Inequality

The Complicated Legacy of the “Chicago Boys” in Chile

How did a group of Chicago-trained economists manage to turn Chile into the cradle of neoliberalism? As the country aims to move...

“This Isn’t the Kind of Journalism That Serves Democracy Best”: How Place and Privilege Came to Define American News

In an interview with ProMarket, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Nikki Usher discusses how news in the US came to be...

How Insufficient Enforcement Led to Prevalent Tax Evasion and Contributed to American Inequality

The prevalence of tax evasion among the top 1 percent of the income distribution is much worse than previously thought, a study...

How Protests Against the Jim Crow Credit Market Changed the Civil Rights Movement

Before the civil rights movement captured the nation’s attention, activists and community groups were protesting against exploitative credit and exclusionary lending practices...

The Digital Society: “We Live in a World Obsessed With Cost Cutting”

In an interview about his new book, The Inglorious Years, economist Daniel Cohen explores the emergence of the digital society and its...

Three Ways Tax Policies Increase the Black-White Racial Wealth Gap

Dorothy Brown, the author of The Whiteness of Wealth, explains how tax breaks for marriage, college, and gifts and inheritance contribute to...

Most Americans Consider Themselves Middle-Class. But Are They?

There are different ways of determining who should be considered middle-class. But there is one thing they have in common: all reveal...

Barriers to Entry as Another Source of Top Income Inequality

A new book, The Power of Creative Destruction, explores how lobbying contributes to the increase in the top 1 percent’s share of...

What the US Can Learn From Denmark About Inequality and Social Mobility

Denmark has many generous social policies that American progressives seek to emulate. Yet Denmark also has substantial inequality of child outcomes across...

“I Wanted to Call People’s Attention to the Extent of Amazon’s Takeover of Washington”

In an interview with ProMarket, author and ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis discusses the rise of Amazon and regional inequality, the role of...

LATEST NEWS

Uninhibited Campaign Donations Risks Creating Oligarchy

In new research, Valentino Larcinese and Alberto Parmigiani find that the 1986 Reagan tax cuts led to greater campaign spending from wealthy individuals, who benefited the most from this policy. The authors argue that a very permissive system of political finance, combined with the erosion of tax progressivity, created the conditions for the mutual reinforcement of economic and political disparities. The result was an inequality spiral hardly compatible with democratic ideals.

Did the Meme Stock Revolution Actually Change Anything?

Many financial commentators thought that the surge of retail investors participating in the stock market, the most notable of whom boosted “meme stocks” like GameStop, would democratize corporate governance and improve prosocial firm behavior, including the promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. In new research, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee find evidence that the exact opposite took place.

The Kroger-Albertsons Merger Will Not Help Grocery Competition

Kroger and Albertsons say they need to merge to compete with Walmart. Claire Kelloway argues that what they really want is Walmart’s monopsony power, and permitting mergers on these grounds will only harm suppliers, workers, and consumers.

Innovators Respond to Their Presidential Candidate Winning With More Innovation

Does an inventor’s political identity influence their productivity? In a new paper, Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, William Mullins, and Richard Townsend examine the impacts of the 2008 and 2016 United States presidential elections on Democrat and Republican inventors, with a particular focus on the quantity and quality of patents after the country elects a new president.

Letter to the Editor: Former FTC and DOJ Chief Economists Urge Separation of Economic and Legal Analysis in Merger Guidelines

Seventeen former chief economists of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division urge current Agency heads to separate the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines to strengthen the role of the latter in merger review.