Inequality & Distribution

“Dualism” in the structure of production across sectors of the US economy, employment by sector, productivity levels and growth, real wages, and intersectoral terms-of trade increased markedly between 1990 and 2016.

A new report examines the path to global social progress. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers

Gay men earn 20% less than straight men, but gay women earn up to 20% more than straight women. Why?

Alissa Quart’s new book chronicles the pain of a disgruntled class that could change the country’s political landscape.

Young Scholars based in Latin America are invited to convene in Buenos Aires. The event serves to strengthen the Latin American network of new economic thinkers pursuing a new economic paradigm. Attendees will be able to enjoy several partner events during the same week.

13 million people looking for living wage work is not a “full employment” economy

When politics is defined in terms of “populism” vs. “the mainstream,” the possibility for real economic reform is diminished.

Edoardo Nesi’s new book tracks the destructive march of globalization and neoliberal capitalism through his own life and the places, like Italy, that lie broken in its wake.

A light-hearted economic analysis of the World Cup

The World Bank and IMF say developing economies can’t afford to have strong labor laws. Actually, they can’t afford not to.

Labor market regulation is a controversial area of public policy in both developed and developing countries.

As in previous years, young scholars will come together in Trento during the annual Festival dell’Economia. This gathering will serve as the YSI Europe Convening for 2018. Attendees will have the opportunity to share their work with YSI members from across Europe, while also partaking in the Festival dell’Economia. 

Adair Turner, Chair of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Lecture at School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC April 10th 2018

It’s time to connect political violence with economic violence.

Wage suppression—not monopoly power—is fueling corporate profits and the growing gap between rich and poor

“Meso” level analysis of 16 producing sectors sheds light on broad forces shaping growth of employment and profits. 

For the BRICS countries to not just grow their economies but also raise the standard of living of their people, inclusive growth that prioritizes poverty reduction is a must

As early as 1900, German sociologist Georg Simmel identified a central feature of wealth in his seminal work The Philosophy of Money. Simmel writes about the superadditum of wealth for the rich, namely that a great fortune is encircled by innumerable possibilities of use, as though by an astral body.

The vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years later, and the relevance of his economic ideas today

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Reflections on the Radical Vision of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Last Major Speech

Despite assembling a formidable data set and leveling a bold argument, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has theoretical and accounting flaws that distort its central findings

Workers, innovation, and productivity all suffer when corporations spend their new U.S. tax breaks on stock buybacks.

By pushing workers into precarious, part-time work, “Third Way” governments of the past 20 years helped to create the disturbing economic trend that’s vexing orthodox economists

In the face of  laissez-faire capitalism at home and resurgent nationalism across the globe, INET offers an innovative look at the causes of—and solutions for—the problems that ail a fissuring world economy.

Ed Pavlić discusses the role of music in communicating suffering and resistance in the African-American experience

Economist Morton Schapiro, president of Northwestern University, and his colleague, literary critic and Slavic studies scholar Saul Morson, argue that—contrary to popular belief—studying the humanities is the key to not getting outsourced.

Contrary to the neoclassical model’s assumptions, shifts in aggregate demand have persistent effects on GDP

The prevailing wisdom that aggregate demand ‘shocks’ determine short-run cyclical fluctuations around a supply-determined equilibrium growth rate and an associated equilibrium unemployment rate (or NAIRU) has been called into question by various streams of literature in the last decades. Specifically, a recently revived literature on hysteresis finds significant persistence in the effects of recessions and negative aggregate demand shocks (Blanchard et al. 2015; Martin et al. 2015).

In their op-ed in the Washington Post, INET grantee William Lazonick and Rick Wartzman show how companies are spending their tax savings on investors, not workers.

There’s no turning back from humanity’s move to high-density living, says Ed Glaeser. The task of the century will be making cities more liveable.

The corporate titans of yore once offered a sizable wage premium over smaller employers—but not anymore. What happened?

A critical analysis of Piketty’s work

Behind towering figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. were the taxi dispatchers, pharmacists, grocers, and other small business owners who were instrumental in making civil rights a reality.

A large literature has detailed the seminal roles played in the Civil Rights Movement by activists, new political organizations, churches, and philanthropies. But black-owned businesses also provided a behind-the-scenes foundation for the movement’s success.

