Please join us in celebrating Thomas E. Weisskopf, Economics Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. For more than four decades, Weisskopf has been a formidable intellectual force in advancing the field of radical political economics. Over this two-day conference, scholars from across the country will reflect on Weisskopf’s contributions to the field, as well as presenting work that Weisskopf inspired.

>> Read more about the Weisskopf conference

Robert Pollin considers how best to promote productive investments in the United States, especially investments that advance a clean-energy economy. He looks at three issues related to a productive federal industrial policy: 1) the ‘crowding-in’ of private investments that will accrue from public ones; 2) how we might re-focus current successful industrial policies; and 3) developing and promoting cooperative and community ownership models so as to benefit all regions of the U.S. equitably and provide alternatives to the private corporation.

>> Download “A Policy Framework for Advancing Productive Investments and Clean Energy throughout the U.S. Economy”

A default on the Greek debt looms on the horizon, and the repercussions are likely to resonate throughout Europe and into worldwide financial markets. But the potential national bankruptcy did not rise out of a vacuum. In this PERI Research Brief, C.J. Polychroniou explores the history of Greece’s joining the Eurozone, and examines the factors—economic, political, and social—that have led to this moment of crisis.

>> Download “An Unblinking Glance at a National Catastrophe and the Potential Dissolution of the Eurozone: Greece’s Debt Crisis in Context”

The Great Recession has created fiscal crises for state and local governments. In response, state and local governments are cutting taxes, slashing wages and benefits for public workers, or even selling off state-owned facilities. In this article, now published in New Labor Forum, Robert Pollin and Jeffrey Thompson argue that these austerity policies are not the only possible responses to the crises, and propose alternative approaches that can close the budget gaps in the short term, promote a sustainable recovery, and, over the long term, help insulate state and local government budgets from the effects of recessions.

>> Download "State and Municipal Alternatives to Austerity"

Robert Pollin examines three sets of major issues regarding the current U.S. government’s fiscal deficit and outstanding debt, tied to the recession and 2009 economic stimulus program. Since its enactment, critics of stimulus program have claimed that it will drive up interest rates and inflationary pressures and dramatically increase the government’s debt burden. Pollin shows that these outcomes haven’t occurred. He then considers why the stimulus didn’t achieve more to advance a healthy economic recovery. He finally proposes a series of policies for fighting mass unemployment in the short-run and reducing structural deficits in the long-run.

>> Download "U.S. Government Deficits and Debt Amid the Great Recession: What the Evidence Shows"

Rapidly rising government deficits have triggered an austerity-focused class war. Economically powerful segments of society and politicians who represent their interests have demanded that deficits be eliminated by severe cuts to spending that supports the poor and the middle class or funds public investment. James Crotty argues that this crisis results from a shift from the New Deal economic model to today’s neoliberal model, slowing growth and increasing inequality. Crotty shows that this crisis can be resolved by raising taxes on upper-income households and corporations, cutting war spending, and adopting a Canadian- or European-style health care system.

 >> Download “The Great Austerity War: What Caused the Deficit Crisis and Who Should Pay to Fix It?”

Since the 1970s, the U.S. economy has seen growing financialization, increasing household debt, and stagnant wages. Deepankar Basu analyzes the links between these features and the economic slowdown. He uses a Marxian circuit of capital model to address two important theoretical issues of general interest to the heterodox economics: profit-led versus wage-led growth, and the growth-reducing impact of non-production credit. He demonstrates how these three characteristics of the U.S economy under neoliberalism can have a growth-reducing impact on a capitalist economy.

>> Download “Financialization, Household Credit and Economic Slowdown in the U.S.”