Intergenerational economics is characterised by three central questions: how much living generations transfer to or from future ones, how these transfers are made, and whether these transfers are sufficient to support sustainable levels of consumption for future generations. Up to now,...

This paper surveys the economic wreckage created by Wall Street's decision to manufacture and sell trillions of dollars of financial securities, which we now call toxic. And we call them toxic, not because they were risky, but because they were fraudulent. Rather than address the fundamental...

Most economists differ, not on the causes of the Great Recession, but on their relative importance. They concur, though, on the basic problem, namely human, not market failure. This study applies the evidence, some new, some old, to re-try the usual suspects. It finds none guilty. Instead, it...

Many commentators have argued that if the Federal Reserve had followed a stricter monetary policy earlier this decade when the housing bubble was forming, and if Congress had not deregulated banking but had imposed tighter financial standards, the housing boom and bust - and the subsequent...

This Policy Analysis explains the antecedents of the current global financial crisis and critically examines the reasoning behind the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve's actions to prop up the financial sector. It argues that recovery from the financial crisis is likely to be slow with or...