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Bard Economist L. Randall Wray Wins 2022 Veblen-Commons Award in Recognition of Significant Contributions to Evolutionary Institutional Economics

L. Randall Wray, professor of economics and senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, has won the 2022 Veblen-Commons Award. This award is the highest honor given annually by the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) in recognition of significant contributions to evolutionary institutional economics. Named after the founders of institutional economics, Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) and John R. Commons (1862–1945), and awarded since 1969, the Veblen-Commons Award is presented to scholars “on the basis of their contributions to a better understanding of both the economic process and the behavior of the major institutions that shape that process and society’s goals and values” (Trebing, 1992, 333). By recognizing significant contributions to institutional analysis, this award furthers the goal of institutional economics to make the world a better place.

Recipients of the Veblen-Commons Award have made outstanding contributions to institutional economics in the tradition of Veblen and Commons. Award recipients have focused their work on some of the most important topics confronting human society. Such topics include exploring the underlying power relations within society, the origins and implications of inequality, feminist economics, the origins of discrimination, the enabling myths of the dominant groups, the continuing conflict between rights and duties, the possibilities offered by modern technologies and the use of those possibilities for good or ill, the causes of financial crises, among others. Previous recipients include Levy scholars James Galbraith (2020), John F. Henry (2017), Jan Kregel (2011), and Hyman P. Minsky (1996).

L. Randall Wray is a senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute and professor of economics at Bard College. He is one of the original developers of Modern Money Theory. Wray’s most recent books are Why Minsky Matters (Princeton University Press, 2016), and A Great Leap Forward (Academic Press, 2020), and Handbook of Economic Stagnation(with Flavia Dantas; Elsevier, 2022). Four new books will be published in 2022/2023: Making Money Work for Us (Polity Press, Fall 2022), Money For Beginners (with Heske Van Doornen; Polity Press, 2023), Modern Monetary Theory: Key Thinkers, Leading Insights (editor; Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022), and The Elgar Companion to Modern Money Theory (with Yeva Nersisyan; Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023).

Wray is the author of Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies (Edward Elgar Publishing, 1990), Understanding Modern Money (Edward Elgar Publishing, 1998), The Rise and Fall of Money Manager Capitalism (with É. Tymoigne; Routledge, 2013), Modern Money Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; 2nd rev. ed., 2015), and Macroeconomics (with William Mitchell and Martin Watts; Red Globe Press, 2019).

Wray previously taught at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and at the University of Denver, and has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Paris, Bologna, Bergamo and Rome, as well as UNAM in Mexico City. He holds a BA from the University of the Pacific and an MA and a Ph.D. from Washington University, where he was a student of Minsky. He has held a number of Fulbright Grants, including most recently at the Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia. He is the 2022 Veblen-Commons Award winner for contributions to Institutionalist Thought and will be the 2022-2023 Teppola Distinguished Visiting Professor at Willamette University, Salem Oregon.

Learn more about the Veblen-Commons Award here.

Post Date: 08-02-2022

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Bard Economist ​​L. Randall Wray on the Impacts of the Federal Reserve Raising Interest Rates to Fight Inflation

​​L. Randall Wray, professor of economics and senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and Yeva Nersisyan argue on the Hill that a Fed rate hike seems certain, yet raising rates is more likely to raise unemployment and slow growth than have any impact on our current inflation problem. “We must find a better way to think about, and deal with, inflation. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to inflation control, but what is clear is that interest rates are a very imprecise tool for influencing prices. In the current circumstance, the more appropriate solution would be to work to alleviate supply-side constraints. That, however, requires much more work and intentionality than a stroke of a pen to change interest rates, which camouflages as action rather than the cop-out it has proven to be,” write Wray and Nersisyan.

Post Date: 03-15-2022

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Bard Economist L. Randall Wray on How Modern Monetary Theory Isn’t the Future. It’s Here Now.

In the Wall Street Journal, Bard economist and leading scholar of Modern Monetary Theory L. Randall Wray comments on how important elements of MMT, including the claim that a government need never default on debt issued in its own currency, are now accepted by much of the economic and financial establishment. “We got five or six trillion dollars of spending and tax cuts without anyone worrying about payfors, so that was a good thing,” says Wray. “In January [2020], MMT was a crazy idea, and then in March, it was, OK, we’re going to adopt MMT.” L. Randall Wray is Professor of Economics and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

Post Date: 11-23-2021

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How Should We Measure Well-Being? Dimitri B. Papadimitriou Talks with Financial Times about Bard Levy Institute’s New Federal Contract to Broaden Measures of Economic Well-Being

Many of the metrics we commonly use to understand economic growth and well-being were developed nearly a century ago, and may no longer paint an accurate picture of the economy. The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College last week won a $300,000 federal contract to aid the US Department of Labor in its efforts to broaden how it measures the economic well-being of US households. Levy Institute President Dimitri Papadimitriou talked with Rana Foroohar of the Financial Times about how new metrics, such as measuring women’s unpaid labor, could create more clarity for policymakers.

Post Date: 11-09-2021

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Interview: Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva Talks with Thomas Piketty

Associate Professor of Economics Pavlina Tcherneva interviews French economist Thomas Piketty as part of the first-ever Global Forum on Democratizing Work, a project of the Open Society University Network’s Economic Democracy Initiative. Piketty’s groundbreaking book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), showed through data collected on 200 years of tax records from the United States and Europe, a “central contradiction of capitalism”—that the return on capital exceeds the rate of economic growth. Thus, without government intervention, the wealthy continue to grow wealthier leading to unsustainable and undemocratic levels of economic inequality.

In their conversation, Tcherneva and Piketty discuss the #democratizingwork movement, how it resonates with Piketty’s work on wealth inequality and the future of capitalism, and how collective, multifaceted, and organized actions and efforts can address economic inequality. “Human beings are not simple resources and human wellbeing cannot be governed by market forces alone,” says Tcherneva.

Thomas Piketty is Professor of Economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des hautes études en sciences sociales: EHESS), Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics, and Centennial Professor of Economics in the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics.

Post Date: 10-19-2021

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Professor Pavlina R. Tcherneva: A Just Transition Needs a Job Guarantee

Associate Professor of Economics Pavlina R. Tcherneva says a job guarantee is necessary both for managing the disruptions wrought by global warming and for achieving a smooth, just transition to a low-carbon economy. And since the policy is also wildly popular, it should be a no-brainer for any politician who claims to be serious about tackling the climate crisis. “If ‘decent work for all’ is to become an actionable policy benchmark, access to a living-wage job must be guaranteed to everyone, not merely implied in the text of stimulus packages and other policies,” she writes.

Post Date: 09-21-2021