Despite the media hype about corporate CEOs having abandoned their shareholder value maximization credo, the recent statement from the Business Roundtable contains nothing new of substance. CEOs still firmly convinced that their firms’ main goal remains to maximize shareholder value could sign it without batting an eye.
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In the same way that Capital in the Twenty-First Century transformed the way economists look at inequality, Piketty’s new book Capital and Ideology will transform the way political scientists look at their own field.
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The first minimum-wage laws in the history of the United States were predominantly gender-specific in that they were imposing a lower bound only on women’s earnings. In a new working paper, we identify the impact of these minimum-wage laws on the employment of American men and women.
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In his review of Paul Collier’s recent book The Future of Capitalism, Branko Milanovic discusses ideology, social democracy, and the “ethical world.”
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Studies of the evolution of market power since 2000 have focused mostly on publicly traded US firms. This column introduces a new global study that incorporates private firms and decomposes the aggregate effect into intensive and extensive margins. It shows the increase in markups is broad-based across countries and sectors but is driven by a small number of firms.
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For decades, competition in America has been on the wane, leading to slower economic growth and a gaping chasm of inequality. Antitrust can help reverse the trend, but antitrust doctrines and enforcement actions once thought adequate are proving insufficient. Fixing the problem is urgent.
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The offshoring activities of multinational firms explain about one-third of the aggregate decline in US manufacturing employment, according to a new study.
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At the launch of the IFS Deaton Review, a 5-year review of rising inequalities in the UK, Sir Angus Deaton decried extreme inequality and the system that allows it. “As it is, capitalism is not delivering to large fractions of the population.”
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What would the effect of a universal basic income be on crime? A new study looks into Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend and suggests that it reduced property crimes.
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As China’s export growth has slowed down over the past five years, workers have responded by taking to the streets with increasing frequency. The Chinese government is paying attention.
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One striking feature of many underdeveloped societies is that economic power is concentrated in the hands of very small powerful elites. Why is it the case that some elites show remarkable persistence and even retain their power after major economic disruptions, like civil wars or democratization? The fortune of wealthy white southern households and their sons after the American Civil War is one such case in point.
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Booming stock markets and the collapse of house prices in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis have increased wealth inequality in the US to a new historical high. Meanwhile, the racial wealth gap has stayed put for over 70 years, with virtually no progress in reducing wealth inequality between black and white households.
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