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As the nation prepares for a second Trump administration, the mood among many Democratic Party officials has been one of bafflement and astonishment. How could voters have failed to rise to the defense of the democracy and “institutions” that Democrats…

On October 28, the Israeli Knesset voted to shut down the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and to designate it as a terrorist organization. While this drastic attack…

Healthcare and education are two of the most important sectors of the US economy. Together they comprise over $8.44 trillion in annual expenditure. When including the $1 trillion-plus health insurance industry, these three industries of private education and healthcare, public…

In his bid to transform Colombia into a global leader of the green transition, President Gustavo Petro announced in 2023 that the country would stop signing new contracts for oil and gas exploration. Though celebrated by environmental advocates, the announcement…

On August 28, Israel launched its largest military assault on the West Bank since the Second Intifada more than two decades ago. Targeting Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas—three cities in the north of the territory—“Operation Summer Camps” has killed thirty-nine Palestinians.…

In the international legal system, the Palestinian cause has made significant headway since the start of the war in Gaza. In addition to legal processes that have arisen from Israel’s conduct in the war itself—it stands formally accused of genocide…

India’s Lok Sabha elections in June ended a decade of single-party majority-rule for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). With the BJP winning 240 seats, down from the 303 they won in 2019 and short of the 273…

Martin Luther King once called the United States government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” That formulation may be controversial, but no one denies that the US is by far the world’s biggest arms dealer, with a 42…

In October 2023, the United Nations Security Council voted to “authorize the deployment of a multinational security support, headed by Kenya.” While Russia and China abstained, they too condemned “the increasing violence, criminal activities, and human rights abuses and violations…

Few economists in the course of Colombian economic history have matched the influence of Salomón Kalmanovitz, who has played a key role in the professionalization of the discipline since the 1970s, when he returned from the United States to teach…

Since Hamas launched its attack on southern Israel on October 7, the question of deterrence has loomed over the region: who holds it, what does it consist of, and how will the balance of forces tilt or not tilt towards…

Behind the retail grocery industry’s image of public routine churns an incredible and evolving feat of collective enterprise. The companies that own and operate grocery stores serve as the primary source of food for the country’s 130 million households. Employing…

The Soviet Union’s construction of pipelines across Western Europe granted the superpower access to European markets—and capital. In his new book, The Soviet Union and the Construction of the Global Market, Oscar Sanchez-Sibony demonstrates how this move challenged American dominance…

Market Microstructures

May 30, 2024

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In the following interview, seasoned fixed-income portfolio manager Mohsen Fahmi questions this assumption. Fahmi is a veteran multi-asset fund manager with extensive experience managing fixed-income funds, including PIMCO Dynamic Bond, PIMCO GIS Dynamic Bond, and PIMCO Multi-Strategy Alternative Fund. After…

Prior to October 2023, about a seventh  of global maritime trade passed through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea to and from the Suez Canal. As a result of attacks by Houthi fighters on commercial ocean freight traveling…

The success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the last decade of Indian politics, and its frontrunner status in this year’s parliamentary elections, has often been attributed to its welfare policies. The rise of Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT)—whereby beneficiaries…

In 2022, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president of the twenty-first century, emerged victorious alongside a coalition of liberal ministers experienced in the public sector and academia. One key figure in this coalition was José Antonio Ocampo, an academic with…

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign for his third term as Brazil’s president was defined by the idea of reconstruction. This encompassed both a political recovery from the antidemocratic reign of Jair Bolsonaro as well as the promise of reindustrialization…

It didn’t take long for the new President of Argentina, Javier Milei, to don gloves in the international arena and showcase his libertarian approach to foreign policy. Some political gestures have already stirred conflicts with Brazil and China—the country’s two…

January 25, 2024

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With India headed to elections this April, the ruling BJP is rolling out enormous publicity campaigns to promote its record on economic growth and Hindu nationalism. Central to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third bid for reelection is the narrative that…

Upon entering office in July 2022, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro voiced a strong stance against fossil fuels, marking a contrast with other left-wing leaders in Latin America who rose to power through resources gained from extractive economies. Petro’s emphatic critique…

December 15, 2023

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An interview with Navroz Dubash on COP28, the history of international climate diplomacy, and the developmentalist turn in climate politics

On December 10, the fortieth anniversary of Argentina’s redemocratization, Javier Milei was sworn in as the country’s new president. Milei—a far-right economist who calls himself an “anarcho-capitalist,” denies the existence of the military dictatorship, and claims to be a fan…

The majority of countries in the world have some sort of fiscal rule: an institutional constraint on fiscal policies to discourage government overspending and reduce political influence on state expenditure. But these rules have their own politics. As Clara Zanon…

Market Microstructures

November 8, 2023

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Have interest rate swaps become the modern repos? In the latest essay in the ongoing series on Market Microstructures, I argue that shifts in the liquidity market have fundamentally altered the function of interest rate swaps (IRS) in the global…

