Archive for the ‘Folbre’ Category

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Folbre blogs on “Shared Capitalism”

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

Nancy Folbre

Nancy Folbre, UMass Amherst economics professor, discusses “shared capitalism,” a term for arrangements that businesses can make to share profits with employees, in her Economix blog. She notes that her departmental colleague, Fidan Kurtulus and another economist last week offered evidence that companies with employee ownership showed greater employment stability during economic downturns between 1999 and 2008. The study was presented at the London School of Economics. (New York Times, 5/30/11)

May 30, 2011
Shared Capitalism
By NANCY FOLBRE

How could public policies promote and expand this shared capitalism? Public policies already offer companies tax benefits for setting up employee stock-ownership plans, and these could be increased. It would also be relatively easy to encourage companies to offer more workers incentive pay based on company performance.

In a report published by the Center for American Progress in March, Professors Freeman, Blasi and Kruse point to a strange anomaly in current tax policy: Companies are allowed to write off costly stock options that represent incentive pay for top executives, despite a lack of evidence that such incentives lead to improved company performance.

Why not restrict the tax benefits to companies that provide the same type of incentive pay for all full-time employees, stipulating that the value expended on the bottom 80 percent of employees by salary must equal at least that expended on the top 5 percent?

Similar restrictions have long been in effect for employee retirement and health plans. The costs of these programs are not tax-deductible unless they are offered in a nondiscriminatory way to all workers.

Private-sector precedents are also strong. Two very successful American companies, the Wegmans supermarkets and Cisco Systems, offer broad-based incentive systems that effectively meet these restrictions.

If America’s capitalists mean what they say about the virtues of an ownership economy, they should throw their weight behind modest changes in tax incentives that could expand it. If they don’t, we might infer that they prefer to keep the benefits of ownership to themselves.

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Folbre: “Super Sad True Jobs Story”

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

Nancy Folbre

Nancy Folbre, UMass Amherst economics professor, writes in the Economix blog about how large numbers of unemployed workers in the U.S. may be left behind because the close relationships between economic recovery, job creation and increased profits are being frayed by globalization. Folbre cites a paper co-authored by Deepankar Basu, assistant professor of economics at UMass Amherst. Basu and his co-author found that there is a weakening correlation between output growth and employment growth in the United States. This means that even as the economy grows, employment has not risen as much as the models predicted. Folbre’s blog also notes that the unemployed, in addition to not being needed by business, become increasingly viewed as a drag on society because they spend less and depend on unemployment benefits. (New York Times, 5/2/11)

May 2, 2011
Super Sad True Jobs Story
By NANCY FOLBRE

Macroeconomic models of these relationships based on historical data are increasingly obsolete. As Deepankar Basu and Duncan Foley argued in a recent Political Economy Research Institute paper, the correlation between output growth and employment growth in the United States has declined in recent years.

Foreign-owned businesses may locate in the United States, helping compensate for declining investment by American multinationals. But as all businesses become more footloose, they have less incentive to support public spending on education, health, human services or social safety nets, including unemployment insurance.

Unneeded as workers, the unemployed also become superfluous as consumers and burdensome as citizens.

Cutting unemployment benefits (as was just accomplished in Michigan and is well under way in Florida) becomes just another means of cutting losses.

Super sad no-love story. Wish it weren’t true.

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Folbre discusses public higher ed funding on WGBY’s Connecting Point

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Nancy Folbre

Nancy Folbre, UMass Amherst economics professor and author of Saving State U: Why We Must Fix Public Higher Education, was a guest on WGBY’s Connecting Point. She discusses the pressure that has been put on state universities, and in particular the University of Massachusetts, by the decreased amount of public funding. Decreased funding has led to tuition and fees increases, with another expected this year. Folbre feels that public higher education is now out of reach for many residents, which could negatively impact our economy. According to Folbre, a college education should not just be looked at as someone’s personal ticket to a better job; “there are many spillover benefits to the business community and the state and national economies.”

