Wednesday, September 29, 2021
12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
via Zoom
This was a joint Facing Inequality Series and Rethinking Capitalism & Democracy Series event featuring Peter Dietsch (University of Victoria).
Globalization and technological change are the two staple explanations of the income inequality between the relatively skilled and unskilled segments of the labor market. While recognizing their importance, this webinar turns the spotlight on another, neglected driver of income inequality. The mechanics of the labor market have a tendency to allow skilled workers to extract a significant wage premium. Arguably, the magnitude of this premium is neither just nor necessary for a functioning labor market. Interestingly, the policy response required to contain this centrifugal nature of the labor market differs markedly from the standard remedies to reduce income inequality.
Kathryn Holston (Harvard and World Bank) provided discussant remarks. This webinar was moderated by IIEP Director Jay Shambaugh with introductory remarks by IIEP Distinguished Visiting Scholar Sunil Sharma. The event was co-sponsored by GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Seminar, organized by Professor Trevor Jackson.
About the Speaker:
Peter Dietsch is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. His research focuses on issues of economic ethics, notably on tax justice, normative dimensions of monetary policy, and on income inequalities. Dietsch is the author of Catching Capital – The Ethics of Tax Competition (Oxford University Press, 2015), co-author of Do Central Banks Serve the People? (Polity Press, 2018), and co-editor of Global Tax Governance – What is Wrong with It and How to Fix It (ECPR Press, 2016). He has published numerous articles and book chapters, and is a regular contributor in the media on debates in his field. Dietsch received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation in 2021 and was nominated to the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada in 2017. Prior to the University of Victoria, Dietsch taught at the Université de Montréal for 16 years. He has been a visiting fellow at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, at the European University Institute in Florence, and at the University of Victoria.
About the Discussant:
Kathryn Holston is an economist in the Office of the World Bank Chief Economist and a PhD candidate in economics at Harvard (on leave for the 2021-22 academic year). Since 2019, she has been a Stone PhD Scholar in Inequality and Wealth Concentration at Harvard. Her current work focuses on financial fragility during the COVID-19 crisis and banking crises throughout history. She is also interested in monetary policy, central bank independence and governance, and policymaking under low interest rates. Kathryn’s past work includes estimating the natural rate of interest for advanced economies with Thomas Laubach and John C. Williams, for which they received the Bhagwati Award for best paper in the Journal of International Economics. Previously, Kathryn has worked in the Monetary Studies Section of the Federal Reserve Board and as a Guaranteed Income Fellow at the Jain Family Institute. She is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied economics and math.
About the Moderators:
Sunil Sharma is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA, and a Senior Associate at the Council on Economic Policies, Zurich, Switzerland. He was Assistant Director in the IMF’s Research Department from 2015-2018, and the Director of the IMF- Singapore Regional Training Institute (STI) in Singapore from 2006-2015. Before moving to Singapore in 2006, he was Chief of the IMF Institute’s Asian Division in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the IMF in 1992, Dr. Sharma was on the Economics faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Cornell University, a M.A. from the Delhi School of Economics, and a B.A. (Honors) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. His current interests include rethinking capitalism and democracy, systemic hazards, complex systems, the international financial architecture, and the institutional structure and design of financial regulation.
Jay Shambaugh is the Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy and recently served as a member of the Biden transition team. His work includes analysis of the interaction of exchange rate regimes with monetary policy, capital flows, and trade flows as well as studies of international reserves holdings, country balance sheet exchange rate exposure, the cross-country impact of fiscal policy, the crisis in the euro area, and regional growth disparities. He has also served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Shambaugh received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.
IIEP Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy Series
The COVID-19 pandemic, like the global financial crisis a decade ago, has laid bare the cracks in the leading capitalist democracies. Fissures in the political, social, economic, and financial orders, accompanied by an increasingly stressed natural environment, pose serious and possibly existential threats to these societies, as exploding income and wealth inequality subverts the integrity and fairness of markets and elections, weak regulatory oversight increases the likelihood and severity of the next crash, and the visible effects of climate change threaten lives and livelihoods and drive migrations. The three spheres of wellbeing – political and social, economic and financial, and the natural environment, are each becoming more fragile while their complex interrelationships are producing wicked challenges. The IIEP webinar series on Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy examines these difficult questions and possible policy responses.
