
Our shrinking economic toolkits
For four decades, mainstream economists and policymakers have been wedded to fixed dogmas. Their blind belief in fiscal discipline threatens the very stability of societies.
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Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is a member of the Club of Rome’s Transformational Economics Commission and co-chair of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation.

For four decades, mainstream economists and policymakers have been wedded to fixed dogmas. Their blind belief in fiscal discipline threatens the very stability of societies.

Worsening economic inequality in recent years is largely the result of policy choices that reflect the political influence and lobbying power of the rich.

For too long, multinational corporations—and digital firms in particular—have used existing rules to avoid paying taxes in countries where they do much of their business.

A big argument of neoliberal economics is that unemployment is reduced by labour-market deregulation. Lack of robust evidence doesn’t seem to get in the way.