Despite the shock and the costs, the sanctions imposed on the Russian economy were in the nature of a gift.
Government & Politics
Sanctions on Russia are isomorphic to a strict policy of trade protection, industrial policy, and capital controls.
Most assessments of the effectiveness of sanctions on Russia, with some exceptions, hold them to have been highly effective. My new INET Working Paper analyzes a few prominent Western assessments, both official and private, of the effect of sanctions on the Russian economy and war effort. It seeks to understand the goals of sanctions and bases of fact and causal inference that underpin the consensus view. Such understanding may then help to clarify the relationship between claims made by Western economist-observers and those emerging from Russian sources – notably from economists associated with the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). As we shall see, Russian views parallel those in the West on many matters of fact yet reach sharply different conclusions.
INET Research on Financial Sector Weakness and Too Big to Fail
After 2008 the financial system was supposed to be fixed thanks to Dodd-Frank, stress tests, higher capital requirements, and all that. Suddenly we now wake up to discover that the collapse of a single bank may mortally threaten large segments of the banking system and that authorities are reinstating the financial equivalent of Medicare for All (for financiers only). And this amid news reports that SVB leaders lobbied against regulatory restraints and higher FDIC fees and even paid out bonuses just before the takeover.
INET was founded in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to help rethink the role finance plays in economic theory. Since then, it has broadened its mission, but this concern remains central to our purpose. INET has supported many of the best critical discussions of financial reform -- too many to list easily here. Naturally, we continue to commission and publish work in this area.
An analysis of gun lobby contributions to Republicans and Democrats
Recent mass shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde, Tulsa, and more have left scores dead from sickening gun violence in just the last few weeks. The wave of injuries and deaths has revived the political debate surrounding America’s uncommonly lax gun laws, raising hopes for reform. Yet we’ve seen cycles of this sort before, with the hopes of victims, their families, and their communities dashed by congressional inaction, with even mild responses like universal background checks extinguished by the constitutionally built-in ease with which minorities can block action in the Senate.
Real reform is not impossible. The 1994 assault weapons ban passed by large margins in both House and Senate, also in the wake of a deadly school shooting. But to carry out such reform, Congress will have to overcome two key factors: the NRA’s entrenched position within the Republican Party, and the ability of the NRA and other interest groups to dismantle the current bicameral Democrat majority by peeling off legislators who take gun lobby money.
New mandates must beget new organizing
Last week’s WTO 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) in Geneva concluded with pro-corporate, anti-worker, and anti-development outcomes on all major issues of access to medicines, agriculture, digital trade, and the future of the WTO itself. The spin of “unprecedented outcomes” of MC12 is a cynical ploy to paper over major differences to bolster the institution’s flailing reputation.
The agreements should herald a warning to all: rich country governments professing new commitments to sustainable and worker-centered trade are just as likely to push anti-development outcomes and cosmetic window-dressing when it comes to protecting Big Business profits above the public interest. Their version of WTO “reform” will facilitate the further deterioration of multilateralism and cement-in discredited pro-corporate rules on globalization.
MC12: Setting the Scenario
Author and law professor Maurice Stucke warns that as fundamental privacy rights vanish, your personal data can and will be used against you.
University of Tennessee law professor Maurice Stucke, author of “Breaking Away: How to Regain Control Over Our Data, Privacy, and Autonomy” has been critical as tech firms have grown into giant “data-opolies” profiting from surveillance and manipulation. In a conversation with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, he warns that legislative inaction and wider government complicity in this surveillance are eroding fundamental rights to privacy along with the ability of federal agencies to regulate Big Tech.
Lynn Parramore: Concern over privacy is increasing right now, with people worrying about different aspects of the concept. Can you say a bit about what privacy means in a legal context? With the digital revolution, privacy obviously means something different than it did 50 years ago.
Frank McCourt discusses his work to reinspire hope in the American experiment, and to build the framework necessary for that better tomorrow.
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Is it good for your wallet? A climate bill in disguise? Landmark action or nothingburger? Economic experts assess the Democrats’ legislative victory for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
Now that Democrats have finally passed their much-touted legislation, key experts go beyond the hype to weigh in on how the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will likely impact your wallet in the short and long term, what it means to climate change, and what more is required to improve the lives of Americans and save the planet. Hint: the bill may not be all it's cracked up to be -- especially when it comes to curbing inflation.
On Climate, a Meaningful Small Step: Servaas Storm, Senior Lecturer of Economics, Delft University of Technology
Thomas Ferguson’s commentary for an INET symposium on the Inflation Reduction Act
Steve Fazzari and Servaas Storm’s breakdowns of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act are acute and persuasive. I think they point inescapably to a striking conclusion: That this flamboyantly contradictory production only looks like a piece of legislation. Really it is a new species of mythical beast – a twenty-first-century counterpart of the ancient Greeks’ fire-breathing Chimera, which notoriously joined the head of a lion with the torso of a goat and the tail of a serpent.
Servaas Storm’s commentary for an INET symposium on the Inflation Reduction Act
The IRA has received mixed reviews, which is not surprising given the current polarised political, social, and economic conditions existing in the US. However, what strikes even more is that reactions by economic pundits, both from the center-left and the center-right, have been inflated, often relying on dramatic hyperbole and invoking sweeping vistas of (climate) disaster averted and ‘civilization saved’. The (sad) truth is that ‘serious’ establishment macroeconomists are once again having a breathless debate over very little. Let me quickly run through the debate.