The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is pleased to announce it will be holding a summer seminar June 11–18, 2022. Through lectures, hands-on workshops, and breakout groups, the seminar will provide an opportunity to engage with the theory and policy of Modern Money Theory (MMT) and the work of Institute Distinguished Scholars Hyman Minsky and Wynne Godley. Intended for those who are introducing themselves to these approaches as well as those who are looking to deepen their understanding, the seminar will be of particular interest to graduate students, recent graduates, and those at the beginning of their academic or professional careers.

Topics will include the history and theory of money, central bank and treasury operations, inequality and austerity, the job guarantee, MMT and developing economies, current debates over inflation, the Green New Deal, the stock-flow consistent approach to macroeconomic analysis and modeling, financial innovation and the financialization of the economy, cryptocurrency and central bank digital currencies, and more. The teaching staff will include well-known economists, legal scholars, monetary historians, writers, and financial market professionals working in the relevant topic areas.

The seminar will be limited to 60 attendees. Admission will include provision of room and board on the Bard College campus. The fee for the seminar will be $3,000; a fee waiver is available for all those in need.

Applications may be made to Emily Ungvary ([email protected]) and should include a current curriculum vitae and letter of application. Your letter should indicate the nature of your interest in the program and, if applicable, your reasons for requesting a fee waiver. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

The current list of confirmed faculty and speakers, which continues to grow, is below the fold (in alphabetical order): continue reading…

November 1–November 2, 2021

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent losses in lives and livelihoods are looming over Sub-Saharan Africa. As in the rest of the world, the pandemic has exposed the enduring inequalities and injustices in stark terms, including those based on gender and those intersecting with gender, such as economic deprivation. There is a growing realization that collective action to overcome the long-term and ongoing challenges requires greater engagements between researchers, civil society organizations, and policymakers. Accordingly, we are organizing a two-day virtual workshop that will feature research and policy discussions that address economic aspects of gender inequalities in Sub-Saharan Africa from various angles. Part of the research to be presented is work conducted by scholars at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College in collaboration with scholars from Sub-Saharan Africa with the generous support of the Hewlett Foundation. The workshop will also highlight recent research by leading scholars in the region. The presentation of research will be accompanied by a free-wheeling exchange of ideas between scholars and participants. A policy roundtable with a select group of prominent members of the academic, policymaking, and civil society communities will conclude the workshop.

The workshop will be held between 13:00 and 15:30 (GMT) on November 1, 2021 and between 13:00 and 16:00 (GMT) on November 2, 2021.

This event is free and open to the public.

The complete schedule and information for participants is available below:

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After pausing last spring due to the pandemic, the Minsky Conference is back. Join us next week, May 5-6.

It would be an understatement to say this has been an eventful year in world economies and financial markets. It is also a period in which we are seeing some signs of change in economic thought and policymaking. The conference has always been an important occasion for contact between heterodox and more mainstream economics; this year, that could be a particularly interesting dynamic to watch.

The full program is below. Register here for the online event.

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The Hyman P. Minsky Summer Seminar
Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
Blithewood
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

June 7–13, 2020

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is pleased to announce the 11th Minsky Summer Seminar will be held from June 7–13, 2020. The Seminar will provide a rigorous discussion of both the theoretical and applied aspects of Minsky’s economics, with an examination of meaningful prescriptive policies relevant to the current economic and financial outlook. It will also provide special sessions introducing the theory and applications of Wynne Godley’s stock-flow consistent modeling methods, supported by hands-on workshops.

The Summer Seminar will be of particular interest to graduate students, recent graduates, and those at the beginning of their academic or professional careers. The teaching staff will include international economists working in the theory and policy tradition of Hyman Minsky and Wynne Godley.

Applications may be made to Kathleen Mullaly at the Levy Institute ([email protected]), and should include a letter of application and current curriculum vitae. Admission to the Summer Seminar will include provision of room and board on the Bard College campus. The registration fee for the Seminar will be $375.

Due to limited space availability, the Seminar will be limited to 30 participants; applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis starting in January 2019.

We are grieved to announce that Nina Shapiro, Professor of Economics Emeritus at St. Peter’s College, passed away on March 6. Nina was one of the first Levy Institute Visiting Scholars and a major contributor to the field of post-Keynesian economics. She passed away last week at the age of 71 from complications due to cancer.

