economic history

• 
• SOURCE: Dissent
  11/10/2021
  

  "The Ivory Tower is Dead": An Interview with Davarian Baldwin

  Davarian L. Baldwin's work interrogates how universities in postindustrial cities exemplify new models of economic development and are implicated in the problems of labor exploitation, gentrification and inequality. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  11/1/2021
  

  Land of Capital: Jonathan Levy's "Ages of American Capital" Reviewed

  by Steven Hahn

  "Ages of Capitalism" is one of the first synthetic accounts of the relationship of capitalism and American politics and society, and provides an important vocabulary for a developing field of inquiry. It also, oddly, resonates with the older consensus history that assumed capitalism as a core part of American life.

• 
• SOURCE: Woodrow Wilson Center and National History Center
  9/17/2021
  

  Indentured Students: Elizabeth Tandy Shermer on Student Debt (Monday, October 4)

  Elizabeth Tandy Shermer shows that Democrats and Republicans intentionally wanted to create a student loan industry instead of generously funding colleges and universities, which eventually left millions of Americans drowning in student debt. Zoom, Monday, Oct. 4, 4:00 PM EDT.

• 
• 9/19/2021
  

  Inequality Tends to Reach Political Tipping Points – Is That Happening Today?

  by Richard Vague

  "Proposals for a $15 minimum wage, more support for childcare and education, and even an alternative minimum income did not emerge out of nowhere as radical notions imported from Western Europe."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/13/2021
  

  The History of the Debt Ceiling: How a Routine Procedure Became Routine Political Brinksmanship

  It's clear that the originators of legislation establishing a debt limit for the United States did not intend for the measure to be a land mine threatening to derail the government's operations on a recurring basis. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/1/2021
  

  What if the Coronavirus Crisis Is Just a Trial Run?

  by Adam Tooze

  The disjointed and haphazard global response to the COVID pandemic bodes poorly for the world's capacity for coordinated action to face inevitable crisies in the near future. The problem isn't a lack of means but a lack of commitment to collective action.

• 
• SOURCE: Democracy
  8/31/2021
  

  Wartime Wisdom to Combat Inflation

  by David Stein

  Today, monetary policy controlled by the Federal Reserve is the only tool commonly used to control inflation, pitting controlling prices against full employment and wage growth. The history of the World War II Office of Price Administration reveals other possibilities. 

• 
• SOURCE: Project Syndicate
  8/31/2021
  

  Back to the Seventies?

  by Kenneth Rogoff

  Problems of political economy complicate the job central bankers face in setting interest rates. From international relations to domestic politics to an aging population, an economist considers the similarities and differences between now and the 1970s. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Economist
  8/28/2021
  

  The Economist Reviews Adam Tooze's Contemporary History of the COVID Economy

  "The challenge of instant history is that its judgments can be overtaken by events."

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  8/19/2021
  

  The Real Political Danger of Inflation

  by Andrew Elrod

  Democrats have not lost elections because of inflation, but because they have imagined austerity politics as the only solution to inflation. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/5/2021
  

  Policymakers in the 1960s Laid the Groundwork for the Student Debt Crisis. Policymakers Today Can Undo It.

  by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer

  "Lawmakers purposefully crafted the Guaranteed Student Loan Program to jump-start a student loan industry — instead of really investing in colleges and universities to keep costs down or forcing them to provide young people with genuinely equal opportunities to enroll."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Center for Equitable Growth
  6/24/2021
  

  New Research Shows Slavery’s Central Role in U.S. Economic Growth Leading up to the Civil War

  Historian Sven Beckert and economist Mark Stelzner's collaborative research applies new methods for quantifying how much the labor productivity of enslaved people contributed to economic output, as well as identifying the gap between white households with and without slaves as a driver of inequality. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/25/2021
  

  What Scaremongering About Inflation Gets Wrong

  by Rebecca L. Spang

  Inflation has become a subject of political dread as Americans have shifted from seeing themselves as producers to seeing themselves as consumers. But historical perspective shows that policy picks winners and losers and is dependent on choices about what to measure and how.   

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/24/2021
  

  How 24 Hours of Racist Violence Caused Decades of Harm

  by Jeremy Cook and Jason Long

  Census analysis shows how the Tulsa race massacre inaugurated a U-turn in the economic fortunes of the city's black community and gives a sense of the value of property lost. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• SOURCE: Dissent
  4/6/2021
  

  The End of Development

  by Tim Barker

  "Capitalism’s publicists are experiencing something of what Marxists went through after 1989, with one important difference: capitalism may be increasingly discredited, but it has not disappeared the way state socialism did."

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  4/6/2021
  

  The Age of Care (Review of Gabriel Winant's "The Next Shift")

  by Nelson Lichtenstein

  Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein says Gabriel Winant's book on the rise of the care industry is the story of community change in the last 50 years, with union retiree health care dollars reabsorbed by capital through the treatment of diseases of despair provoked by deindustrialization (with care provided by a workforce of women and people of color).

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/29/2021
  

  Government has Always Picked Winners and Losers

  by David M.P. Freund

  Government action has always been tied to economic growth, and always involved policy choosing winners and losers. Policies proposed by the Biden administration as part of the COVID recovery aren't inserting the government into the market, they're changing the parties favored by government policy. 

• 
• SOURCE: History.com
  3/23/2021
  

  Why the Roaring Twenties Left Many Americans Poorer

  Despite popular imagery, many Americans – urban workers, African Americans, and farmers in particular – experienced the 1920s as an era of deprivation and hardship that flowed into the worse times of the Great Depression.