Economics and Finance Program

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Bard Economist L. Randall Wray Discusses the Evolution of Money

L. Randall Wray, professor of economics at Bard and senior scholar at the Levy Institute, spoke with Anastasia Bendebury and Michael Shilo DeLay of the DemystifySci Podcast about the origin of money and what it has meant throughout history. Wray details money’s evolution, from the transition from Medieval tally sticks to modern central banking, and explains how debt plays a crucial role in our economic system. “All money, every form that it takes, is a debt and a credit,” Wray explains. “Banks create money. The state creates money . . . and you can create money. Anyone can create money.” Wray continues, “There are lots of valuable things that are not money. So, gold is valuable in part because it has some useful characteristics . . . it has been prized probably back to the very beginning of humans. But that does not make it money, it is not money. So, money is a debt, it’s an IOU. But you want some evidence of that debt.”

Post Date: 10-16-2024

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Pavlina Tcherneva Joins WAMC’s Roundtable Panel on the State of the US Economy and How it Impacts Voters

Bard Professor of Economics and President of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva joined a panel of economists on WAMC’s Roundtable to discuss the economic issues that matter to voters and how each of the two presidential candidates’ policy proposals address them. “If you compare the two proposals, it’s very clear where they are directed. Trump’s proposals tend to favor corporations, high income earners, and they deal with a lot of dismantling of public institutions. ‘Defund, deport, deregulate, destroy.’ His message plays on economic fears and anxieties,” said Tcherneva. “In terms of the direction of her policies, Kamala Harris looks like she is trying to address housing issues, food prices, and drug prices but we don’t have concrete details yet.” Tcherneva also points to how deficit rhetoric is weaponized during election cycles as a tactic to scare people. 

Post Date: 09-26-2024

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Business Insider Interviews Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva about the Job Guarantee

Bard Professor of Economics and President of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva spoke to Business Insider about Universal Basic Employment (UBE), which is a job guarantee policy. Many countries around the globe have tested out UBE programs, but support for the policy has yet to catch on in America. “A job guarantee is really a public option for jobs. It’s a basic job that is provided irrespective of what the state of the economy is,” said Tcherneva, who is the author of The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity 2020). “We can implement it now when the economy is in a relatively calm state and then be ready when business conditions slow down and people are laid off.” Although logistically more complicated to implement than universal basic income programs, UBE has long-lasting economic benefits, argues Tcherneva. UBE would fight inflation by establishing a minimum livable wage without increasing prices elsewhere, prevent labor shortages by supplying a willing and ready workforce, and mitigate sudden financial hardship. She believes UBE is on par with Social Security as a means to shore up economic stability and that pilot programs are unnecessary. “We didn't really pilot public education to figure out whether we wanted it,” Tcherneva said. The first American UBE pilot program will launch in Cleveland in 2026. Advocates see the potential to win more bipartisan support for UBE over simply giving people checks through universal basic income.

Post Date: 08-20-2024

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Pavlina Tcherneva Discusses the Recent Stock Market Sell-Off on Background Briefing with Ian Masters

Bard Professor of Economics and President of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva spoke with journalist Ian Masters about Monday’s panic on Wall Street and fears that it may presage a recession. “I’m not exactly sure if it’s a panic, or an opportunity to liquidate some positions,” said Tcherneva. “The real question for us is, would that then ripple through the rest of the economy? At this moment, I’m not detecting unsustainable processes in financial markets to cause the kind of effects on the real economy as we saw in 2008.” Tcherneva, who watches the data on labor markets and public investments very closely, believes that the US labor market still has significant room to grow, pointing out that we have yet to recover our employment-to-population ratio or labor force participation rate to pre-COVID levels. She believes the government needs to keep investing in the economy to sustain the recovery. “We set the economy on a really strong growth path in the last four years . . . If we pull out too quickly, if we allow an administration to impose drastic cuts to these public programs, this is where I think we can be certain that a recession will come.”

Post Date: 08-06-2024

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The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College Welcomes Pavlina R. Tcherneva as New President

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College has appointed Pavlina R. Tcherneva as its next president, succeeding Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, who has held the role since its founding in 1986.

“After 38 years as president of the Levy Institute, the time has come to pass the baton to the new generation,” Papadimitriou announced. “I can think of no one better than Pavlina to lead the Levy Institute into its next phase of development in exploring solutions to the economic challenges that lie ahead.” Papadimitriou will remain at the Institute as president emeritus and senior scholar.

