Ban in Bloomberg: Austerity Insight Too Late
Cornel Ban, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, said that a change in thinking about the efficacy of austerity measures at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) might not have come in time to help debt-ridden Greece.
Ban made his case in a July 7 article in Bloomberg News entitled “Kinder, Gentler IMF Austerity Stance Came Too Late to Aid Greece.”
From the text of that article:
The fund’s World Economic Outlook that October said policy makers may have been underestimating the effect of fiscal measures on economic growth since the financial crisis. The implication for Greece: Public spending cuts may have caused more economic pain than first thought.
Such growing views were reflected in the biographies and research of 144 economists whose work was cited in the fund’s flagship economic-outlook and financial-stability reports, according to Boston University’s Ban, who didn’t examine specific nations or lending programs. He found that 58 percent of the authors supported some kind of “doctrinal change” from the fund’s orthodox views on fiscal policy.
You can read the entire article here.
Ban is also the co-director of the Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI), an affiliated center of the Pardee School. Learn more about him here.