How did globalization create such discontent in developed and developing countries alike? Nobel laureate and INET grantee Joseph Stiglitz explains in this 150th episode of our “New Economic Thinking” video series.

Inequality isn’t driven by taxes—it’s driven by the power of capital in relation to workers

We explore the transmission mechanism of income inequality to output.

A discussion with Steven M. Fazzari, INET Grantee and the Bert A. & Jeanette L. Lynch Distinguished Professor of Economics, Washington University.

The World Economic Roundtable seeks to help the business, investment, and policy communities understand ongoing changes in the world economy and to promote a discussion of ideas that can advance the goal of a widely shared global prosperity.

With unemployment reaching very low levels in major economies, despite low – and slowly rising – inflation, it’s time for central banks to rethink their reliance on the so-called natural rate. No numerical target for this rate can serve as an anchor for monetary policy.

From the Rust Belt to Rural America, Economic and Social Distress Helped Shape the 2016 US Presidential Election Outcome

As the old lines continue to blur, what does inequality mean in the modern global economy? And, how does the economy need to evolve to address these changes?

As dual economies transform countries, how does world politics adjust?

Can a Policy of Guaranteed Basic Income Return Mature Market Economies to les Trente Glorieuses?

Building symbiotic public-private partnerships

What can policy do to remedy the spread of dual economies in the developed world?

Untangling the Facts about Immigration in the World Economy.

What Do Citations Actually Measure in Economics and How Should Economic Journals and Department Review Committees Use This Data? 

As the old lines continue to shift, what does inequality mean in the modern global economy? And, how does the economy need to evolve to address these changes?

Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Spence and a global team of leading thinkers are calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy

Growing income inequality is threatening the American middle class, and the middle class is vanishing before our eyes. We are still one country, but the stretch of incomes is fraying the unity of our nation.

The Precariat under Rentier Capitalism Guy Standing We are in the midst of a Global Transformation, analogous to Karl Polanyi’s Great Transformation described in his seminal 1944 book. Whereas Polanyi’s Transformation was about constructing national market systems, today’s is about the painful construction of a global market system. To use Polanyi’s term, the ‘dis-embedded’ phase has been dominated by an ideology of market liberalisation, commodification and privatisation, orchestrated by financial interests, as in his model. The similarities also extend to today’s fundamental challenge, how to construct a ‘re-embedded’ phase, with new systems of regulation, distribution and social protection.

In the economic literature, several scholars have addressed the narrative of a two-stage European crisis. In a first stage, the so-called “he-cession”, men would have been hit the most by the economic recession induced by the financial crisis. Shortly thereafter, in the “she-austerity” stage, women would have suffered the heaviest burdens of the fiscal retrenchment measures. If that were the case, the policy response to the crisis would be producing an increase in the – already high pre-existing – gender inequality.

“Dual Economy” models were developed to explain growth in the developing world. Now they appear necessary to comprehend the high income trap that afflicts the world’s most developed economies.

INET gathered hundreds of new economic thinkers in Edinburgh to discuss the past, present, and future of the economics profession.

The Festival for New Economic Thinking is a collaborative initiative of several organizations, and aims to bring together those who seek to improve how economics is taught, studied and practiced. 

The Idea That Businesses Exist Solely to Enrich Shareholders Is Harmful Nonsense

The path of austerity could spread economic pain and social woes far beyond the Caribbean island, says public debt expert Martin Guzman 

Xavier Gabaix argues that public policies should prioritize alleviating deprivation at the bottom over narrowing the rich-poor gap 

Personal connections are key to understanding concentrations of wealth and power

Why we should worry about job quality, not quantity—or robot overlords

New research shows that access to elite colleges varies by parents’ income—reinforcing inequality across generations 

Back-room deals on corporate tax reform won’t increase growth

Economists’ infamous failure at predicting the recent financial crisis has brought new impetus to studies on diversity in the economics profession. Such studies have underlined how diversity plays a prominent role in enriching economic analyses.

The YSI Latin America Working Group is hosting a workshop at the United Nations ECLAC Summer School on Latin American economies.

Professor Ghilarducci describes the roadblocks to securing retirement and retirement plans beyond the 401k.

