PERI researchers Robert Pollin and Gerald Epstein show that proponents of free market capitalism ignore the fact that the neoliberal framework that has dominated economic policymaking for the past 40 years has been dependent on regular, and increasingly massive government bailouts. This article documents the centrality of government bailout operations, both in the U.S. and other high-income economies.  It also reviews three alternatives moving forward:  1) maintaining neoliberal hegemony; 2) a more genuinely free market variant of ‘practice what you preach’ capitalism; and 3) a Green New Deal, which mobilizes public financing to advance greater equality and ecological sanity.

PERI researchers Léonce Ndikumana, Karmen Naidoo and Francisco Perez examine the landscape of national development banks in Africa. They show that while national development banks do not lend more relative to commercial banks, they tend to focus more on medium-term and long-term lending as prescribed by their mandate. Medium- and long-term lending is associated with lower non-performing loan ratios as well as higher returns on assets. The evidence suggests that empowering national development banks with enhanced lending capacity and operational autonomy would significantly help alleviate the shortage of medium-term and long-term credit in African economies.

In this interview with C.J. Polychroniou, PERI researcher James Boyce describes his work on a range of issues in the areas of economic development, the climate crisis, and climate justice. Boyce notes that “when environmentalists and their opponents argue about the ‘limits to growth,’ they’re thinking about different things: environmentalists think about the bad stuff, while growth proponents think about the good stuff….Both sides fail to separate the good from the bad. I believe that we need a new banner: grow the good and shrink the bad. The clean energy transition is an example of doing precisely this.”