Inequality & Distribution

HCEO’s new three-question series will regularly publish quick Q&As with members who will discuss their work, frontiers in the field of inequality that could use more knowledge, and advice for emerging scholars.

The Romer/Romer letter to Professor Gerald Friedman marks a turning point. It concedes that there are indeed important issues at stake when evaluating the proposed economic policies of Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders. These issues go beyond the political debate and should be discussed seriously between and among professional economists.

Nobel laureate James Heckman is one of this year’s recipients of the Dan David Prize, an international honor which encourages innovative and interdisciplinary research, for his scholarship on poverty.

Nancy Folbre is an American feminist economist who focuses on economics and the family, non-market work and the economics of care. She is Professor Emirita of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who has written extensively about the economics of care and reciprocity.

It is high time to ditch this myth for at least the following five reasons.

Recently, our analysis has been questioned by Servaas Storm who has claimed that it is untenable to blame neo-mercantilist Germany for driving a wedge into the Eurozone. [i] It is shown below that Storm’s critique has a certain aplomb, but lacks substance.

Today’s richest Americans may soon blow past the tycoons of the Roaring Twenties. Lance Taylor explains why, and what to do about it.

The tragic crisis in Flint, Michigan, where residents have been poisoned by lead contamination, is not just about drinking water. And it’s not just about Flint. It’s about race and class, and the stark contradiction between the American dream of equal rights and opportunity for all and the American nightmare of metastasizing inequality of wealth and power.

We first show that, with a Kaleckian structure that is consistent with Pasinetti (1962), the relationship between distribution and growth is more robust than conventional wisdom suggests. Next, we extend our model by incorporating borrowing and emulation effects into workers’ consumption behavior, under different assumptions about how debt is serviced.

Comments on “German Wage Moderation and the Eurozone Crisis: A Critical Analysis” by Servaas Storm

Professor Casarico explains why her focus on gender and the “glass ceiling” can help us push forward economic thinking.

It is high time to look more closely at the labor cost competitiveness myth.

Join us for a reception at the ASSA conference in San Francisco

This research project focuses mainly on whether the wealth of the United States middle class recovered and whether wealth inequality continued to rise or moderated over the years 2010 to 2013 following the financial crisis of 2008.

This research project investigates whether rising inequality has contributed to the macroeconomic imbalances that erupted in the present crisis, based on a Kaleckian macroeconomic model.