The 31st Annual Levy Economics Institute Conference is a one-day, virtual event organized around the topics of Economic Prospects for the US Economy, The Revival of Industrial Policy, Causes and Measurement of Inequality, and Aging and Public Policy: Debunking Myths, Providing Solutions.
Presenters will include:
Reda Cherif, International Monetary Fund (IMF); James K. Galbraith, LBJ School of Public Affairs & Levy Economics Institute of Bard College; Teresa Ghilarducci, The New School for Social Research; Fuad Hasanov, International Monetary Fund (IMF) & Georgetown University; Jan Hatzius, Goldman Sachs; Michelle Holder, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Ed Lane, Lane Asset Management; Tom Masterson, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College; Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College; R.C. Whalen, Whalen Global Advisors LLC; L. Randall Wray, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College; Ajit Zacharias, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College; and Gennaro Zezza, University of Cassino, Italy & Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.
Conference program, livestream link, and further details will be posted on our website as they become available.
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Research Project Report | February 2024
Integrating Nonmarket Consumption into the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey
Ajit Zacharias, Fernando Rios-Avila, Nancy Folbre, and Thomas Masterson
In spring 2021, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) kicked off a major initiative—to produce a measure of consumption to supplement the release of consumer expenditures. The production of such a measure would fill a data gap regarding household economic well-being. The following report includes the Levy Institute’s findings in developing an empirical methodology and identifying data sources to extend the consumer expenditure data collected by the BLS by incorporating household production (nonmarket and nongovernmental services such as do-it-yourself home repairs and childcare).
Under contract with the BLS, the researchers—Ajit Zacharias, Fernando Rios-Avila, Nancy Folbre, and Thomas Masterson—found that an overwhelming share of home production is provided by women. Distinct from most previous research, this research extends the scope of household production to include supervisory childcare and care received by household members from people outside their household. Estimates are generated for various major components of household production, such as childcare and cooking, rather than a single category. Included are estimates by alternative methods with monetary values of household production. This research represents an extension of the work the Levy Institute has been doing in bringing the realm of household production into economic analysis, including the creation of alternative measures of economic well-being (LIMEW) and poverty (LIMTIP).
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Working Paper No. 1040 | February 2024
COP28 and Environmental Federalism: Empirical Evidence from an Emerging Economy, India
Lekha S. Chakraborty, Amandeep Kaur, Ranjan Kumar Mohanty, Divy Rangan, and Sanjana Das
Against the backdrop of COP28, Research Scholar Lekha S. Chakraborty et al. investigate the impact of intergovernmental fiscal transfers (IGFT) on climate change commitments in India. Their findings substantiate the fiscal policy impacts for climate change commitments within the fiscal federal frameworks of India, and the significance of IGFT in increasing the forest cover in India, which has policy implications for the Sixteenth Finance Commission of India in integrating a climate change–related criterion in the tax-transfer formula in a sustainable manner.
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Working Paper No. 1041 | February 2024
Amazon Green Recovery and Labor Market in Brazil: Can Green Spending Reduce Gender and Race Inequalities?
Luiza Nassif Pires, Gilberto Tadeu Lima, Pedro Romero Marques, Tainari Taioka, and José Bergamin
This article presents a counterfactual analysis by assessing the impacts of green spending in the Amazon on the labor market, quantitatively—in terms of the number of jobs created—and qualitatively—exploring the distribution of those jobs by region and according to gender and race categories. Research Scholar Luiza Nassif Pires et al. build synthetic sectors representing each area of investment in a two-region input-output matrix (“Brazilian Amazon” and “Rest of Brazil”), and, using employment multipliers, simulate a demand shock on the Amazonian economy and its impact on job creation in the two regions with results that suggest green spending in the Amazon offers good perspectives (but also highlights limitations) for a just transition to a low-carbon economy in Brazil.
