December 9, 2023
AnalysisClimate Divergence
The politics of green central banking at the Fed and ECB
Ten years ago, the current predicament of central bankers would seem unthinkable: to what extent should they contribute to society’s response to climate change? As the impacts of climate change have escalated, most central banks have begun to appreciate the…
November 18, 2023
InterviewsRules of Restraint
Fiscal politics in Brazil, Germany, and the European Union
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…
October 17, 2023
AnalysisThe Oil Revolution
The myths and realities of the oil price shock of 1973
The abrupt quadrupling of the oil price in the final months of 1973 is widely held to have marshalled the end of “a golden age of world capitalism.” Eric Hobsbawm’s standard-setting interpretation defines 1973 as the turning point when the…
October 5, 2023
AnalysisThe Politics of Fiscal Restraint
Three decades of rule-based fiscal policy in Brazil
The adoption of fiscal rules has emerged as a global trend over the past four decades. While institutional constraints to fiscal policy were uncommon before the 1990s, recent data indicates that they have since been put in force in more…
Defining Bidenomics
Industrial policy, labor, and the New Cold War
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…
August 23, 2023
AnalysisCoercion and Inequality
The distributional effects of sanctions in Iran
“Plumbing” is an oft-used metaphor for understanding how sanctions work. Sanctions are intended to stop the flow of money to the targeted government; reserves are frozen, trade is blocked, export revenues dry up, and government budgets are drained. Even the…
Hockey Sticks and Crosses
Images that define the globalization debate
August 5, 2023
AnalysisThe Agribusiness Pact
The “reprimarization” of the Brazilian economy
Over the past two decades, Brazilian media and political discourse have exalted the uncontroversial success of a magical entity known as “agribusiness.” Closely associated with the rise of commodity exports such as soy, sugarcane, and corn, “agribusiness” has come to…
Feasibility Pact?
Systemic reform, debt, and political feasibility at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris
A brewing sovereign debt crisis threatens to engulf as many as sixty-one countries in debt distress over the coming year. Aid flowing from the global North—which carries the most responsibility for the atmospheric carbon stock—to the global South—which bears the…
Varieties of Derisking
Industrial policy, macrofinance, and the green transition
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…
June 7, 2023
AnalysisRisk Politics
ESG and the politicization of finance
In 2022, Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) accounted for 65 percent of all new inflows in exchange traded funds in Europe. Investments in the US are also projected to grow—PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) observes that more than eight out of ten…
May 27, 2023
AnalysisPecuniary Salvation
Monetary financing at the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank
Monetary financing—the issuance of public money to support public expenditure—has in recent times become a policy taboo. The message from economists to politicians, policymakers, and society more broadly is often that any central bank support for public expenditure is likely to destroy…
March 3, 2023
AnalysisWall Street Consensus a la Française
Development agendas at the Gabon One Forest Summit
Since his election in 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron has periodically committed to resetting France’s relationship with Africa. In 2020, his so-called Macron Doctrine denounced the Washington Consensus for creating a “capitalism that has become financialized, that has become over-concentrated…
March 1, 2023
AnalysisThe IMF Trap
Debt, austerity, and inequality in Sri Lanka’s historic crisis
Massive demonstrations that swept Sri Lanka last year exposed the serious challenges at the heart of the global economy. In July 2022, former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to flee the country, only a few months after announcing a hasty…
January 28, 2023
AnalysisGender and the Great Resignation
Dynamics of gender and class in the Covid-era labor market
The much anticipated “return to normal” after the Covid-19 pandemic has been anything but. In contrast to the aftermath of previous economic crises, workers have not rushed back to work. Each month over a period of nine months in 2021,…
Don’t Say “Scramble for Africa”
Debt and diplomacy on the African continent
Europe’s “Leap Into the Future”
Do exceptional crisis-fighting policies signal the arrival of an interventionist Europe?
This is the fifth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. In 2020, as demand for liquefied natural gas boomed in Asia, the shippable fuel was an afterthought in…
Money and the Climate Crisis
COP27 and financing the green transition
The conclusion of COP27 reflected persisting uncertainties around coordinated global action towards decarbonization. Major agreements—including the establishment of a loss and damage fund—were reached, but the burden of mounting debt among global South countries continued to limit climate ambition. The…
Development Bank Self-Sabotage
What’s stopping MDBs?
