A “lost decade” refers to an extended period of low or negative growth triggered by an economic crisis and that could have been avoided by the use of efficient crisis policies. The risk to the world’s developed economies of a lost decade was highlighted early on in the 2007-2008 crisis....

Using individual-level data on homeowner debt and defaults from 1997 to 2008, we show that borrowing against the increase in home equity by existing homeowners is responsible for a significant fraction of both the sharp rise in U.S. household leverage from 2002 to 2006 and the increase in...

This paper makes the case for a third stimulus package to in the face of economic indicators signaling that the economy is in a deeper downturn than was expected based on previous projections. Specifically, the report calls for an employer tax-credit for extending health care coverage and...

Globalization and strengthening of integration processes have, among other things, also influenced some solutions relating to monetary sovereignty of particular countries. A great number of transition countries as well as some other underdeveloped countries are facing both inefficiency in their...

The version 2005 of the Romanian macromodel (Dobrescu 2005, 2006) was built using data for the period 1990 (sometimes 1989) - 2004. This paper insists on three (probably the most complicated) problems: the evaluation of export, import, foreign capital inflows and exchange rate in euros, since...

The paper presents a possible medium-run evolution of the Romanian economy. It is organised in two chapters. The first chapter discusses the conceptual framework of the macromodel used for simulations, insisting on the behavioural (stochastic) relationships and the sectoral decomposition of the...

A fall in house prices due to a change in fundamental value redistributes wealth from those long housing (for whom the fundamental value of the house they own exceeds the present discounted value of their planned future consumption of housing services) to those short housing. In a representative...

The macromodel estimates the short and medium-term economic implications for internal policies and changes in the international context. This version of the Romanian macromodel incorporates the experience accumulated through the utilization of its previous forms - either experimental (tested...

This research has the primal objective of forecasting the viability of Poland as a present member of European Union taking a step further and joining the inner circle by adopting euro as its currency. A study about short and long term implications of this decision on the country’s economic...

Progressives need a fundamentally new approach to politics. They have been losing not just because conservatives have so much more money and power, but also because they have accepted the conservatives’ framing of political debates. They have accepted a framing where conservatives want market...