Cömert investigates the relationship between overnight interest rates and the long-term rates in the US from 1983q1 to 2007q3. He presents evidence supporting the argument that there was a gradual decoupling between the Fed interest rate and long-term interest rates even before the recent...

The financial crisis of 2008 was not unforeseen: it was preceded by clear warning signals with developments during the crisis that confirmed the underlying fault lines that had emerged as changed institutions, products and practices shifted the structure of the global system over the preceding...

This previously published, but now out-of-print paper addresses the circumstances surrounding the ‘Federal Reserve - Treasury Accord of 1951. We want to make it available now because of the current intense focus on the role of the Federal Reserve in the financial crisis, which has raised...

This paper examines three sets of major issues regarding the current U.S. government’s fiscal deficit and outstanding debt, tied to the 2009 economic stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvest-ment Act (ARRA). First, I consider the claim that high levels of government borrowing...

In the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, the world economy was characterized as experiencing a ‘two-speed’ recovery. Industrialized nations, where the crisis occurred, saw slow growth whereas many emerging market and developing countries grew significantly. These growth...

Corruption causes severe waste and misallocation of financial, human, and natural resources, thus retarding growth and social development. It suffocates private sector activity and entrepreneurship, perpetuating the dominance of an inefficient public sector, and undermining economic...

This paper conducts a causal analysis of determinants of the profit share of income for nonfinancial corporations in the Neoliberal era. The analysis focuses on power relations across and amongst three classes: labor, industrial capitalists and financial capitalists. Particular attention is paid...

As neoliberal policies failed to fulfill their promises and instead produced various financial and social crises, one after another, left-oriented leaders took power in Latin America and began, to varying degrees, seeking alternatives to the neoliberal orthodoxy. Venezuela went further than...

Most analyses explain the increase in China's overall inequality during the reform period principally by means of the expansion of urban-rural income gap. This paper tries to shed light on a more complex relationship that appears to exist between primary distribution of income, top incomes...

Amid the wreckage of the 2008-09 Wall Street collapse and Great Recession, orthodox economists and political elites in both the United States and Western Europe have been strongly pushing the idea that austerity is the only viable policy option. The basis for the austerity hawks' claim is that...