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Folbre on NPR’s Marketplace: Ethics for economists

Friday, February 25th, 2011

Nancy Folbre

Nancy Folbre, UMass Amherst economics professor, discusses the need for economists to maintain a high level of ethics when commenting on the current economic situation. She cites research by UMass colleague, Gerald Epstein, which found that prominent academic economists didn’t always disclose their work outside of academia, such as investing in or advising for-profit businesses, and that the lack of transparency can lead to suspicion surrounding their policy recommendations. Folbre suggests this may be preventable by adopting a code of ethics. (Marketplace [NPR], 2/22/11)  Listen to the audio

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Folbre examines economics of “Big Love”

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Nancy Folbre

In her weekly New York Times Economix blog post, Nancy Folbre, UMass Amherst economics professor, looks at what the potential economic impact of legalizing polygamy would be. Supporters of polygamy argue that it could be economically advantageous to society by increasing demand for women and creating a more efficient marriage market.  Critics, however, point out that policies and practices strongly associated with polygyny (one husband, more than one wife) can lead to negative consequences for women, both in society and as individuals.  According to Folbre, while no one fully understands the complex social dynamics, the “historical links among polygyny, patriarchy and inequality seem very strong. And monogamy — whether heterosexual or homosexual — probably has some equalizing effects for both families and communities.” (New York Times, 1/24/11)

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Folbre: Unemployment rate higher for males

Friday, December 17th, 2010

Nancy Folbre

Nancy Folbre, UMass Amherst economics professor, discusses why men have suffered higher levels of unemployment than women in the current recession. Currently, the unemployment rate for males is approximately 10.6% as compared to 8.9% for women. She notes that manufacturing, a male-dominated sector of the economy, has been hit harder with job losses than other female-dominated sectors such as health care and services. (The Real News Network, 12/16/10)

 
 

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Folbre blogs about the “Mancession”

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

Nancy Folbre

Nancy Folbre, UMass Amherst economics professor, writes in her weekly Economix blog in the New York Times about how the job losses in the current recession have been much more severe for men than for women. She says one key reason may be that jobs lost in manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, have been much greater than in health and education, sectors dominated by women. This mismatch in job losses has been dubbed the “Mancession” by some observers. An economics columnist takes note of Folbre’s observation and says construction, another male-dominated area of the economy, has also been hard hit. (New York Times, 12/13/10; The Atlantic, December 2010)

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Folbre: Inadequate Assistance for Needy Families

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

Nancy Folbre

Nancy Folbre, economics, writes a column in the New York Times Economix blog about how the cash-welfare program for needy families with children is inadequate and growing more so as the numbers of poor children grows due to the economic downturn and high unemployment. (New York Times, 9/20/10)

September 20, 2010
For Needy Families, a Needy Program
By NANCY FOLBRE

But the inadequacies of the needy-families program have also contributed to the deterioration of economic conditions among the very young. 

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, our nation’s primary cash-welfare program for families with children, would more accurately be named Inadequate Assistance for Needy Families.

The latest Census Bureau estimates show that an additional 2.1 million children officially entered poverty between 2007 and 2009, as the poverty rate among children rose to 20.7 percent from 18 percent.

This comes as no surprise, given increases in unemployment over these years, from 4.6 percent in January 2007 to 10 percent by December 2009 (declining only slightly to 9.6 percent in August 2010).  Read more…

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Folbre blogs about jobs in New York Times

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Nancy Folbre

Nancy Folbre, UMass Amherst economics professor, writes in her weekly blog at the New York Times about what level of job growth is actually needed by the U.S. economy. She also looks at the relationship between available jobs and job seekers. (New York Times, 9/13/10)

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Folbre blogs: “Nannies Under the Table”

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Nancy Folbre

Nancy Folbre, economics, writes in the Economix blog at the New York Times about under-the-table employment of nannies and other household workers and how little is known about this part of our economy. Folbre is also quoted in a story about the stigma of being a housewife in a world economy where many women now work and take care of household chores. (New York Times, 8/30/10; Times of India, 8/29/10)

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