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Working Paper No. 1042 | February 2024
Saving Social Security
Edward Lane
In this paper, Edward Lane aims to address the issues surrounding the future of Social Security by suggesting legislative changes that will protect the Social Security system indefinitely, help ensure the adequacy of benefits for retirees and their survivors and dependents, and remove confusing and misleading legislative and administrative complexity. In making recommendations, Lane demonstrates that the Social Security Trust Funds are essentially an artificial accounting contrivance within the US Treasury that have become a tool to force program changes that will likely shift an increasing financial burden onto those who can least bear it.
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Working Paper No. 1043 | February 2024
Interest Rate Dynamics: An Examination of Mainstream and Keynesian Empirical Studies
Tanweer Akram and Khawaja Mamun
Tanweer Akram and Khawaja Mamun critically review both mainstream and Keynesian empirical studies of interest rate dynamics. They assess the key findings of a selected number of these studies, surveying the debates between the mainstream and the Keynesian schools. They also explore the debates on interest rate dynamics within the Post Keynesian school of thought. Lastly, the paper identifies the critical questions relevant for future empirical research.
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Working Paper No. 1044 | February 2024
Empirical Models of Chinese Government Bond Yields
Tanweer Akram and Shahida Pervin
Tanweer Akram and Shahida Pervin, in this paper, econometrically model the dynamics of long-term Chinese government bond (CGB) yields based on key macroeconomic and financial variables. Their findings show that the short-term interest rate has an economically and statistically significant effect on the long-term CGB yield of various maturity tenors. The paper’s findings evince that Keynes’s claim—that the central bank’s policy rate exerts an important influence over long-term government bond yields through the short-term interest rate—holds for China. This means that policymakers in China have considerable leeway in fiscal and monetary operations, government deficit finance, and central government debt management.
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Working Paper No. 1045 | March 2024
Social Security and Gender Inequality
Liudmila Malyshava and B. Oak McCoy
This inquiry examines the role of federal policy in gender inequality using the principles of institutional adjustment (Foster 1981; Bush 1987) in the context of the Veblenian dichotomy of habit formation. Specifically, Research Associate Liudmila Malyshava and B. Oak McCoy assert that Social Security, though exclusive at its inception in 1935, has undergone significant institutional adjustment. Today, Social Security plays a determining role in providing the appropriate institutional space for not only increasing economic security for older women, but also for reducing gender inequality overall.
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Working Paper No. 1046 | March 2024
The Aggregate Production Function and Solow’s “Three Denials”
Jesus Felipe and John McCombie
This paper offers a retrospective view of the key pillar of Solow’s neoclassical growth model, namely the aggregate production function. Research Associate Jesus Felipe and John McCombie review how this tool came to life and how it has survived until today, despite three criticisms that undermined its raison d’être. They are the Cambridge Capital Theory Controversies, the Aggregation Problem, and the Accounting Identity. These criticisms were forgotten by the profession, not because they were wrong but because of the key role played by Robert Solow in the field. Today, these criticisms are not even mentioned when students are introduced to (neoclassical) growth theory, which is presented in most economics departments and macroeconomics textbooks as the only theory worth studying.
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Working Paper No. 1047 | March 2024
“Just Transition” in India and Fiscal Stance: Analyzing the Tax Buoyancy of the Extractive Sector
Lekha S. Chakraborty and Emmanuel Thomas
Against the backdrop of fiscal transition concomitant to energy transition policies with climate change commitments, revenue from the extractive sector needs a recalibration in the subnational fiscal space. The extractive tax is the payment due to the government in exchange for the right to extract the mineral substance. The extractive tax has been fixed and paid in multiple tax regimes, sometimes on the measures of ad valorem (value-based) or profits or as the unit of the mineral extracted. Using the ARDL methodology, Research Associate Lekha S. Chakraborty and Emmanuel Thomas analyze the buoyancy of extractive revenue across the states in India, for the period 1991–92 to 2022–23 and analyze the short- and long-run coefficients and their speed of adjustment.
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Interested students should contact the Institute at [email protected] for more information. Scholarships are available.
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