The United States must make a fundamental choice in its economic policy in the next few months, a choice that will shape the US economy for years to come. Pundits and policymakers are divided over how to address what is widely referred to as the "fiscal cliff", a combination of tax increases and...

With economic growth having cooled to less than 1 percent in the first quarter of 2007, the economy can ill afford a slump in consumption by the American household. But it now appears that the household sector could finally give in to the pressures of rising gasoline prices, a weakening home...

A wave of revisionist work claims that anticompetitive New Deal legislation such as the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) greatly slowed the recovery from the Depression; in this new public policy brief, President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and...

In this new brief, President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Research Scholar Greg Hannsgen evaluate the current path of fiscal deficits in the United States in the context of government debt and further spending, economic recovery, and unemployment. They are adamant that there is no justification...

In this brief, Research Scholar Greg Hannsgen and President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou focus on the risks and possibilities ahead for the US economy. Using a Keynesian approach and drawing from the commentary of other observers, they analyze publicly available data in order to assess the strength...

To mobilize Greece's severely underemployed labor potential and confront the social and economic dangers of persistent unemployment, we propose the immediate implementation of a direct public benefit job creation program - a Greek "New Deal." The Job Guarantee (JG) program would offer the...

President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray argue that the common diagnosis of a "sovereign debt crisis" ignores the crucial role of rising private debt loads and the significance of current account imbalances within the eurozone. Profligate spending in the periphery is...

Claims that the nation has reached full employment take for granted the need for a reserve pool of labor to maintain price stability and labor market flexibility. But are millions of jobless and underemployed workers the best we can do in these times of economic expansion? And what will happen...

The targets for monetary policy adopted by the Fed in recent years have not proven to be closely correlated with inflation, leading some theorists and policymakers to advocate the use of a price index, such as the consumer price index (CPI), as both the target and the goal of monetary policy....

At a time when small businesses are suffering from a credit crunch, 'niche' financial institutions are filling the void left by more traditional sources of financing, such as commercial banks. The authors argue that the most important of these niche players are community-based factor companies,...