PERI researcher Gregor Semieniuk and co-authors compute global fossil fuel stranded assets—the oil, coal and gas in the ground that cannot be burned—if climate stabilization goals are going to be achieved. Focusing on oil and gas, they estimate this figure to be US $1.4 trillion. They trace these potential losses for a total of 43,439 assets through a global equity network of 1.8 million companies to their ultimate owners. Most of the market risk falls on private investors, overwhelmingly in OECD countries, including substantial exposure through pension funds.

Economics and the Left presents interviews by C.J. Polychroniou with 24 progressive economists, including PERI researchers Michael Ash, James Boyce, Jane D'Arista, Gerald Epstein, Nancy Folbre, Jayati Ghosh, Léonce Ndikumana, and Robert Pollin.  All 24 economists discuss how they promote egalitarianism, democracy and ecological sanity through research, policy engagement and activism.  They also discuss their respective personal backgrounds and major influences, and describe how their thinking as economists developed over time. The result is a wide-ranging combination of ideas and reflections on major historical events, including the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the global economy.

Arjun Jayadev and Josh Mason advance a critique of neoliberal trade policies and alternative egalitarian global trade policies. They present a developmental framework, through which the standard for evaluating the global trading system is not whether it allows countries to specialize according to their existing productive capacities but whether it creates space for the transformation of those capacities. They also reject the neoliberal separation between a country’s trade policies and its domestic economy objectives, such as sustaining full employment. These critiques provide the basis for developing an alternative egalitarian global trade framework.