U.S. Dollar Decline as a National Strategy?
Eichengreen, Barry. Some prominent economic analysts have called for a weaker dollar as a cure for the United States’ economic ills. They argue it would rebalance the U.S. economy toward exports and help reduce income inequality. But as Barry Eichengreen, author of “Exorbitant Privilege,” explains, such a strategy would not work as advertised. Πηγή: The […]
Foreign banks and the global financial crisis: Investment and lending behaviour
Claessens, Stijn, Van Horen, Neeltje. How did foreign banks adjust their investment and lending decisions during the global financial crisis? This column uses a new and comprehensive database to show that the crisis dramatically halted foreign direct investment in banking and that foreign banks often cut back on lending more than their domestic competitors. While exits […]
Low-Wage Lessons
Schmitt, John. Over the last two decades, high – and, in some countries, rising – rates of low-wage work have emerged as a major political concern. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in 2009, about one-fourth of U.S. workers were in low-wage jobs, defined as earning less than two-thirds of the […]
A Crisis in Two Narratives
Rajan, Raghuram. With the world’s industrial democracies in crisis, two competing narratives of its sources – and appropriate remedies – are emerging. The first, better-known diagnosis is that demand has collapsed because of high debt accumulated prior to the crisis. Households (and countries) that were most prone to spend cannot borrow any more. To revive […]
Europe’s three-dimensional crisis
Brown, Gordon. In the rush to define Europe’s problems as fiscal, our deep-seated banking and competitiveness problems have been largely ignored. In the search for a simple, one-dimensional answer – austerity and, if that fails, more austerity – to what is a three-dimensional crisis, Europe’s leaders are failing to grasp the profound historical forces now […]
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 […]
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 […]
Men’s Sexual Orientation and Job Satisfaction
Drydakis, Nick. This study investigates the differences in three aspects of job satisfaction – total pay, promotion prospects, and respect received from one’s supervisor – between male heterosexual and gay employees in Athens, Greece. Gay employees are found to be less satisfied according to all job satisfaction measures. Affect Theory proposes that the extent to […]
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 […]