Employee empowerment: towards greater workplace democracy
Briône, Patrick, Nicholson, Chris. There is strong evidence that giving employees more of a voice in the firm that employs them is of benefit to both the firm and the employees. Just as important is the democratic case: employees have a fundamental right to be involved in key decisions that affect their lives. Boosting employee […]
Hot times in Silicon Valley
The San Francisco Bay area is undergoing one of its periodic tech booms on the back of the flourishing of social networking firms. That boom, the Wall Street Journal tells us, is very good for local tech workers: Tech-jobs website operator Dice Holdings Inc. said salaries for software and other engineering professionals in California’s Silicon […]
Getting up to Speed on the Financial Crisis: A One-Weekend-Reader’s Guide
Gorton, Gary, Metrick, Andrew. All economists should be conversant with “what happened?” during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. We select and summarize 16 documents, including academic papers and reports from regulatory and international agencies. This reading list covers the key facts and mechanisms in the build-up of risk, the panics in short-term-debt markets, the policy reactions, […]
Driving the Global Economy with the Brakes On
Blanchard, Olivier. After the speech by the IMF’s Managing Director in Berlin yesterday, my main messages on the global outlook will not surprise you. Starting with the bad news–the world recovery, which was weak in the first place, is in danger of stalling. The epicenter of the danger is Europe, but the rest of the […]
Financial reform after the crisis: an early assessment
Véron, Nicolas. This paper takes stock of global efforts towards financial reform since the start of the financial crisis in 2007-08, and provides a synthetic (if simplified) picture of their status as of January 2012. Underlying dynamics are described and analysed both at the global level (particularly G-20, International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability […]
Is Higher Income Inequality Associated with Lower Intergenerational Mobility?
Wolfers, Justin. A lot of our political debate boils down to questions about equality of outcomes versus equality of opportunity. But it turns out that they’re pretty closely related. Πηγή: Freakonomics πλήρες κείμενο
Income Inequality and Current Account Imbalances
Kumhof, Michael, Lebarz, Claire, Ranciere, Romain, Richter, Alexander , & Throckmorton, Nathaniel. This paper studies the empirical and theoretical link between increases in income inequality and increases in current account deficits. Cross-sectional econometric evidence shows that higher top income shares, and also financial liberalization, which is a common policy response to increases in income inequality, […]
The Perils of 2012
Stiglitz, Joseph. The year 2011 will be remembered as the time when many ever-optimistic Americans began to give up hope. President John F. Kennedy once said that a rising tide lifts all boats. But now, in the receding tide, Americans are beginning to see not only that those with taller masts had been lifted far […]
Financial repression German style
Fatás, Antonio. Last weekend I attended the American Economic Association meetings in Chicago where I had been asked to discuss a paper on historical lessons lessons on government debt reduction. The paper is written by Carmen Reinhart and Belén Sbrancia and the title is “The Liquidation of Government Debt”. The paper presents a historical review […]
Political Economy: Success or Failure?
Frey, Bruno. Political Economy and Public Choice have studied the interactions between the economy and the polity for over 60 years now. The present paper endeavours to provide a critical discussion of this literature and its achievements. In particular, it starts with the different approaches based on empirically tested or politometric models, and it then […]