Since the end of the 1970s, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in economic inequality. While the United States has long been among the most unequal of the world’s rich economies, the economic and social upheaval that began in the 1970s was a striking departure from the movement...

One outcome of the TARP and other bank rescue efforts following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September of 2008 is that the United States has essentially formalized a commitment to a “too big to fail” (TBTF) policy for major banks. This paper uses data from the FDIC on the relative cost...

The unemployment rate is expected to average 10.2 percent for 2010, 9.1 percent for 2011, and 7.3 percent for 2012. With this in mind, this Issue Brief describes a job sharing tax credit, designed to provide a quick and substantial boost to the economy. It would use tax dollars to pay firms to...

This paper is part of a discussion between CEPR and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) regarding CEPR’s paper, “IMF-Supported Macroeconomic Policies and the World Recession: A Look at Forty-One Borrowing Countries.” An IMF representative presented a response to that paper at an October...

Many proponents of conservative fiscal policies talk of the budget deficit as being a matter of intergenerational equality. However, this paper shows the younger generations (and those yet to be born) will contribute more to the deficit than older generations. This analysis uses data from the...

The strong rise in the U.S. stock market since the spring and the return to positive economic growth in the third quarter of this year have created a consensus among economists that the Great Recession is very likely over. Unfortunately, the end of the official recession will have little visible...

This paper looks at three countries that have been hard-hit by the world economic recession, and have turned to the IMF for assistance: Hungary, Latvia, and Ukraine. In all of these countries, it would appear that there were more sensible responses to the crisis that would reduce the loss of...

This paper looks at the problem of state budget shortfalls during the recession and calculates the number of jobs that would be lost (nationally and by state) if states utilize pro-cyclical spending cuts in an attempt to balance their budgets. This is an update to an earlier paper from December...

This paper finds that 31 of 41 of countries with current International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreements have been subjected to pro-cyclical macroeconomic policies that, during the current global recession, would be expected to have exacerbated economic slowdowns.

In the current recession, millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Unemployment has increased nationwide to levels not witnessed since the 1980s. This issue brief tallies more than 110,000 jobs that have been shed from state and local governments in the last two years and breaks them down by...