The transcript for this interview is available by clicking HERE.
The Lower Unemployment Rate is a Recovery–for
the Top 10%Economist Pavlina Tcherneva of Bard College explains why monetary policy that is directed at finance and not job creation has this effect
Sharmini Peries, Executive Producer, TRNN
Interview w/Bard College Assistant Professor of Economics Pavlina Tcherneva
October 5th, 2014Pavlina R. Tcherneva is an assistant professor of economics at Bard College. She previously taught at Franklin and Marshall College and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. During 2000-06, she served as the associate director for economic analysis at the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability, where she remains a senior research associate. In the summer of 2006, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy, and since July 2007 she has been a research associate at the Levy Institute. Tcherneva conducts research in the fields of modern monetary theory and public policy, and has collaborated with policymakers from Argentina, Bulgaria, China, Turkey, and the United States on developing and evaluating various job-creation programs. Her current research examines the nexus between monetary and fiscal policies under sovereign currency regimes and the macroeconomic merits of alternative stabilization programs. She has also examined the role, nature, and relative effectiveness of the Federal Reserve's alternative monetary policies and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act during the Great Recession.
Tcherneva is a two-time recipient of a grant from the Institute for New Economic Thinking for her research on the impact of alternative fiscal policies on unemployment, income distribution, and public goods provisioning. Her work has appeared in the Review of Social Economy, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, International Journal of Political Economy, and Rutgers Journal of Law and Urban Policy, among other journals, and she is the co-editor of Full Employment and Price Stability: The Macroeconomic Vision of William S. Vickrey (Elgar, 2004). In January 2013 she received the Helen Potter Prize, awarded annually by the Association for Social Economics to the author of the best article in the previous year's Review of Social Economy.
She holds a BA in mathematics and economics from Gettysburg College and an MA and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
This is the second post I’ve published at Daily Kos, in as many weeks, regarding Pavlina Tcherneva’s work. The first diary (see excerpt below) exclusively focused upon the Bard College educator’s graphic analysis of French economist Thomas Piketty’s recent bestseller, “Capital In The 21st Century.” (One need look no further than the reviews published on the page that’s accessed in this last link to understand the importance of this book to society, in general.)
Here’s Matt Yglesias with his take on the most widely-mentioned of Tcherneva’s graphics--which are based upon statistics from French economist Thomas Piketty’s bestseller, “Capital In The 21st Century”--headlined, “The most important chart about the American economy you'll see this year,” over at Vox.com…
Pavlina Tcherneva's chart showing the distribution of income gains during periods of economic expansion is burning up the economics internet over the past 24 hours and for good reason. The trend it depicts is shocking:
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A Personal Note…
In the comments in my September 26th post on Tcherneva’s work, I made note of how the Bard College economist’s affiliation with that school and, more importantly, with the Levy Economics Institute (located on the school’s campus), made this story somewhat personal for me, and that I’d mention why at some point here, in the near future.
There once was a time in America, just a few decades ago, when economic inequality--which should not be conflated with racial/religious/gender/social inequality—wasn’t as pronounced in our society as it is, today. In the pre-Powell Memo era (a/k/a “the old normal”), corporations weren’t “persons,” labor unions thrived, and the über-wealthy were taxed at rates up to 90% of their gross income.
As Piketty noted in his watershed work, published earlier this year, that brief window in our country’s post-WWII history was, in fact, the exception to the draconian realities of unbridled capitalism, not “the rule.”
Truth be told, (albeit only superficially speaking when it came to racial / religious / gender / social inequality), at least as far as economic inequality was concerned, it could be said that, at least during the Baby Boom generation, our nation was beginning to grow a conscience. (It was a Republican President, Eisenhower, who warned Americans of the rise of the military-industrial complex as he left office in early 1961.)
One of those Wall Street “Masters of The Universe” who began to grow a conscience during this period was financier Leon Levy. While a click upon this last link will demonstrate that Levy’s philanthropic legacy hasn’t been perfect since his death in 2003, at 77, it has been very left-leaning; and to say the least, pretty damn good, at least from this traditional Democrat’s vantage point.
It is not a stretch to state that there’s a pretty good chance we wouldn’t even be reading this story about Tcherneva’s work if it wasn’t for the Levy Economics Institute’s leadership in the study of post-capitalism and economic inequality. The Institute, with many left-leaning board members such as Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, is—along with the folks over at the University of Missouri at Kansas City—at the forefront of “the worldwide discussion” on Modern Monetary Theory, among many other critical issues of our time (from the LEI’s Wiki page)…
…The Levy Institute has 18 scholars and 50 research associates. Their research focuses on such issues as stock-flow consistent macro modeling, monetary policy and financial structure, financial instability, income and wealth distribution, financial regulation and governance, gender equality and time poverty, and immigration/ethnicity and social structure...[1]But, it is Levy’s primary philanthropic organization, The Leon Levy Foundation, which makes this story quite personal for yours truly. In addition to maintaining a leading position in the philanthropic world in the areas of Ancient History, Arts and Humanities, Neurosciences, and Jewish Culture, the Foundation focuses upon two other sectors: Human Rights and the Conservation of our Natural Environment.
Here’s the Wiki statement on their work in Human Rights…
…The Foundation supports organizations that advance and protect the right to political freedom, blind justice, humane treatment, free speech and international legal standards, including The Committee to Protect Journalists, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Freedom House.[23] “In 2011, the Foundation awarded Human Rights First a grant for a two-year fellowship and a pilot project to increase high quality pro bono legal representation of indigent asylum-seekers and other immigrants in New York City…”[24]But, burying the lede, as it were, it’s due to the Foundation’s work in support of our environment that I’m reminded, along with thousands of others--many times, virtually every single day--that there are, still, at least a few folks like Leon Levy in the world of the
Every day, when I step, literally, right outside of my front door (in, by far and away, the most lower-middle to middle class enclave in an otherwise wealthy community in northeastern Westchester County, NY, that’s, in turn, completely surrounded by some of the wealthiest communities in our entire country), THIS is what I see.
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