INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS

Anatomy of the Global Economy

J. Bradford DeLong

Is a new global reserve currency needed? Do central banks need to be reigned in? Will health-care reform help or hinder efforts to control government budgets? Will the stimulus packages implemented to counteract the financial crisis of 2008 consign the world to a future of slow growth?

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FEATURED COMMENTARIES

Neville Chamberlain was Right

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2012-01-30

Relatively soon after the start of the Great Depression, the British economy was rapidly returning to its previous level of output, thanks to Neville Chamberlain’s reliance on fiscal stimulus to restore the price level to its pre-depression trajectory. Unlike today's British leaders, he did not appease flawed economic theories.... read

Comments: 1 Recommended: 0 Read: 15806

America’s Financial Leviathan

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2011-12-30

Today, finance and insurance in the US account for 8.4% of GDP, up from 2.8% in 1950 and 6% in 1990. So why has the devotion of a great deal of skill and enterprise to finance and insurance sector not paid obvious economic dividends?... read

Comments: 8 Recommended: 0 Read: 27695

The 70% Solution

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2011-11-30

Today's super rich command and control over resources that they are effectively satiated. So, when we calculate what their tax rate should be, we should not consider the effect on their happiness, but rather on the well-being of everyone else.... read

Comments: 28 Recommended: 1 Read: 32061

The ECB’s Battle against Central Banking

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2011-10-31

When the European Central Bank announced its program of government-bond purchases, it let financial markets know that it thoroughly disliked the idea, was not fully committed to it, and would reverse the policy as soon as it could. But the ECB's refusal to accept responsibility for financial stability flies in the face of the history of central banking.... read

Comments: 11 Recommended: 2 Read: 57000

A Free Lunch for America

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2011-09-29

The US government can currently borrow for 30 years at a real interest rate of 1% per year. Given this, an additional $500 billion in infrastructure spending would yield enormous benefits – and virtually no costs.... read

Comments: 7 Recommended: 1 Read: 24474

Ben Bernanke’s Dream World

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2011-08-30

Ben Bernanke's recent claim that the US economy's “growth fundamentals" apparently have not permanently altered by the shocks of the past four years” is simply not credible. Worse still, it sanctions a hands-off approach to economic depression that threatens to undermine US and global growth for years to come.... read

Comments: 11 Recommended: 0 Read: 30184

America’s Locust Years

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2011-07-29

During the run-up to World War II, Winston Churchill, speaking in Parliament, lamented “the years that the locusts hath eaten” – the period during which preparatory action to face the great crisis of his day (the rise of Continental fascism) could have been taken, but was not. America's debt-ceiling debate has put the US in a similar position.... read

Comments: 1 Recommended: 1 Read: 18489

Confessions of a Financial Deregulator

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2011-06-30

Back in the late 1990’s, in America at least, support for financial deregulation was widespread, and the entire experiment turned out to be woefully misguided. But if it all looks like such a bad idea now, why didn’t it then?... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 1 Read: 27830

Built to Bust

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2011-05-25

In 2007, it was reasonable to expect that construction spending in the US would be depressed for some time to come. But the extent of the subsequent fall-off in construction spending relative to long-run trends has dwarfed the level of excess spending in 2003-2006.... read

Comments: 1 Recommended: 0 Read: 20486

Economics in Crisis	J. Bradford DeLong
Asked recently to name where to turn to understand what was going on in 2008, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers cited three dead men, a book written 33 years ago, and another written the century before last. Economists today, by contrast, have allowed themselves to be continually distracted, confused, and in denial.... read

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The 70% Solution

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2011-11-30

Comments: 28 Recommended: 1 Read: 32061

Confessions of a Financial Deregulator

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2011-06-30

Comments: 0 Recommended: 1 Read: 27830

The Humiliation of Britain

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2010-10-27

Britons are willing to lend to their government on an enormous scale – and on terms that are more generous than the IMF's. But that hasn't stopped the Cameron government from forcing through fiscal cuts that will cost a half-million public-sector jobs – and cause the loss of another half-million private-sector jobs – at a time when no sources of expanding demand exist to pick up the slack.... read

Comments: 15 Recommended: 1 Read: 34312

Depression Economics

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2008-12-26

A decade ago, the 2008 Nobel laureate in economics, Paul Krugman, wrote a little book entitled The Return of Depression Economics. It sank like a stone, but now it's back – in a revised and expanded edition – and, sadly, this time Krugman's timing is perfect.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 32993

Is Inflation the Right Battle?

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2008-08-28

The Federal Reserve and other central banks are coming under growing pressure to rein in rapid price growth. But headline inflation numbers are the only indication that rising inflation is a problem, or even a reality, and there is no sign anywhere of a wage-price spiral.... read

Comments: 1 Recommended: 0 Read: 35155

The Knife’s-Edge Economy

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2008-07-29

The fact that the US has not slid into a full-blown recession proves that the late Rudi Dornbusch was right that macroeconomic imbalances can last for longer than economists believe possible. But, given the magnitude of the chaos on the financial side of the US economy, widespread nationalization and liquidations are inevitable if confidence is not restored soon.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 33963

The False Promise of Private Pensions

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2006-01-17

One of the strangest claims made in the debates about social insurance now roiling the world’s richest countries is the that government-funded defined-benefit pension programs (such as America’s Social Security system) are outmoded. These programs were fine, the argument goes, for the industrial economy of the Great Depression and the post-World War II generation, but they have become obsolete in today’s high-tech, networked, post-industrial economy.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 43863

Houses in the Air

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2005-08-24

Over the past six months, attention and worry have shifted from America’s enormous trade deficit to its surging property markets and real-estate bubble. At least two of the reasons for high – and rising – home prices in the United States are well understood. What remains highly uncertain, however, is whether an obviously overheating market can be cooled without sending America, and its main trading partners around the world, into an economic tailspin.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 43842

For Whom America’s Bell Tolls

J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy

2005-10-26

These days the Chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, Ben Bernanke, likes to talk about a “global savings glut” that has produced astonishingly low real interest rates around the world. But that is the wrong way to look at it. ... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 43803

The Roots of Islamic Backwardness	J. Bradford DeLong
The war in Iraq is over. But the battle to transform the economies of the Middle East--the only hope of preventing fanaticism from claiming a generation of young unemployed Arabs and Iranians--is only beginning. ... read
The Final Defeat of Thomas Malthus?	J. Bradford DeLong
The UN recently revised its population projections. Some 6.3 billion people now live on Earth. If fertility rates in relatively poor countries continue to follow the trends set by today's relatively rich countries, we are within shouting distance of the world's maximum population-9-10 billion-to be reached in 2050-2100. ... read

AUTHOR INFO

J. Bradford DeLong

J. Bradford DeLong, a former assistant secretary of the US Treasury, is Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley and a research associate at the National Bureau for Economic Research.

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