October 26, 2023

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A world with terminally declining oil demand has never been experienced before, but the growth era for fossil fuels is ending, as many producers, investors and forecasters are acknowledging. This does not put climate goals in close reach, as CO2…

Sudan’s ongoing war between two military formations—the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces—has killed thousands and displaced millions. The current crisis follows years of political upheaval across the country. In late 2018, mass protests calling for democratic rule…

September 2, 2023

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A new American industrial policy—“Bidenomics”—has arrived, consisting of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. The proclaimed goals of Bidenomics are to propel a green energy transition to confront climate…

Pranab Bardhan is Professor Emeritus of Economics at University of California, Berkeley. Among the foremost global scholars of development, distribution, and trade, his twelve books and more than one hundred fifty journal articles cross disciplinary boundaries in an effort to…

Market Microstructures

July 22, 2023

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The Federal Reserve has provided payment and settlement services for more than a century. But FedNow, the instant payments service rolled out in late June 2023, is the first new Fed payments rail in 50 years. Though payment and settlement…

June 17, 2023

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In recent years, the debate over climate policy has moved away from the earlier consensus in favor of carbon pricing and towards an investment-focused approach, illustrated by the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), along with other similar measures…

Market Microstructures

May 25, 2023

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The Gamestop bubble of 2021—where the value of the company’s stocks increased more than a hundred times over in just a few months—exemplified the rising trend of the meme stock frenzy. The event shed light on the role of retail…

January 12, 2023

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In How China Escaped Shock Therapy (2021), Isabella Weber analyzes how China applied market reforms selectively, avoiding the broad agenda of liberalization advocated for in the West. Retaining oversight of prices for critical goods was key to this strategy.  Recently,…

Few scholars have done more to elucidate the relationship between democracy and economic development in the United States and its corresponding regional—or “sectional”—antagonisms than Richard Franklin Bensel, the Gary S. Davis professor of government at Cornell University. Among Bensel’s published…

The recent victories of left parties across Latin America—most recently the election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil—have prompted comparisons with the Pink Tide of the early 2000s. But with narrow margins of victory against far-right opponents,…

The supply and demand whiplashes of the Covid-19 pandemic snarled global supply chains, shaking up labor markets and well-established migration patterns. In the process, existing cracks in logistics and infrastructure systems widened, making these systems newly visible. In the US…

The past year of rampant inflation and energy system chaos is a clear indication that we need paradigmatic change. Any new economic system is going to be anchored by major scientific innovations; historically, spurring these technological transformations has required a…

October 13, 2022

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The material economy is back. Economists and commentators in recent decades had heralded (or lamented) the arrival of an automated, redundant, frictionless system of international commerce. But over the past two years, multiple global crises have exposed the fragile physical…

The inflation of the past year has reshaped the political economic landscape in the United States and around the globe. While the IMF and World Bank echo UN calls about the recession risk of globally-synchronized rate hikes, the debate over…

China’s high-speed railway network is one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history. Though today international headlines emphasize the decline in China’s growth—lagging behind the rest of Asia for the first time since 1990—for more than two decades, the…

Across Latin America, a recent wave of left electoral victories has drawn comparisons to “Pink Tide” of the early 2000s. The current moment, however, coincides with a global push towards decarbonization, and much of the world’s supply of commodities essential…

For some, neoliberalism is to blame for most, if not all, of our societal problems, as well as for the resistance to progressive changes that characterizes contemporary policymaking. This is for good reason. As has been extensively documented, the neoliberal…

Fifty years on from the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the role of the international monetary system and international financial institutions in managing the global economy are in question.

Restarting our economies after the pandemic continues to expose the fragility of our supply chains. The Russia-Ukraine conflict serves as a stark reminder that oil and gas can still dictate our anxieties. Commodity prices and our collective sense of vulnerability…

Every new climate study seems to confirm what we have long known: the brunt of these impacts will fall on those least prepared to weather them, in considerable part because the basic structure of our global system had long ago…

Tax cuts and austerity have been a central feature of American politics in recent decades—just recently, the Build Back Better bill was blocked under the guise of fiscal responsibility. The work of Robin Einhorn, Preston Hotchkis Professor in the History…

Few scholars have had the theoretical, methodological, and empirical influence of William Sewell. His work has persistently scrutinized and challenged disciplinary barriers, placing historical and social scientific methods in dialogue and thereby illuminating their strengths and shortcomings. This effort is…

Over the course of several decades, Michael Mann's writing has consistently advanced thinking on great powers and the social orders they create. Combining a theoretical and empirical focus, his work is nearly unparalleled in its ambitious scope and meticulous attention…

The uptick in organized and unorganized labor militancy registered throughout the pandemic, and in particular in strike and unionization campaigns in recent months, comes at a relative nadir for the US labor movement. The work of Kim Voss, Professor of…

As New Yorkers grapple with an uncertain future, the fiscal crisis of the 1970s and its aftermath are often invoked by the press and politicians. Today, “New York in the 1970s” is shorthand for a city facing poverty and crime,…

In late March, the Biden administration announced the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, with approximately half of the sum dedicated to fighting the climate crisis. While the legislation would mark a sea change in federal action to avert climate catastrophe,…

Ken Shadlen's research examines how international institutions can create unique challenges for developing countries and, in doing so exacerbate core-periphery inequalities.