Nina was best known for her work on the post-Keynesian theory of the firm and innovation, as well as the history of economic thought and macroeconomic theory. Her work was rooted in the tradition of Marx, Keynes, Kalecki, and Steindl. She was a deeply creative thinker who connected Marxian and Marshallian ideas on competition with the macroeconomics of Keynes and Steindl. An essay published at the start of her career—“The Revolutionary Character of Post Keynesian Economics” (Journal of Economic Issues, 1977)—made an enduring case for the rejection of scarcity as the basis for economic analysis. She was a founding member of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics and at the time of her death was at work on a book on the theory of the firm.

Trained in the nascent political economy doctoral program of The New School for Social Research with Edward Nell, Robert Heilbroner, David Gordon, and Anwar Shaikh, she was a part of the Rutgers University Livingston College program in post-Keynesian Economics along with Paul Davidson, Alfred Eichner, Bruce Steinberg, Lourdes Beneria, Robert Guttmann, Michele Naples, and myself. One of very few women in the field of post-Keynesian economics, she was a brilliant teacher of the history of economic thought and heterodox microeconomics and mentored two generations of Rutgers graduate students in economists, including Fernando Cardim de Carvalho, William Millberg, Andrea Terzi, and Radhika Balakrishnan.

This year’s Minsky conference will be a one-day affair, featuring keynote speakers that include St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, former PIMCO chief economist Paul McCulley (now Senior Fellow at Cornell Law), and First Vice President of the Minneapolis Fed, Ron Feldman.

The Levy Institute’s Jan Kregel will be discussing reform of the eurozone system; Michalis Nikiforos will be presenting the upcoming strategic analysis for the US economy (using the Institute’s stock-flow model); and L. Randall Wray will be presenting on “Paying for a Green New Deal.”

Financial Stability, Economic Policy, and Economic Nationalism
A conference organized by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
Blithewood
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 12504

April 17, 2019

Registration for the conference is now open. The preliminary program is attached below the fold. Further details are available here.

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We are accepting applications for the 2019 Hyman P. Minsky Summer Seminar, held here at the Levy Institute and the wider Bard College campus June 16–22:

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is pleased to announce the tenth Minsky Summer Seminar will be held from June 16–22, 2019. The Seminar will provide a rigorous discussion of both the theoretical and applied aspects of Minsky’s economics, with an examination of meaningful prescriptive policies relevant to the current economic and financial outlook. It will also provide an introduction to Wynne Godley’s stock-flow consistent modeling methods via hands-on workshops.

The Summer Seminar will be of particular interest to graduate students, recent graduates, and those at the beginning of their academic or professional careers. The teaching staff will include well-known economists working in the theory and policy tradition of Hyman Minsky and Wynne Godley.

Applications may be made to Kathleen Mullaly at the Levy Institute ([email protected]), and should include a letter of application and current curriculum vitae. Admission to the Summer Seminar will include provision of room and board on the Bard College campus. The registration fee for the Seminar will be $350.

Due to limited space availability, the Seminar will be limited to 30 participants; applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis starting in January 2019.

L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at Bard and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, was a visiting professor at the University of Bolzano (Italy) and the University of Bergamo (Italy) in May-June and at the University of Campinas (Brazil) in August. In Campinas, he gave a series of lectures for a course on Modern Money Theory. In Bolzano he gave a talk titled “Secular Stagnation: Is It Inevitable?”

Wray also delivered a series of lectures in Trento for a course on Modern Money Theory and participated on a panel on the Job Guarantee: La rivoluzione dei Piani di Lavoro Garantito. Video of the latter presentations can be viewed here and here.

The job guarantee proposal fleshed out and analyzed by L. Randall Wray, Flavia Dantas, Scott Fullwiler, Pavlina Tcherneva, and Stephanie Kelton — dubbed the Public Service Employment (PSE) program — garnered a considerable amount of media attention as support for some version of a job guarantee began appearing on the agendas of various 2020 Democratic hopefuls. This panel discussion at the Levy Institute’s 27th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference, featuring Tcherneva and Wray along with critical engagement from John Henry, provides more background on the rationale behind the PSE proposal as well as its potential economic impact:

Video from all the panels at the Minsky Conference can be found here.

The 27th Minsky Conference — “Financial Stability in a World of Rising Rates and the Repeal of Dodd-Frank” — just wrapped up yesterday. Anyone interested in the slide presentations can find them below:

Video of all the sessions, speakers, and Q&A will eventually be posted on the Institute YouTube page.