what's new...

Conference at the Levy Institute on Employment Guarantee Policies

On June 22 and 23, 2009, The Levy Economics Institute, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), convened an international conference to present the merits and challenges of public job creation programs as a constitutive component of an economic recovery strategy.

Please visit the Levy website for more information about this conference, including a copy of the final program, as well as a webcast of the entire conference proceedings.

The 2nd International Congress of the Brazilian Keynesian Association—Call for Papers

The Brazilian Keynesian Association (AKB) is organizing their Second International Congress, to be held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from September 9–11, 2009. The Congress theme is "Financial Instability and Contemporaneous Capitalism". With this theme, the AKB aims at analyzing, in a Keynesian perspective and other heterodox approaches, the international financial crisis and its impacts on world economy, more specifically on Latin American and Brazilian economies. They are currently calling for papers on topics related to the theme of the conference. To learn more, please visit their website to view the conference announcement.

The 10th Path to Full Employment Conference hosted by CofFEE December 4–5, 2008 in Newcastle, Australia

The 10th Path to Full Employment Conference and the 15th National Conference on Unemployment were held at the University of Newcastle from Thursday, December 4 to Friday, December 5, 2008.

As it was also the 10th Anniversary of CofFEE, some special events and speakers were planned.

Keynote speakers included Professor Robert McCutcheon of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; Dr. Bob Birrell of The Centre for Population and Urban Research; Ton van der Bruggen of the Philips Employment Scheme and the Dutch electric company NUON; and Professor L. Randall Wray of the University of Missouri-Kansas City and The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

The final version of the program is available here.

International Seminar on Employment Alternatives for Economic Inclusion held in Bogotá

This seminar was held in Bogotá, Colombia on October 29, 2008 and was sponsored by Fundación Agenda Colombia. The foundation is committed to a democratic and pluralistic diffusion of knowledge on development to all Colombians that wish to get information about international trends and national policies that may affect their everyday lives. This event was focused on public job creation that could be incorporated into official programs to address the predicaments of displaced people. Displacement is a distressing social phenomenon that has been fostered by all kinds of armed confrontations in Colombia during the last 20 years and, so far, governments have not succeeded in designing a strategy to reincorporate this population into full civic life. More information about presentations and other outcomes of the seminar will be posted on our website as it becomes available.

New Articles of Interest in the Knowledge Archives

The following new articles have been posted in the “knowledge” section of the site. You may also follow the links below to access them.

Promoting Equality Through an Employment of Last Resort Policy by Dimitri B. Papadimitriou
Analysing Multiplier Impact of NREGA Works Through Village SAM Modeling by Indira Hirway
Addressing the Employment-Poverty Nexus in Kenya: Comparing Cash-Transfer and Job-Creation Programmes and Job Creation versus Cash Transfers in Kenya by Eduardo Zepeda

Presentations from Brazil's Citizen City International Symposium

All of the presentations given at the first Citizen City International Symposium on Employer of Last Resort, held May 9-10, 2008 in Rio de Janeiro, are now available online. Please click here to view a message from the event coordinator, as well as the final program with links to the presentations.

Presentations from the Recent CDS Trivandrum Conference

All of the presentations and papers given at the conference, "Employment Opportunities and Public Employment Policy in Globalising India," held April 3-5, 2008 in Trivandrum, India are now available online. Please click here to view the final program and presentations.

Brazilian Citizen City International Symposium on ELR

This symposium was hosted by the

Brazilian Institute for Full Employment

with participation of Economists for Full Employment, sponsored by the National Development Bank of Brazil (BNDES), May 9-10, 2008, in Rio de Janeiro.

Theme: The Citizen City International Symposium of ELR

Invitation Letter

Conference Program

Contact: Daniel Conceicao

New Articles on India's NREGA Program

Two new articles on India's NREGA program are available by clicking the links below:

Proposal from Iran...

Dr. Zahra Karimi intends to present a proposal for Employment Guarantee Scheme for Iran . She has put together a paper and invites comments, suggestions and general discussion. She writes: "I hope to receive the comments of our colleagues which will enable me to introduce EGS ideas in Iran more precisely."

To view the paper (in .pdf format), please visit pdf.
E-mail Dr. Karimi at zakarimi@umz.ac.ir.

Durban EFE Report...

12th Regional Meeting on Labor Intensive Construction 2007
On October 8-12, 2007 five of our members presented their work and launched the network in a session organized by “Economists for Full Employment” during the Durban meeting, sponsored by the ILO and the Government of South Africa.

To read the text of the report in .pdf format, click here. To download the report in MS Word format, click here.

Brazil Joins In!

Dear Supporters of Full Employment,

I visited the site and I had the best impression of it. Congratulations. I want to be in full contact with you and to make use of the site as an instrument of help to our campaign in Brazil. We know many of your members and advisers, that are well respected here. I'd like to become a full member as president of the Instituto Desemprego Zero, the organization that fights for a full employment politics in Brazil. We have many social organizations in the Full Employment Campaign - already initiated in Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, and to be initiated in São Paulo on November 28. It created "Frente Parlamentar pelo Pleno Emprego", with more than 80 representatives and more than 40 senators, under the presidency of senator Marcelo Crivella, whom I advise in these questions and in public hearings. We also are in contact with the principal central unions of workers - one, the second in size, “Nova Central Sindical de Trabalhadores”, is already leading the campaign. Our group is restructuring our site (http://www.rumosdobrasil.org.br/instituto-desemprego-zero/) where we will put a link for yours.

Now, a point for your reflection: I think the new polarization in the world, as seen from Brazil, is one that opposes Neoliberalism and full employment politics (or the real social democracy). But this is not clear for people. As long as it lasts, the forces of status quo will prevail. So, our task is to clear the waters and clarify these issues. Our campaign aims just to do it. Given the scale of financialization in Brazil, I think that is impossible to implement a full employment politics without a clear defeat of Neoliberalism. And the Armageddon of this fight will be nearer if we persuade people that unemployment is the inexorable consequence of Neoliberalism. For many reasons that we can discuss in the near future I think Brazil will be one of the main geographic centers of this ideological and political war.

So, I ask you to consider that the first conference of the network “economists for full employment” in 2008 to take place in Brazil, that eventually could draw the rest of Latin America. As soon as we have a translator, I will send some articles and essays of our site.

In solidarity,
Jose Carlos de Assis
President of the Instituto Desemprego Zero

Read an INTRODUCTION/INTRODUÇA0 to the campaign (in English & Portuguese)

Letter to Editor of L.A.Times...

Network members Pavlina Tcherneva and Randall Wray sent this response to an op-ed by Mark Wesibrot in the Los Angeles Times, "How Argentina jump-started its economy":

Mark Weisbrot makes no mention of the large public employment program for unemployed heads of households, known as the Jefes Plan, which was implemented in 2002 as a main tool for economic stabilization and generated 2 million jobs (13% of the labor force) at its peak. This program not only stabilized internal demand but also provided much needed income and services to Argentina's poor. It is this program that largely "jump-started" the economy. Government policies further helped the unemployed establish small cooperatives and microenterprises and, in some cases, take over abandoned factories and begin producing. Removing the straightjacket of the currency board, and defaulting on the foreign debt, were only the prerequisites that made these government policies possible. While lower interest rates and currency depreciation might have played some role, that was minor and could not have been done without first abandoning the dollar.

Standing up to the IMF is no longer enough. It is time to remember another important and long-forgotten lesson: that government pro-employment policies can play a key role in macroeconomic stabilization and economic development.

Pavlina Tcherneva and L. Randall Wray
Levy Economics Institute, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

member institutions...