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Lawrence H. Summers

Lawrence H. Summers is Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a former US Secretary of the Treasury.

Lawrence H. Summers

Setting The Record Straight On Secular Stagnation

Lawrence H. Summers 7th September 2018

Joseph Stiglitz recently dismissed the relevance of secular stagnation to the American economy, and in the process attacked (without naming me) my work in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. I am not a disinterested observer, but this is not the first time that I find Stiglitz’s policy commentary as weak as his […]

Winning An Election Does Not Entitle One To Upend Basic Values

Lawrence H. Summers 2nd December 2016

I will never again use the term “political correctness.” Whatever rhetorical value the term may have once had is far more than offset by what has been unleashed in the name of resistance to it since the US presidential election. I have made no secret over the years of my conviction that the sensitivities of individuals or […]

Voters Deserve Responsible Nationalism Not Reflex Globalism

Lawrence H. Summers 15th July 2016

It is clear after the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s victory in the Republican presidential primaries that voters are revolting against the relatively open economic policies that have been the norm in the US and Britain since the second world war. Populist opposition to international integration is on the rise in much of continental Europe and has always […]

The Economic Consequences Of A Trump Win Would Be Severe

Lawrence H. Summers 9th June 2016

On June 23, the UK will vote on whether to remain in the EU. On November 8, the US will vote on whether to elect Donald Trump as president. These elections have much in common. Both could lead to outcomes that would have seemed inconceivable not long ago. Both pit angry populists against the political […]

Europe Is Right To Kill Off The Criminal’s Favourite Banknote

Lawrence H. Summers 12th May 2016

Most of the time I use this column to recommend policy changes that I believe would make the world a better place. This time I am saluting a policy change I believe will have significant benefits – one that carries with it important lessons. The decision of the European Central Bank last week to stop producing […]

Global Trade Should Be Remade From The Bottom Up

Lawrence H. Summers 18th April 2016

Since the end of the second world war, a broad consensus in support of global economic integration as a force for peace and prosperity has been a pillar of the international order. From global trade agreements to the EU project; from the Bretton Woods institutions to the removal of pervasive capital controls; from ex­panded foreign direct investment to increased […]

Corporate Profits Are Near Record Highs. Here’s Why That’s A Problem

Lawrence H. Summers 31st March 2016

As the cover story in this week’s The Economist highlights, the rate of profitability in the United States is at a near-record high level, as is the share of corporate revenue going to capital. The stock market is valued very high by historical standards, as measured by Tobin’s q ratio of the market value of the nonfinancial corporations to the value of […]

Trump’s Rise Illustrates How Democratic Processes Can Lose Their Way

Lawrence H. Summers 2nd March 2016

While comparisons between Donald Trump and Mussolini or Hitler are overwrought, Trump’s rise does illustrate how democratic processes can lose their way and turn dangerously toxic when there is intense economic frustration and widespread apprehension about the future. This is especially the case when some previously respected leaders scurry to make peace in a new […]

Increasingly Convinced Of The Secular Stagnation Hypothesis

Lawrence H. Summers 23rd February 2016

Foreign Affairs has just published my latest on the secular stagnation hypothesis. I am increasingly convinced that it captures what is going on in the industrialized world and that the risks of long term weakness on the current policy path are growing. Unfortunately since I put forward the argument in late 2013, the data have […]

No Free Lunches But Plenty Of Cheap Ones

Lawrence H. Summers 18th February 2016

Trade-offs have long been at the center of economics. The aphorism “there is no such thing as a free lunch” captures a central economic idea: You cannot get something for nothing. Among the many trade-offs emphasized in economics courses are guns vs. butter, public vs. private, efficiency vs. equity, environmental protection vs. economic growth, consumption […]

ETUI advertisement

The four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.


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Eurofound advertisement

#AskTheExpert webinar—Key ingredients for the future of work: job quality and gender equality

Eurofound’s head of information and communication, Mary McCaughey, its senior research manager, Agnès Parent-Thirion, and research manager, Jorge Cabrita, explore the findings from the recently published European Working Conditions Telephone Survey (EWCTS) in an #AskTheExpert webinar. This survey of more than 70,000 workers in 36 European countries provides a wide-ranging picture of job quality across countries, occupations, sectors and age groups and by gender in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. It confirms persistent gender segregation in sectors, occupations and workplaces, indicating that we are a long way from the goals of equal opportunities for women and men at work and equal access to key decision-making positions in the workplace.


WATCH HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Let’s end involuntary unemployment!

What is the best way to fight unemployment? We want to know your opinion, to understand better the potential of an EU-wide permanent programme for direct and guaranteed public-service employment.

In collaboration with Our Global Moment, Fondazione Pietro Nenni and other progressive organisations across Europe, we launched an EU-wide survey on the perception of unemployment and publicly funded jobs, exploring ways to bring innovation in public sector-led job creation.


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Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


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ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


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