Owing to its strong dependence on exports, Germany was among the economies hit hardest by the financial crisis. But unlike almost all other countries, Germany emerged from the crisis quickly and stronger than before. What lies behind this success story, if at all it is one? The commonplace -...

The concern that an economy could experience persistent stagnation, caused by a structural weakness of aggregate demand, goes back to Alvin Hansen's (1939) thesis of ‘secular stagnation'. Hansen's thesis has been revived in recent times, when it became clear that productivity and potential...

The U.S. economy is widely diagnosed with two ‘diseases': a secular stagnation of potential U.S. growth, and rising income and job polarization. The two diseases have a common root in the demand shortfall, originating from the ‘unbalanced' growth between technologically ‘dynamic' and...

All IPCC (2018) pathways to restrict future global warming to 1.5°C (and well below an already dangerous 2°C) involve radical cuts in global carbon emissions. Such de-carbonization, while being technically feasible, may impose a ‘limit' or ‘planetary boundary' to growth, depending on...

Strong labor protections for ordinary workers are often portrayed as a ‘luxury developing countries cannot afford'. No study has been more influential in propagating this perversity trope in the context of the Indian economy than the QJE article of Besley and Burgess (2004). Their article...

Using macroeconomic data for 1960-2018, this paper analyzes the origins of the crisis of the ‘post-Maastricht Treaty order of Italian capitalism'. After 1992, Italy did more than most other Eurozone members to satisfy EMU conditions in terms of self-imposed fiscal consolidation, structural...

The Rebuilding Macroeconomic Theory Project, led by David Vines and Samuel Wills (2020), is an important, albeit long overdue, initiative to rethink a failing mainstream macroeconomics. Professors Vines and Wills, who must be congratulated for stepping up to the challenge of trying to make...

This book aims to reclaim the mission, relevance and intellectual orientation of development studies - something that is increasingly challenged from different directions. Confronted by the status quoist enterprise of randomized control trials (RCTs) on the one hand and the radical endeavour to...