A nation’s hard power is based on its ability to coerce, while its soft power depends on the attractiveness of its culture, political ideals, and policies. This column shows that a country’s soft power has measureable effects on its exports. Countries that are admired for their positive global influence export more, holding other things constant.
Read more...Why believing that there must be an easy way for Greece to pull of a Grexit does not make it so.
Read more...The debate over Greek debt sustainability is muddied by the fact that different analysts use different definitions. But once you use realistic assumptions, as in “tails risks” are actually pretty likely, Greek debt is obviously not “sustainable”.
Read more...Human dynamics, which over time played right into the Germans’ and other hardliners’ hands in the earlier chapters of the Greek bailout talks, may now be working against them.
Read more...Inflation doesn’t reduce the burden of debt, rather it may (or may not) accompany a rise in nominal worker income.
Read more...A proposal for breaking Greece’s vicious debt cycle.
Read more...Is debt really that bad? This column looks at the towering debts, rapid tax hikes, and constant state of war that led to Britain’s Industrial Revolution, showing that the devil is in the detail when assessing sovereign debt. When we consider the dangers of debt in today’s world, we should keep an eye on its potential benefits as well.
Read more...This post makes important observations about how the elite levels of Greece engage in rent-seeking, aka corruption, and can continue those strategies even in the face of economic collapse, to the detriment to the rest of Greek society.
Read more...Macroeconomic policy focused on inflation targeting is likely to deliver neither macroeconomic stability nor economic development, aka sustainable growth.
Read more...The IMF has dropped a big shoe before the Greek government has passed any of the legislation required as part of its pending bailout. But if this development leads to more wrangling, that means an even longer delay before Greek banks get any liquidity, which means continued strangulation of the Greek economy.
Read more...Nathan Tankus talks to YSI INET about a Grexit and Greece
Read more...The BIS shellacks Bernanke’s savings glut hypothesis and stresses that financial fragility is still a big risk.
Read more...Most Latin American countries—including those, like Chile and Brazil, where democratically elected leftist governments were overthrown in the 1960s and 1970s. reversed course to adopt “neoliberal” economic policies. How well did that work?
Read more...Negotiations with Greece remain fraught. Only a narrow path has been opened to getting a deal done, and it is far too easy for the parties, for reasons good and bad, to stray from it.
Read more...Greek government officials are preparing plans that would cross Syriza’s famed red lines in order to avert a default. Will Tsipras capitulate?
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