This is the fourth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. When the World Bank and IMF make radical noises, the US is typically the voice of restraint. So…
November 30, 2022
InterviewsBittersweet Tides
Chile, Brazil, and the future of the Latin American Left
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,…
November 2, 2022
InterviewsCyborg Trucking
An interview with Karen Levy on surveillance and automation in the trucking industry
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 Geopolitics of Stuff
A discussion on supply chains, commodities, and climate
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…
July 23, 2022
InterviewsResource Nationalism and Decarbonization
Revisiting “resource nationalism” in a new era of raw minerals demand
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…
July 7, 2022
InterviewsThe IMF & the Legacy of Bretton Woods
Global South debt crises and the evolution of the international monetary system
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.
June 10, 2022
AnalysisLeapfrog Logistics
Digital platforms, infrastructure, and labor in Brazil and China
In Spring 2018, two significant labor disputes broke out at opposite ends of the earth. The first, in Brazil, was a two-week-long mass strike of 400,000 truckers in response to successive price increases unleashed by the state oil company, Petrobras,…
April 15, 2022
AnalysisEconomic War and the Commodity Shock
A discussion on sanctions and global commodity markets
The war in Ukraine has unleashed both geopolitical and economic strife, and nowhere is the latter clearer than in the volatile commodities market. Commodities prices have fluctuated wildly since the Russian invasion began and the US-led coalition retaliated with extraordinary…
March 23, 2022
AnalysisA New Public Housing Model
Addis Ababa's Urban Transformation
In 2006, the government of Ethiopia embarked on a mission to construct half a million condominium apartments over a twenty-year period in its capital of Addis Ababa—a city of only five million. Now, sixteen years later, the initiative has transformed the…
March 12, 2022
InterviewsStructures of History
An interview with historian William Sewell
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…
March 1, 2022
InterviewsPower, States, and Wars
An interview with Michael Mann on the study of history and the reemergence of great power politics
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…
December 17, 2021
AnalysisDeath or glory?
New forms of fascism haunt Chile’s presidential election
In October 2019, a proposed thirty peso hike in public transport fares triggered protests in Santiago that spread to other major cities across the country, denouncing the country’s economic infrastructure with the slogan, “It’s not thirty pesos, it’s thirty years.” Chileans…
June 18, 2021
InterviewsInvestment and Decarbonization
A conversation on investment strategies for the green transition
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,…
Feminism in the Union
An interview with feminist activist and trade unionist Begoña San José.
Begoña San José is a feminist activist and trade union leader.
New System, New Society
An interview with former Prime Minister of Spain Felipe González.
Revolution in the Long Run
An interview with Hector Maravall on the Communist Party of Spain, the decline of unions, and Felipe González's modernization program.
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.
August 8, 2020
InterviewsEconomics, Bosses, and Interest
An interview with Stephen Marglin.
Stephen Marglin is Walter S. Barker Professor Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since he received tenure in 1968.
May 1, 2020
AnalysisThe Class Politics of the Dollar System
Managing an international public good
The global dollar system has few national winners. The typical frame for understanding the US dollar is that of “exorbitant privilege.”
April 24, 2020
InterviewsThe Weight of Movements
An interview with Frances Fox Piven
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…
February 13, 2020
InterviewsAusterity and Ideology
An interview with Kim Phillips-Fein
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",…
September 26, 2019
InterviewsOptimizing the Crisis
An interview with Seda Gürses and Bekah Overdorf
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…
July 3, 2019
AnalysisThe Politics of Machine Learning, pt. II
The uses of algorithms discussed in the first part of this article vary widely: from hiring decisions to bail assignment, to political campaigns and military intelligence.
Across all these applications of machine learning methods, there is a common thread: Data on individuals is used to treat different individuals differently. In the past, broadly speaking, such commercial and government activities used to target everyone in a given…
June 27, 2019
AnalysisThe Politics of Machine Learning, pt. I
On prediction, profits, votes, and militarism.
Terminology like "machine learning," "artificial intelligence," "deep learning," and "neural nets" is pervasive: business, universities, intelligence agencies, and political parties are all anxious to maintain an edge over the use of these technologies.
March 28, 2019
AnalysisExperiments for Policy Choice
If we wish to pick good policies, we should run experiments adaptively
Randomized experiments have become part of the standard toolkit for policy evaluation, and are usually designed to give precise estimates of causal effects. But, in practice, their actual goal is to pick good policies. These two goals are not the…
March 1, 2019
AnalysisThe Case for an Unconditional Safety Net
The 'magic bucket' of universal cash transfers
Imagine a system where everyone had a right to basic material safety, and could say “no” to abuse and exploitation. Sounds utopian? I argue that it would be quite feasible to get there, and that it would make eminent economic,…