In Europe, and elsewhere, it is critical to recognize that this clean energy investment project will pay for itself in full over time in strictly financial terms – i.e. in addition to its obvious ecological benefits.

This paper examines the viability of security transaction excise taxes (STETs) as one policy tool for promoting a more stable financial environment, specifically with respect to the U.S. economy. Contrary to a large recent critical literature, we show that a STET can be designed without creating...

After the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, commercial banks in the United States began accumulating huge cash reserves in their accounts at the Federal Reserve. By the middle of 2011, reserves had reached $1.6 trillion, more than 10 percent of US GDP, an order of magnitude for commercial...

Herndon, Ash and Pollin replicate Reinhart and Rogoff and find that coding errors, selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of summary statistics lead to serious errors that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced...

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in July 2010 is the most ambitious measure aimed at regulating U.S. financial markets since the Glass-Steagall Act was implemented in the midst of the 1930s Depression.  However, it remains an open question as to whether Dodd-Frank...

As fast-food workers join picket lines around the country, media outlets are questioning how much a minimum wage increase would cost businesses, fast-food restaurants in particular. Jeannette Wicks-Lim and Robert Pollin examine the potential impact of a proposal to raise the federal minimum...

This book, written by an international team of economists, develops concrete, country specific alternatives to inflation targeting, the dominant policy framework of central bank policy that focuses on keeping inflation in the low single digits to the virtual exclusion of other key goals such as...