In The Takeover of Social Policy by Financialization, Lena Lavinas names the “Brazilian Paradox”: the model of social inclusion implemented by the Workers’ Party under President Lula and President Rousseff promotes a logic of financial inclusion and market incorporation, and…

Social Democracy

February 20, 2021

Interviews

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Hector Maravall is a long time member of the PCE, a labor lawyer, and a leader of the Comisiones Obreras, the largest trade union in Spain.

Social Democracy

February 20, 2021

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Felipe González was Prime Minister of Spain from 1982-1996.

Social Democracy

February 20, 2021

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Begoña San José is a feminist activist and trade union leader.

Social Democracy

February 18, 2021

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Anicet le Pors is a French communist party politician who served as a member of the French Senate from 1977 to 1981, and Minister of Civil Service and Reforms from 1981 to 1984.

Social Democracy

February 18, 2021

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François Morin was technical adviser to Jean le Garrec at the State Secretary for Public Sector Expansion from 1981–1982 and an adviser to Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy.

Social Democracy

February 18, 2021

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Roger Martelli is a historian of the French Communist Party.

Social Democracy

February 4, 2021

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Claudio Petruccioli is an Italian politician who was president of the Italian national broadcast network RAI from 2005–2009.

Social Democracy

February 4, 2021

Interviews

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Emanuele Macaluso was an Italian trade unionist and politician with the Italian Communist Party (PCI).

Social Democracy

February 4, 2021

Interviews

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Giuliano Amato was a member of the Italian Socialist Party and Italian Prime Minister from 1992–93 and 2000–2001, Treasury Minister in 1999–2000, and Minister of the Interior, 2006–2008.

Amit Bhaduri was internationally selected professor at Pavia University and visiting Professor at the Council for Social Development, Delhi University. His six books and more than sixty journal articles have consistently scrutinized the foundations of neoclassical economic theory and presented…

Mark Blyth is William R. Rhodes Professor of International Political Economy at Brown University and a Faculty Fellow at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies. His research examines how the interests of states and economic actors shape ideological consensus and…

Richard Westra is University Professor at the Institute of Political Science, University of Opole, Poland and international Adjunct Professor of the Center for Macau Studies, University of Macau. His research focuses on the philosophical underpinnings of economic phenomena, with an…

Stephen Marglin is Walter S. Barker Professor Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since he received tenure in 1968.

Michael Pettis and Matthew Klein's new book "Trade Wars Are Class Wars" begins with an epigraph from John A. Hobson: "The struggle for markets, the greater eagerness of producers to sell than of consumers to buy, is the crowning proof…

The rapid and expansive action taken by the Fed over the past two months in response to the coronavirus crisis has muddied the distinction between monetary and fiscal policy. In particular, its Municipal Liquidity Facility provides a path for financing…

"The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism" is among the most influential works in the study of welfare states. Rather than conceiving of welfare and industrial policy on a single state-market axis, Three Worlds develops a typology to situate welfare states…

Few theorists of social movements have shaped the events that they analyze. Frances Fox Piven, Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York and one of these few, has studied and agitated within American social…

Kim Phillips-Fein is an associate professor of history at New York University and the author of the books "Invisible Hands: the Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal" and "Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics",…

Lorraine Daston has published widely in the history of science, including on probability and statistics, scientific objectivity and observation, game theory, monsters, and much else. Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science since 1995 (emeritus as…

Throughout his career, John Roemer's work has been uniquely situated between the fields of microeconomics, game theory, philosophy, and political science. His research makes use of the tools of classical economics to analyze dynamics typically thought to be outside the…

Software that structures increasingly detailed aspects of contemporary life is built for optimization. These programs require a mapping of the world in a way that is computationally legible, and translating the messy world into one that makes sense to a…

Few living scholars have had the influence of Mark Granovetter. In a career spanning almost 50 years, his seminal contributions to his own field of sociology have spread to shape research in economics, computer science, and even epidemiology.

Throughout the 20th century, radical social movements were plagued by their relationship to existing state institutions. Across Western Europe, labor movements found political expression in parties like the Swedish Social Democrats, the German SPD, and the French Socialist Party.

Feminist and women's movements in the mid-20th century developed demands for an unconditional basic income that emerged out of concrete experiences with the welfare state. What can the current discussion around UBI learn from examining this largely sidelined history?

Academic study of war in the social sciences is as old as historiography itself, and political economists have considered the economic logic of war and peace for centuries. Yet social scientists have left several questions on the financing of conflict…

Johannes Haushofer is assistant professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. His work includes development economics, behavioral economics, psychology, and neurobiology.