IIEP Facing Inequality Series
The Facing Inequality series focuses on current and emerging inequality issues in the U.S. and around the globe, especially those revealed by the current COVID-19 pandemic. It brings together historians, economists, sociologists, political scientists, and epidemiologists, within the academy and without, to present work and discuss ideas that can facilitate new interdisciplinary approaches to the problem of inequality. It is a platform for dialogue and debate. This series is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Co-Director James Foster; Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics; and IIEP Faculty Affiliate Trevor Jackson, Assistant Professor of History. It is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series and co-organized by Professor Trevor Jackson from the Department of History and Professor Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics.
Rohini Pande is the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center, Yale University. She is a co-editor of American Economic Review: Insights. Pande’s research is largely focused on how formal and informal institutions shape power relationships and patterns of economic and political advantage in society, particularly in developing countries. She is interested in the role of public policy in providing the poor and disadvantaged political and economic power, and how notions of economic justice and human rights can help justify and enable such change. Her most recent work focuses on testing innovative ways to make the state more accountable to its citizens, such as strengthening women’s economic and political opportunities, ensuring that environmental regulations reduce harmful emissions, and providing citizens effective means to voice their demand for state services. In 2018, Pande received the Carolyn Bell Shaw Award from the American Economic Association for promoting the success of women in the economics profession. She is the co-chair of the Political Economy and Government Group at Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a Board member of Bureau of Research on Economic Development (BREAD) and a former co-editor of The Review of Economics and Statistics. Before coming to Yale, Pande was the Rafik Harriri Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, where she co-founded Evidence for Policy Design. Pande received a Ph.D. in economics from London School of Economics, a BA/MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University and a BA in Economics from Delhi University.
Jayati Ghosh taught economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi for nearly 35 years. From January 2020 she will join the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. She has authored and/or edited 19 books (including “Never Done and Poorly Paid: Women’s Work in Globalising India”, Women Unlimited, New Delhi 2009; the co-edited “Elgar Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development, 2014, “Demonetisation Decoded”, Routledge 2017 and “Women workers in the informal economy”, Routledge forthcoming) and nearly 200 scholarly articles. She has received several prizes, including for distinguished contributions to the social sciences in India in 2015; the International Labour Organisation’s Decent Work Research Prize for 2010; the NordSud Prize for Social Sciences 2010, Italy. She has advised governments in India and other countries, including as Chairperson of the Andhra Pradesh Commission on Farmers’ Welfare in 2004, and Member of the National Knowledge Commission of India (2005-09). She is the Executive Secretary of International Development Economics Associates, an international network of heterodox development economists. She has consulted for international organisations including ILO, UNDP, UNCTAD, UN-DESA, UNRISD and UN Women and is member of several international commissions, including the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT) and the Commission for Global Economic Transformation of INET. She writes regularly for popular media like newspapers, journals and blogs.
James E. Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs, Professor of Economics, and Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His joint 1984 Econometrica paper (with Joel Greer and Erik Thorbecke) is one of the most cited papers on poverty. It introduced the FGT Index, which has been used in thousands of studies and was employed in targeting the Progresa CCT program in Mexico. Other research includes work on economic inequality with Amartya Sen; on the distribution of human development with Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva and Miguel Szekely; on multidimensional poverty with Sabina Alkire; and on literacy with Kaushik Basu.
Ajay Chhibber is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Institute of International Economic Policy, George Washington University and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, the Atlantic Council, Washington DC. He was earlier Director General, Independent Evaluation Office, Government of India and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), India. He held senior positions at the UN as Assistant Secretary General and Assistant Administrator, UNDP and managed their program for Asia and the Pacific. He also served in senior positions at the World Bank. He has a Ph.D. from Stanford University, a Masters from the Delhi School of Economics. He taught at Georgetown University and at the University of Delhi.
Bina Agarwal is Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK, and former Professor and Director, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. She has been President, International Society for Ecological Economics; Vice-President, International Economic Association; President, International Society for Feminist Economics; and held distinguished positions at the Universities of Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, Michigan, Minnesota, and the New York University School of Law. Dr. Agarwal’s publications include the multiple award-winning book, A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 1994), Gender and Green Governance (OUP, 2010) and Gender Challenges (OUP, 2016), a three volume compendium of her selected papers on Agriculture, Property, and the Environment. Her pioneering work on gender inequality in property and land and on environmental governance, has had global impact. Her many awards include a Padma Shri, 2008; book prizes; the Leontief Prize 2010; Louis Malassis Scientific Prize 2017; and the International Balzan Prize, 2017.