Tcherneva, who first joined the Levy Institute in 1997 as a forecasting fellow, has been a scholar at the Institute since 2007, specializing in modern money and public policy. She is a professor of economics at Bard College and founding director of the Bard-OSUN Economic Democracy Initiative. Her book The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity 2020), one of the Financial Times economics books of 2020 and published in nine languages, is a timely guide to the benefits of one of the most transformative public policies being discussed today.

“I am honored and energized to take this new role and am grateful to Dimitri Papadimitriou for building a world-class institution that has influenced economic policy in the US and abroad. I am especially excited to support the work of my colleagues whose research has placed the Levy Institute among the most-cited non-profits in the world,” stated Tcherneva. “My mission is clear: to continue to curate cutting-edge research, grow our graduate programs, and amplify the Institute's impact on policy. We have produced some of the most influential work on financial instability, money, inequality, gender, and employment policy and we will continue to make these impacts and expand the Institute's reach.”

She added, “Our work matters. Financial markets crash. Mainstream theories fail. At the Levy Economics Institute, we will continue to do what we do best: make sense of the senseless, find patterns in the chaos of global economics, and produce actionable policies for a safe, sustainable, and stable economy.”

Since 1986, the Levy Institute and its scholars have reinvigorated heterodox economics, with contributions to macroeconomic theory, modeling, and policy targeting financial and economic stability for the US economy and the rest of the world. The Levy Institute has also developed a distinct research program on the distribution of income and wealth featuring two measures of economic well-being (LIMEW) and time and income poverty (LIMTIP) that will help shift official measures of living standards in the years ahead; is one of few institutions with a focus on gender equality and the economy; and has graduated scholars from its MA and MS degree programs in Economic Theory and Policy, who go on to play significant roles in economic think tanks, international organizations, governments, and the world of finance.

Post Date: 07-09-2024

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Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva’s Work on the Job Guarantee Becomes Focus of US National High School Debate Topic

Thousands of high school students across the United States have been studying the work of Bard Professor of Economics and Research Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva in preparation for their national debate tournaments. The official resolution for the 2023–24 High School Policy Debate Topic reads: “The United States federal government should substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by adopting a federal jobs guarantee, expanding Social Security, and/or providing a basic income.” Tcherneva’s book The Case for a Job Guarantee was included in the compilation of research, which the Library of Congress prepares each year, pertinent to the annually selected national debate topic. As this year’s debate season progressed, the federal jobs guarantee policy has emerged as the overwhelming favorite policy for student debate teams on the affirmative. As a result, there are at least a few thousand students across the United States who have gotten very well acquainted with Tcherneva’s work over the past three months. 

According to Chris Gentry, program manager of the Policy Debate League for Chicago Public Schools, “Almost every affirmative team across the country is running a jobs guarantee case, and to do so they are pulling heavily on Tcherneva’s publications.” During one weekend tournament, Gentry realized that essentially every debate relied on Tcherneva’s work. In just one round that he was judging, 10 different articles or books that she wrote had been quoted. “At least twice this last weekend, I heard ‘well that’s not what Tcherneva is trying to get at here,’” he added. Another high school debate coach in Los Angeles confirmed that Tcherneva has likely been the most cited author in high school debate this year, and as a result the student debaters are quite familiar with her work.

“Personally, I can’t think of a greater impact of my work than seeing young people engage with it, study it, and defend its principles,” says Tcherneva. After meeting with a group of high school student debaters this month, she adds, "The questions the students asked about the job guarantee were probing, well-informed, thoughtful, and inspired—with a keen focus on social justice. I hope that some of them will become policy makers.”

Inspired by this nationwide student engagement, Tcherneva has also opened up spots in her summer workshop “Public Finance and Economic Policy” to select high-school debate students interested in going deeper into Modern Monetary Theory and the job guarantee. Organized and hosted by Bard College and the OSUN Economic Democracy Initiative (EDI), this five-day workshop taking place online June 17–21 is for undergraduate students interested in public policy to tackle economic instability and insecurity, and in understanding the financing capacity and policy space available to governments to pursue these aims. Applications from high school debate students will be reviewed in April and early May. Students can apply here.

Tcherneva also recently developed a resource tool jobguarantee.org, created and maintained by Bard College students and alumni, with the support of OSUN, for anyone interested in learning more about the job guarantee policy innovation.

Centered on the well-being of some of the most vulnerable parts of the US population, the 2023–24 national debate topic of “Economic Inequality” prevailed over “Climate Change” and represents a pressing issue at the forefront of our collective societal consciousness.

Post Date: 04-03-2024