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Restarting the transatlantic relationship in the global economy

By Dr. Beverly Barrett Beverly Barrett, Ph.D. The transatlantic relationship is being renewed, as the world emerges from the pandemic. U.S. President Joe Biden’s discourse on his recent travels to Europe indicate a unique commitment to the relationship with partners Europe. Grounded in in decades of cooperation grown out of the partnership of post-World War…

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Quantitative Easing, Helicopter Money, and the Coronavirus Crisis

Helicopter with falling money

Exceptional economic and financial crises often demand exceptional remedies.  It was in this spirit that many governments, fearing another Great Depression, intervened heavily in their economies during the 2007-2009 financial crisis.  While the adopted fiscal actions, involving both government expenditures and tax cuts, were quite substantial, they were nevertheless easily eclipsed by the massive levels of central bank monetary interventions.  In the United States, for example, the level of…

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The Knowledge Economy and the Globalization of Higher Education

By Dr. Beverly Barrett—  Nearly two decades into the new millennium, the pace of technological change behind globalization continues to advance exponentially.  This rapid technological progress has, in turn, necessitated the internationalization of higher education with emphasis on the development of high quality skills needed in the global knowledge economy.  In my recent book Globalization…

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Cognitive Biases and Rational Behavior

By Dr. Hassan Shirvani—As you might have heard, the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Richard Thaler for his pioneering work in the field of behavioral economics, a school of thought dedicated to the application of psychology to economics.  The main point of this school is that humans are subject to too many…

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Economics of Vanity Sizing

By Wan-Ju Iris Franz, PhD—“Size inflation,” also known as “vanity sizing,” is a phenomenon where the measurements of the same label size have been growing over time (The Economist)[1]. For instance, size 14 in Sear’s 1937 catalogue has similar measurements as a size 8 in 1967, which is a size 0 in 2011.[2] In my…

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Are U.S. Stocks Expensive?

By Dr. Hassan Shirvani—-As U.S. stock prices reach new historic highs, many investors are now wondering if another stock market cycle of boom and bust is at hand.  Indeed, many financial advisors are already recommending a shifting away from stocks into safer investments such as cash and bonds.  While predicting future stock price movements is…

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Advertising and Economics

By Dr. Hassan Shirvani–Advertising is an important feature of our daily economic life.  As we watch TV, listen to radio, read newspapers and magazines, and use social media, we are constantly bombarded with advertisements.  For this “privilege,” we are asked to pay some $325 billion per year, roughly 2 percent of our annual national income.  Given this heavy demand of advertising on our…

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Psychology and Economics

By Dr. Hassan Shirvani—Among the collateral damages of the recent global economic crisis has been the reputation of the economics profession whose members famously failed to anticipate the financial tsunami that rocked the world. Enmeshed in their complex mathematical models with their highly unrealistic assumptions, most economists were seemingly as stunned by the suddenness and the severity of the economic downturn as the average person on the street.  Even Queen Elizabeth of England, on…

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Schumpeter on Entrepreneurship

By Dr. Hassan Shirvani –Since the great Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) introduced the concept of entrepreneurship into economics almost a century ago, economists have struggled to systematically incorporate this concept into their models of economic development, with only limited success.   As a result, the initial enthusiasm over the unique role of entrepreneurs as heroic…

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