In this PERI-supported article and video published in The Nation, Eurydice Bersi describes how, due to strong political mobilizations, Spain, France, Italy and Croatia have banned or are moving toward banning new offshore fossil fuel extraction projects as a way of safeguarding the fragile Mediterranean environment and combatting climate change. Bersi also describes how contrary patterns still prevail in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, with governments aiming to attract fossil fuel investments, including in highly fragile parts of the Mediterranean. Bersi’s reporting demonstrates how concerted organizing can transform policies throughout the region around environmental protection, the climate crisis and a Green New Deal.

The COVID-19 crisis will increase fiscal deficits worldwide, both from the action of automatic stabilizers such as reduced tax revenue and unemployment insurance and from enhanced stabilization and recovery efforts such as the three COVID-19 bills already enacted by the U.S. Congress, with a fourth measure already under consideration. Government debt levels will therefore also be increasing worldwide. What are likely to be the consequences of rising public debt on economic growth? Working with contemporary data, this paper by UMass economists Michael Ash, Deepankar Basu and Arin Dube shows that the effects of public debt on GDP growth are generally quite small.

This essay in Daedalus by PERI economist Nancy Folbre offers a new way of visualizing structures of collective power based on gender, emphasizing the role of social institutions in shaping women’s ability to bargain over the distribution of the gains from cooperation with men. Folbre argues for an interdisciplinary concept of bargaining power that emphasizes parallels between structures of collective power based on gender, age, and sexuality, and those based on other dimensions of socially assigned group membership such as race, ethnicity, citizenship, and class. Recognition of the importance of reproductive work helps advance the project of developing intersectional political economy.