economics 
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4/3/2022
The Lost Opportunity to Set Post-Soviet Russia on a Stable Course
by Robert Brent Toplin
The transition from communism was always going to be difficult for Russia and other post-Soviet states. But American politicians and advisors must share blame for the rise of oligarchy and Putinism as responses to economic instability.
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SOURCE: Foreign Policy
3/11/2022
We're Talking about Climate Change with Outdated Colonial Language
by Priya Satia
The dominant climate activist theme of sacrificing in the present to protect the future is rooted in the intellectual history of economics which has driven the profligate consumption and gross inequality that threatens the planet.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
3/9/2022
Bad Economics
by Simon Torracinta
A historian of science reviews three books on the history of economic thought, which support the conclusion that the ideas animating the mainstream of the discipline and enabling it to dominate discussions of policy are badly in need of reexamination.
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SOURCE: Platform
11/1/2021
How Academia Laid the Groundwork for Redlining
by Todd Michney and LaDale Winling
Richard T. Ely and his student Ernest McKinley Fisher pushed the National Association of Real Estate Boards to adopt "the unsupported hypothesis that Black people's very presence inexorably lowered property values," tying the private real estate industry to racial segregation.
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SOURCE: New York Times
9/22/2021
Why Are Moderate Dems Trying to Blow Up Biden's Economic Plan?
by Zachary D. Carter
Centrists' efforts to chisel away at the Build Back Better bill threaten its passage, its effectiveness, and the prospects of Democrats to hold power in the future. A biographer of John Maynard Keynes wonders why they're doing it.
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SOURCE: Aeon
8/3/2021
In Praise of Possibility
by Michele Alacevich
Albert O. Hirschman's approach to development economics stressed the need to understand "hidden rationalities" of developing societies and use them to create change.
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SOURCE: ProMarket
5/2/2021
An Unusual History: A Conversation Between Two Economists About the Economics Department at the University of Chicago
Arnold C. Harberger reflects on his service in the University of Chicago's economics department as it became a highly influential center of "free market" policymaking.
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/24/2021
The Woman Who Shattered the Myth of the Free Market
Joan Robinson theorized the problem of monopsony as workers attempting to sell their labor are hurt by the small number of buyers.
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SOURCE: London Review of Books
4/15/2021
The Gatekeeper
by Adam Tooze
Paul Krugman's career as a politically influential economist has reflected the political dead end of the Clinton-era ideal of technocratic governing. His new book suggests that the intellectual authority of the economics profession may no longer prevent active government or deficit spending.
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SOURCE: New York Times
3/11/2021
The Coronavirus Killed the Gospel of Small Government
by Zachary D. Carter
Revisiting the work of Keynes highlights the fact that struggles to deal with the pandemic are not only public health failures but economic failures — an inability to marshal resources to solve a problem.
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SOURCE: Harvard Magazine
12/16/2020
The American Exception: How Faith Shapes Economic and Social Policy
by Benjamin M. Friedman
Historian Benjamin Friedman's new book examines the importance of changing religious ideas in American Protestantism as influences on the development of social and economic policy. Part of the concluding chapter is excerpted here.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
12/2/2020
The Gadfly of American Plutocracy (Review)
by Simon Torracinta
A new biography of the social theorist examines how his approach to understanding a past gilded age can offer lessons for our present one.
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SOURCE: NPR
9/23/2020
Cost Of Racism: U.S. Economy Lost $16 Trillion Because Of Discrimination, Bank Says
Citigroup's recommendations aren't new: various studies have shown similar findings and experts have called for similar action for years, though so far progress has been slow.
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SOURCE: Bloomberg
9/21/2020
Look What Has Been Taken From Black Americans
It's difficult to quantify the financial cost to Black Americans of racism and segregation. But the destruction of property and denial of trade by white mobs in Elaine, Arkansas in 1919 was quantified by Ida B. Wells-Barnett; her findings can put the scope of a reparations program into some perspective.
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SOURCE: Frank Interviews
9/10/2020
The Debt We Still Owe
Economist Sandy Darity summarizes the case for reparations through the persistent Black-White wealth gap.
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SOURCE: New York Times
8/6/2020
The Real Reason the American Economy Boomed After World War II
by Jim Tankersley
Citing recent economic research, the author argues that fighting employment discrimination and ending the idea that white men have a privileged claim on good jobs will be a potent engine for economic growth if and when America recovers from the pandemic.
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SOURCE: Berkeley News
7/24/2020
Berkeley Talks: Why Racial Equity Belongs In The Study Of Economics (Podcast)
An interdisciplinary panel of scholars including historian Daina Ramey Berry discussed some of the limiting assumptions prevalent in economic thought and what the discipline could learn from others.
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SOURCE: The New York Times
6/25/2020
The Black-White Wage Gap Is as Big as It Was in 1950
Recent research indicates little progress since the Truman administration.
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SOURCE: The New York Times
6/10/2020
Economics, Dominated by White Men, Is Roiled by Black Lives Matter
The editor of a top academic journal is facing calls to resign after criticizing protesters as “flat earthers” for wanting to defund the police.
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SOURCE: Current Affairs
6/9/2020
Capitalism as Religion (Review Essay)
Eugene McCarraher’s The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity examines the ways in which capitalism, despite its purported scientific rationality, operates as a perverse kind of religion.
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