Author: lpretz

Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin’s work debunking Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff credited as a critical piece in the struggle against austerity in The New Republic’s article, The Silence of the Austerians

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As The New Republic notes, Herndon Ash Pollin’s paper was critical in the revitalization of the left:

The year 2013 will be seen as a year of crushing intellectual defeat for advocates of fiscal austerity. There were many smaller victories, but this big one came in April. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts examined the Austerian ur-paper, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, which said that countries whose debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 90 percent experience dramatically slower growth. The UMass folks found not only dodgy statistics and backwards causation, but a goof in the paper’s Excel spreadsheet. The causation and statistics errors were more serious, but the fact that elites around the globe had gleefully embraced something with a flub any office temp could understand was horribly embarrassing.

It was an intellectual rout that badly wrong-footed the Austerians, who have since been notably half-hearted in the face of a resurgent left now campaigning on economic justice. This includes, for example, increasing Social Security benefits, which was unthinkable two years ago, when the fight to stop benefits from being cut was nearly lost.

In her New York Times Economix blog post Nancy Folbre notes the merits of extending paid parental leave to the partners of the mother. Professor Folbre argues that more inclusive paid paternity both insulates families from the costs of leaving work to care for a child and seems to incentivize a more egalitarian division of labor within the home.

Professor Ndikumana received the honor as a result of his long standing commitment to developing policy grounded in rigorous and high quality research. His recent work has dealt with the role of financial systems in promoting development bank accounts and loans.

In addition to teaching and researching at the University of Massachusetts Professor Ndikumana has been an active contributor to the Political Economy Research Institute’s African Development Policy program.

Beyond PERI and his other research Professor Ndikumana has published a book, Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent with co-author Jim Boyce which addresses the problem of capital flight in Africa.