Inequality, Distribution and Pre-Distribution
Blog Post, Paper
Progressing Beyond GDP: Towards a Multidimensional Livings Standards Index and Integrated Headline Measure of Gross National Sustainable Development
How best to supplant or “dethrone” GDP alone as the paramount measure of national economic performance and international development standing? A new paper by a group of UN-affiliated economists, of which I am lead author, makes a concrete suggestion regarding this ultimate, high-ambition purpose of "Beyond GDP" reform. It comes as intergovernmental negotiations are due to begin later in the year on this complex topic following the issuance of a report by a High-Level Expert Group.
Article, Blog Post, Official Document
The macroeconomic payoff from investment in universal economic and social human rights
Evidence is accumulating that the GDP and even tax revenue multipliers of increased public investment in the material sufficiency, agency and dignity of people underpinned by human rights are often strongly positive over 5 to 10 years. The budgeting and borrowing practices of governments and international financial institutions need to catch up and treat investment in social infrastructure, such as social protection systems, more like that in physical infrastructure, i.e., scored dynamically and partially amortized over a medium to long term budgetary window.
Report
Jobs and Skills for the New Economy: An Action Agenda for a People-Centered Climate Transition
Major report produced by an international research team of which I was co-lead author. The most detailed treatment to date of the likely labor market dynamics of a climate transition consistent with the Paris agreement's well-below-2-degree goal, including an extensive set of policy recommendations for governments, international organizations and companies.
Blog Post, Podcast
Podcast with Lord Robert Skidelsky: How can macroeconomics answer the call for greater social justice?
A podcast discussion with Lord Robert Skidelsky, the eminent economic historian and macroeconomist. Audio only.
Video
Book event at Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and its Thinking Ahead on Societal Change (TASC) Platform
Overview presentation and discussion of Human-Centred Economics: The Living Standards of Nations with Professor Cedric Dupont, former Swiss WTO Ambassador Didier Chambovey and wider Geneva community.
Book
Human-Centred Economics: The Living Standards of Nations
Palgrave Macmillan, ILO
This book examines the chronic underperformance of economies with respect to inclusion, sustainability and human and systemic resilience. It proposes a reformulation of macroeconomic theory and policy to explicitly internalize the role of policies and institutions that enable them. Correcting the imbalance of emphasis in modern economic theory and policy between markets and institutions, production and distribution, and national income and household living standards is the single most important step required to transcend 20th century trickle-down “neoliberalism” and replace it with a more human-centred model of economic progress in the 21st century.
Chapter
Original Sin or Wayward Practice? Living Standards as a Trickle-Down, Residual Consideration of Modern Economics (Chapter 3)
Palgrave Macmillan, ILO
This chapter interrogates the history of economic thought to trace the origins of the tendency by modern Economics to treat social inclusion, environmental sustainability and human and systemic resilience as an afterthought, a presumed by-product of rising productive output or GDP. Is this reflex of contemporary pedagogy and practice due to a conceptual flaw or omission in the original principles of liberal political economy or to a more recent misapplication of them?
Article
Toward People-Centered Growth
Project Syndicate
ILO's Global Commission on the Future of Work recommends that countries increase investment in people to improve both social inclusion and economic growth. Co-authored with ILO Director-General Guy Ryder.
Article
Better Labor Standards Must Underpin the Future of Work
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Governments and business should invest in the institutions of work to help workers through destabilizing job displacement and transformation.
Report
Inclusive Development Index
An alternative metric to GDP per capita for measuring national economic performance and level of economic development. I led the team that developed it.