Greater efficiency, lower costs, and universal coverage make it the sustainable option, say some top economists

A new model probes why the US leads the world in jailing and imprisoning people, and what it will take to reverse course

The Young Scholars Initiative is hosting its regional convening for Latin America in Mexico City from 17-21 June. 

This seminar is happening at INET Oxford

A workshop hosted by the YSI Inequality Working Group (IWG) will take place from 12-13 June at the London School of Economics in collaboration with the International Inequalities Institute (III).

YSI Working Groups are cooperating with Dimensions of Poverty conference

The Young Scholars Initiative and its working groups will be hosting meetings and discussions in and around the 2017 Trento Festival of Economics. 

Demand, Secular Stagnation and the Vanishing Middle-Class

How austerity policies and microfinance can bankrupt rather than empower women. Professor Girón discusses why microfinance cannot replace development banks.

Professor Dutt discusses how group identity is key to addressing inequality and how inequality can disrupt group identity.

April 28-29, 2017, USC Dornsife INET is hosting a conference on inequality, globalization, and macroeconomics at the University of Southern California. The goal of this conference is to bring together leading researchers to discuss and present new approaches and new results on the relationships between inequality and macroeconomics and between inequality and globalization. Please direct any questions or comments to [email protected]. 

A new book by economist Peter Temin finds that the U.S. is no longer one country, but dividing into two separate economic and political worlds

The YSI Keynesian Economics Working Group is co-hosting a PhD seminar at the Nordic Post-Keynesian Conference entitled “Economics at the Edge”.

In his 2017 presidential address to the National Economic Association, Professor Darrick Hamilton warned that treating economics as a morally neutral ‘science’, and the discipline’s limited attention to structural barriers and overemphasis individual agency, has resulted in bad economics, and bad policy particularly as it relates to racial disparity.

INET

Despite dismissive comments by the U.S. Treasury Secretary, facing the challenge posed by robotics replacing human labor raises key public policy questions 

The “War on Poverty,” and the impact of public policy

In this comment, we explain our objections to the SEC’s current formulation of the Pay Ratio Disclosure Rule on each of three grounds: the erroneous estimation of CEO pay; the unclear specification of the “median” worker; and the risk of normalizing a pay ratio that is far too high. Then we present the latest data on the remuneration of the 500 highest-paid CEOs in the United States, demonstrating the way in which the SEC’s measure of CEO pay that enters into the CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio tends to systematically underestimate actual executive pay.

Long term labor shortages do not happen naturally in market economies.

Long term labor shortages do not happen naturally in market economies. That is not to say that they don’t exist. They are created when employers or government agencies tamper with the natural functioning of the wage mechanism.

The health crisis afflicting working-class Americans recalls similar symptoms in Russia following the collapse of communism

Taxing the use of robotics may or may not be the answer, but the question remains how to compensate for the growing inequality created by our changing economies

Pursuing equality while growing the economy requires reframing social spending as a form of investment.

In the age of Adam Smith, an economics that masqueraded as natural science and excluded the human condition actually suited the interests of the landed and the wealthy

A transition from the conventional policy of “redistributing income” to “redistributing membership”, could promote economic integration across communities and intergenerational mobility.

INET grantee JW Mason has been engaged in an important debate with the Financial Times’ Matthew Klein over the relationship of household debt to income inequality

To mark International Women’s Day, Neva Goodwin argues that the crisis of income insecurity and longstanding gender inequality require a form of universal basic income that recognizes and rewards the value of household labor

Policies based on faith in the “market” as a principle of social organization have wrought havoc with a founding principle of American democracy

New findings show that hourly wage-rates in China are higher than in middle-income countries and are approaching the levels of Greece and Portugal

A reference guide to all Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) community presentations at the Eastern Economic Association’s (EEA) 2017 annual meeting

Following a thought-provoking panel discussion at the AEA, James Heckman and Rob Johnson discuss peer-reviewed journals and a professional incentive structure that constricts the idea space and reinforces tired orthodoxies in economics.

Stanford economic historian Professor Gavin Wright, addressing the Institute’s conference on the economics of race, argues that the conditions facing the children of the great migration from the South are very different to the conditions for the children of those who stayed behind.