An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year - an economy like America's - is not likely to do well over the long haul.
— Joseph Stiglitz
Technology has been advancing so fast that the number of jobs globally in manufacturing is declining. There is no way that Trump can bring significant numbers of manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.
Hedge funds are not noted for their long-term thinking - for them, a quarter is an eternity.
Donald J. Trump has the good fortune of taking office as the economy is finally recovering from the 2008 crisis.
Behind Trump's promise to 'make America great again' lie many fallacies. The most important fallacy is that America's place in the world can be restored to the one it occupied after World War II, when Europe was still recovering from vast devastation and most developing countries were still European colonies. It can't be.
For Obama, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement - unilaterally abrogated by Trump - was part of the 'pivot to Asia,' a re-assertion of the role of America in that part of the world.
Having excessive power in the hands of one country meant the fate of the world was too dependent on what happened in that one country.
Under the rule of law, if the government wants to prevent firms from outsourcing and offshoring, it enacts legislation and adopts regulations to create the appropriate incentives and discourage undesirable behaviour. It does not bully or threaten particular firms or portray traumatised refugees as a security threat.
Too many countries of the former Soviet bloc remain under the control of authoritarian leaders, including some, like the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who have learned how to maintain a more convincing facade of elections than their communist predecessors.
We share a common planet, and the world has learned the hard way that we have to get along and work together. We have learned, too, that cooperation can benefit all.
Letting bygones be bygones is a basic principle in economics.
If Trump actually wants to help those who have been left behind, he must go beyond the ideological battles of the past.
Donald Trump's astonishing victory in the U.S. presidential election has made one thing abundantly clear: too many Americans - particularly white male Americans - feel left behind.
In an economy, when the government spends more and invests in the economy, that money circulates, and recirculates again and again. So not only does it create jobs once: the investment creates jobs multiple times.
America under Trump has gone from being a world leader to an object of derision.
A politically astute president who understood deeply the economics and politics of corporate tax reform could conceivably muscle Congress toward a reform package that made sense. Trump is not that leader.
America and the world are paying a high price for devotion to the extreme anti-government ideology embraced by Donald Trump and his Republican party.
Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.
Globalization and trade liberalization were supposed to make us all better off through the mechanism of trickle-down economics. What we seemed to be seeing instead was trickle-up economics, accompanied by a destruction of democratic politics, as we moved ever closer to a system of 'one dollar, one vote' as opposed to 'one person, one vote.'
The laws of normal economics dictate that lower taxes combined with increased spending will lead to bigger deficits.
China, with its large emerging middle class, is among the big beneficiaries of globalization.
President Trump sees the world in transactional and zero-sum terms - if something is good for China, it must be bad for the U.S. By contrast, economists see the world in much more nuanced ways: if globalization is well-managed, it can be a positive-sum game, where both the U.S. and China gain; if it is badly managed, it can be negative-sum.
With the election of Trump, America's soft power has taken a big hit. The United States has moved from a position of leadership in the creation of a rules-based international system to a position of leadership in its destruction and the creation of a regime of global protectionism. The damage will be long-lasting.
A lot of my book, 'The Price of Inequality,' is about why there has been an increase in rent-seeking.
If there is a silver lining in the Trump cloud, it is a new sense of solidarity over core values such as tolerance and equality, sustained by awareness of the bigotry and misogyny, whether hidden or open, that Trump and his team embody.
If Trump wants to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, the rest of the world should impose a carbon-adjustment tax on U.S. exports that do not comply with global standards.
America will suffer under Trump.
Free migration within Europe means that countries that have done a better job at reducing unemployment will predictably end up with more than their fair share of refugees. Workers in these countries bear the cost in depressed wages and higher unemployment, while employers benefit from cheaper labor.
Ensuring preschool education for all and investing more in public schools is essential if the U.S. is to avoid becoming a neo-feudal country where advantages and disadvantages are passed on from one generation to the next.
There's a long list of investments that governments could and should be making. There is strengthening infrastructure, such as transport and communications; there is investment in education; there is investment in families, particularly putting measures in place that free women from having to make the choice between raising a family and work.
Under Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K., there was a rewriting of the basic rules of capitalism. These two governments changed the rules governing labour bargaining, weakening trade unions, and they weakened anti-trust enforcement, allowing more monopolies to be created.
By taxing CO2, firms and households would have an incentive to retrofit for the world of the future. The tax would also provide firms with incentives to innovate in ways that reduce energy usage and emissions - giving them a dynamic competitive advantage.
One can only hope that America, and other countries, will not need more natural persuasion before taking to heart the lessons of Hurricane Harvey.
When markets fail, as they often do, collective action becomes imperative.
Trump can bring jobs back, but they will be minimal-wage jobs, not the high-paying jobs of the 1950s.
Obama had to save the banks, sure, but he didn't have to save the bankers and the shareholders and the bondholders. We broke the rules of capitalism in order to save those at the top - as we always do.
Trump has been criticized by mainstream Republicans for not really being one of them. But he is definitely one of them when it comes to the central palliative for any ill befalling the country: a tax cut for the rich.
China's government has far more control over the country's economy than our government has over ours, and it is moving from export dependence to a model of growth driven by domestic demand. Any restriction on exports to the U.S. would simply accelerate a process already underway.
The Clinton years were not an economic Nirvana; as chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers during part of this time, I'm all too aware of mistakes and lost opportunities.
The diminishing economic role of the United States in the global economy means that global political power will also become more dispersed. The world will become multipolar. By clumsily re-asserting a wish for U.S. dominance, Donald Trump is accelerating the opposite.
The Paris climate agreement may be a harbinger of the spirit and mindset needed to sustain genuine global cooperation.
Trump sees the world in terms of a zero-sum game. In reality, globalisation, if well managed, is a positive-sum force: America gains if its friends and allies - whether Australia, the E.U., or Mexico - are stronger. But Trump's approach threatens to turn it into a negative-sum game: America will lose, too.
Europe can't rely on a Trump-led U.S. for its defence. But, at the same time, it should recognise that the cold war is over - however unwilling to acknowledge it America's industrial-military complex may be.
Negative interest rates hurt banks' balance sheets, with the 'wealth effect' on banks overwhelming the small increase in incentives to lend.
Growth is not an objective in itself; we should be concerned with standards of living.
Regulatory reform must move beyond limiting the damage that the financial sector can do and ensure that the sector genuinely serves society.
With neoliberalism discredited and austerity failed, we need to rewrite the rules of the economy once again. But this time in the right way. We need rules that focus on long-term economic growth, and the only kind of sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity.
Climate change poses an existential threat to the planet that is no less dire than that posed by North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
It is always better to tax bad things than good things.
After the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the shutdown of much of New York City by Sandy in 2012, and now the devastation wrought on Texas by Harvey, the U.S. can and should do better.
