1,721,045 research outputs found
"Getting Out of the Recession?"
Full text linkResearch Scholar Gennaro Zezza updates the Levy Institute’s previous Strategic Analysis (December 2009) and finds that the 2009 increase in public sector aggregate demand was a result of the fiscal stimulus, without which the recession would have been much deeper. He confirms that strong policy action is required to achieve full employment in the medium term, including a persistently high government deficit in the short term. This implies a growing public debt, which is sustainable as long as interest rates are kept at the current low level. The alternative is an ongoing unemployment rate above 10 percent that would represent a higher cost to future generations.
"Sustaining Recovery--Medium-term Prospects and Policies for the U.S. Economy"
Full text linkThough recent market activity and housing reports give some warrant for optimism, United States economic growth was only 2.8 percent in the third quarter, and the unemployment rate is still very high. In their new Strategic Analysis, the Levy Institute's Macro-Modeling Team project that high unemployment will continue to be a problem if fiscal stimulus policies expire and deficit reduction efforts become the policy focus. The authors--President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Research Scholars Greg Hannsgen and Gennaro Zezza--argue that continued fiscal stimulus is necessary to reduce unemployment. The resulting federal deficits would be sustainable, they say, as long as they were accompanied by a coordinated and gradual devaluation of the dollar, especially against undervalued Asian currencies--a step necessary to prevent an increase in the current account deficit and ward off the risk of a currency crash.
"Are Housing Prices, Household Debt, and Growth Sustainable?"
Full text linkRising home prices and low interest rates have fueled the recent surge in mortgage borrowing and enabled consumers to spend at high rates relative to their income. Low interest rates have counterbalanced the growth in debt and acted to dampen the growth in household debt-service burdens. As past Levy Institute strategic analyses have pointed out, these trends are not sustainable: Household spending relative to income cannot grow indefinitely.
"Can Global Imbalances Continue?: Policies for the U.S. Economy"
Full text linkIn this new Strategic Analysis, we review what we believe is the most important economic policy issue facing policymakers in the United States and abroad: the prospect of a growth recession in the United States, linked to the imbalances in the U.S. current account, government, and private sector deficits. The current account balance, which is a negative addition to U.S. aggregate demand, is now likely to be above 6.5 percent of GDP and has been rising steadily for some time. The government balance has improved, again giving no stimulus to demand, which has therefore relied entirely on a large and growing private sector deficit. A rapidly cooling housing market is one of the signs showing that this growth path is likely to break down. We focus first on the current account deficit. Our analysis suggests that a necessary and sufficient condition to address this problem, without dire consequences for unemployment and growth, is that net export demand grow by a sufficient amount. For this to happen, three conditions need to be satisfied: foreign saving has to fall, especially in Europe and East Asia; U.S. saving has to rise; and some mechanism, such as a change in relative prices, should be put in place to help the previous two phenomena translate into an improvement in the U.S. balance of trade.
A Simplified Stock-Flow Consistent Post-Keynesian Growth Model
Full text linkA Simplified Stock-Flow Consistent Post-Keynesian Growth Model Claudio H. Dos Santos* and Gennaro Zezza** Abstract: Despite being arguably the most rigorous form of structuralist/post-Keynesian macroeconomics, stock-flow consistent models are quite often complex and difficult to deal with. This paper presents a model that, despite retaining the methodological advantages of the stock-flow consistent method, is intuitive enough to be taught at an undergraduate level. Moreover, the model can easily be made more complex to shed light on a wealth of specific issues.Post-Keynesian Growth, Stock-Flow Consistency, Real-Financial Interactions
"Prospects and Policies for the U.S. Economy: Why Net Exports Must Now Be the Motor for U.S. Growth"
Full text linkThe US economy has grown reasonably fast since the second half of 2003 and the general expectation seems to be that satisfactory growth will continue more or less indefinitely. This paper argues that the expansion may, indeed, continue through 2004 and for some time beyond. But with the government and external deficits both so large and the private sector so heavily indebted, satisfactory growth in the medium term cannot be achieved without a large, sustained and discontinuous increase in net export demand. It is doubtful whether this will happen spontaneously and it certainly will not happen without a cut in domestic absorption of goods and services by the US which would impart a deflationary impulse to the rest of the world. We make no short term forecast. Instead, using a model rooted in a consistent system of stock and flow variables, we trace out a range of possible medium term scenarios in order to evaluate strategic predicaments and policy options without being at all precise about timing.
"Understanding Deflation: Treating the Disease, Not the Symptoms"
Full text linkDeflation can be defined as a falling general price level utilizing one of the common price indices.the consumer price index; the GDP deflator or other, narrower indices as the wholesale price index; or an index of manufactured goods prices. Falling indices of output prices can be the result of several mechanisms: productivity increases, quality increases and hedonic imputations of prices, competition from low-cost producers, government policy influences, or depressed aggregate demand. Falling output prices, in turn, can have strong effects, especially on the ability to service debts fixed in nominal terms; depending on the level of indebtedness of households and firms, they can set off a classic Minsky-Fisher debt deflation spiral. In this paper, we argue that deflation can and usually does generate large economic and social costs, but it is more important to understand that deflation itself is a symptom of severe and chronic economic problems. This distinction becomes important for the design and implementation of economic policy.
"How Fragile is the U.S. Economy?"
Full text linkAs we projected in a previous strategic analysis, the U.S. economy experienced growth rates higher than 4 percent in 2004. The question we want to raise in this strategic analysis is whether these rates will persist or come back down. We believe that several signs point in the latter direction. In what follows, we analyze the evidence and explore the alternatives facing the U.S. economy.
Financial fragility and income inequality
Full text linkAfter the financial crisis of 2007/2008 academics and policymakers have turned their attention to how private debt can affect, significantly, the economic performance of a country.
In the period of the “Great Moderation”, the increasing level of income inequality, together with structural transformations, has created an environment where a large portion of the private sector was more prone to rely on bank credit in order to finance its expenditure. While borrowing can have a first expansionary impact, because of the increase in the purchasing power of the borrowers, the increase in the stock of debt in the “medium-term” can have different negative effects. Debt repayment transfers resources to “high propensity to spend” agents (borrowers) to “low propensity to spend” agents (lenders). The impact of this income transfer can have a negative impact on final expenditure and, thus, on GDP. The increase in the stock of debt leads to an increase of the fragility of the household sector because of its increase in the vulnerability to different kind of shocks such as: an increase of the interest rates, a sudden decrease of the disposable income, a collapse of the assets used as collateral, and to possible changes of the attitudes of the lenders.
Starting from this, we developed three different theoretical models in order to describe the impact of an expansion of household debt, in an environment of high-income inequality
"The Effects of a Declining Housing Market on the U.S. Economy"
Full text linkLongstanding speculation about the likelihood of a housing market collapse has given way in the past few months to consideration of just how far the housing market will fall and how much damage the debacle will inflict on the economy. In this paper, we discuss recent developments related to the housing market; econometrically assess the magnitude of the impact of housing price decreases on real private expenditure; assess the importance of new types of mortgages and mortgage-related securities; and briefly analyze possible policy responses.
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