks. Monetary policy should target the short-term interest rate rather than the growth rate of the money supply. Central banks should concurrently maintain reasonable control over short-term interest rates and the exchange rate through making judicious use of capital management policies. Finally, it is imperative that governments dramatically increase access to affordable credit for enterprises at all levels. The key policy tools are large-scale loan guarantee programs and the revival of public development banks.

These alternative policy approaches, which directly address poverty and massive unemployment, are particular critical at this moment, when political events in Kenya have brought long-simmering social and economic pressures to the surface, so dramatically and violently.

>> Download "Pro-Growth Alternatives for Monetary and Financial Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa"

On October 19-20, 2007, PERI hosted a conference entitled “Rebellious Macroeconomics: Keynes, Marx and Crotty,” honoring the life work of Professor James Crotty of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Economics Department, and a close PERI associate. The conference was organized by Jonathan Goldstein of Bowdoin College and Michael Hillard of the University of Southern Maine. Eighteen conference papers were presented by a panel of distinguished heterodox macroeconomists. The papers celebrated Jim Crotty’s contributions to political economy over the past 35 years. Consistent with the major themes in Crotty’s research, the conference focused on the virtues of an integrated Keynesian, Marxian and institutionalist macroeconomic framework and applications of that framework to an analysis of the macrodynamics of the neoliberal regime.

The various sessions considered the nature of, advantages of, and Crotty’s contributions to an integrated heterodox macro framework, the theory of accumulation and crisis in that approach, the macrodynamics of the neoliberal regime and heterodox macroeconomic policy. A dinner celebrating the career of Jim Crotty and his contributions to the university community was held on Saturday evening after the conference with about 100 people in attendance.

>> See a full list of papers presented at the conference
>> See a full list of Jim Crotty's PERI Working Papers

Robert Pollin's review article of Andrew Glyn's recent book, Capitalism Unleashed: Finance, Globalization and Welfare appears in the July-August issue of New Left Review. Pollin considers the book to be a powerful new history of the age of neoliberalism in the OECD economies, the rich Western countries plus Japan. Glyn characterizes this neoliberal era as one of "austerity, privatization, and deregulation." Pollin challenges Glyn's discussion on several points, including the book's assessment of the impact of globalization on the OECD economies, and what, for the foreseeable future, are likely to be the most effective ways of putting Western capitalism 'back on a leash.'

>> Download Robert Pollin's review article from New Left Review

PERI researchers have worked since 2003 with the International Poverty Centre of the United Nations Development Programme to develop new pro-poor economic policies for developing countries. The PERI projects have been part of a global initiative by the IPC called “Economic Policies, the Millennium Development Goals, and Poverty.” These initiatives have concentrated on fiscal policies, monetary policies, financial policies, and the public provision of services. IPC has now launched a new website, co-sponsored by PERI and the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, that brings this work together. The materials on this new site include Country Studies, Policy Research Briefs, Working Papers, and Training Modules for policymakers in developing countries.

The most recently launched IPC training module is on Financial Policy. It is authored by PERI Co-Director Gerald Epstein and Ilene Grabel of the University of Denver.

>> Go to the new IPC Website (co-sponsored by PERI and SOAS)
>> Download the IPC Training Module on Financial Policy by Gerald Epstein and Ilene Grabel

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

Inflation targeting—monetary policy that focuses almost exclusively on keeping inflation in the low single digits—has become the operational objective of central banks around the world. But the record with this approach has been generally disappointing. Economic growth and employment have generally suffered as countries adopt inflation-targeting policies, even while these measures have not even consistently succeeded in maintaining lower inflation. Over the past two years, PERI and Bilkent University in Turkey have organized an international team of economists to produce a new volume, Alternatives to Inflation Targeting, edited by PERI co-director Gerald Epstein. This new work includes a range of country-focused studies that propose central bank policies to promote growth, employment and poverty reduction, while also maintaining moderate inflation and a stable exchange rate. The project also includes thematic papers, including a study of the gender impacts of monetary policy, inflation and poverty.   

>> Click here for more information about the May 17 panel discussion
>> Click here for more information about the May 18 workshop

>> More on the Alternatives to Inflation Targeting project
>> Contents of the volume and .pdfs of the papers

When we speak of the impact of globalization on national and local economies, those economies are, actually composed of a wide variety of individuals, each class of whom will be effected differently by large-scale economic forces. In this paper, produced for the U.N.’s International Labour Office, PERI Associate Director James Heintz demonstrates how global labor markets are segmented by gender and how any analysis of the impact of macroeconomic policies on growth, employment and poverty reduction needs to be undertaken with this segmentation in mind. Specifically, Heintz addresses how macroeconomic policies differentially effect women’s and men’s employment, looking at monetary policy, trade policy, exchange rate regimes and public sector restructuring. Heintz brings his findings together in recommendations for an alternative policy framework of employment-centered, poverty-reducing development.

>> Globalization, Economic Policy and Employment full report (91 pages)