There is strong evidence to support the case for interest-rate cuts in the United States, given the disproportionate impact of higher rates on the most vulnerable. Yet with Donald Trump loudly demanding that the US Federal Reserve lower borrowing costs, the situation has become more complicated than it needed to be.
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The William R. Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance
Mark Blyth
Director, The William R. Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance, The William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics, Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs
Research Interests
International and comparative political economy, banks and finance, Europe, monetary policy
Biography
Mark Blyth is a political economist whose research focuses upon how uncertainty and randomness impact complex systems, particularly economic systems, and why people continue to believe stupid economic ideas despite buckets of evidence to the contrary. He is the author of several books, including Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford University Press 2013, and The Future of the Euro (with Matthias Matthijs) (Oxford University Press 2015).
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Project Syndicate
Inflationary Tales (Mark Blyth research cited)
The inflationary surge of the 1970s has long served as a cautionary tale, and that episode has shaped how central banks have carried out their mandates ever since. Two recent books revisit the standard narrative about that period in light of the 2021–23 inflation, offering sharply contrasting lessons for the future.
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The Trump administration is doing everything it can to ensure that fossil fuels remain dominant in the energy mix of the twenty-first century. If it succeeds, the short-term returns to the US will be huge; but the long-term damage to the planet will be orders of magnitude larger.
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Capitalism’s operating system is due for a major upgrade. How that turns out depends on enormously consequential political choices.
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Who are the winners and losers when it comes to inflation? NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University, about the impact of President Trump's tariffs.
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Ten years ago, trillions of dollars of advanced-economy government debt traded at a negative real interest rate. Deflation, not inflation, was the euro zone’s main problem, and central bank researchers wondered where all the inflation had gone. They found it again in Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. Inflation had merely been dormant, not dead, we discovered. Now President Donald Trump’s tariffs augur still-higher prices.
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