Research
Is There a Future for Heterodox Economics?
Paper | This paper assesses economics research and teaching frameworks in the United States by examining how knowledge is produced and ranked, the flaws and strengths of heterodox economic theory; and how students are trained, especially for careers in economic policy.
Policy Note | Unpaid care work — the vast majority of such work in the United States — is primarily shouldered by economically vulnerable people. The costs associated with unpaid care work compound existing economic insecurity, leading to higher rates of poverty in old age. It is essential to support informal caregivers by recognizing caregiving as work and expanding their access to social safety net programs and providing paid family care leave.
Policy Note | Up to 40 percent of middle-income workers are at risk of downward mobility into poverty or near-poverty in retirement because of an inefficient retirement system that disproportionately benefits those with high incomes. Universal retirement accounts and providing workers with more equitable and better targeted tax incentives are among the best methods to supplement Social Security and prevent downward mobility in retirement.
Article | Value capture schemes sound simple in theory – future revenues pay debt issued to cover upfront costs. But in practice, these financing mechanisms are highly complex and, as a result, can have unintended consequences on municipal finances. Research from SCEPA’s Critical Public Finance project published in the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA) offers a new frame to evaluate TIF projects based on the tool’s potential to create, capture, & destroy value.
Article | This article contributes to the literature on monopsony models by moving away from their emphasis on exogenous factors—worker preferences, incomplete information, and barriers— and focusing on these factors as the main drivers of monopsony power. Employers have compelling profit reasons to create monopsony conditions and create labor market frictions.
Working Paper | Social Security “Catch-Up” contributions would allow workers to contribute an additional 3.1 percent of salary, starting at age 50, in return for enhanced benefits. The program would modestly reduce defacto elderly poverty and reduce the Social Security shortfall in the short run and be approximately actuarially neutral over 75 years.
Book Review | Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, Daniel Sherrell
The subject of Warmth, written by a 26-year-old as a letter to his unborn child, is the climate crisis. But the climate crisis is never referred to by name. Instead, it is called “The Problem.” And though The Problem animates the book, Warmth is also a memoir—a book about memory, justice, and the future.
The economy-climate interaction and an appropriate mitigation policy for climate protection have been treated in various types of scientific modeling. This paper focuses on the seminal work by Nordhaus on the economy-climate link and extends that model to include optimal policies for mitigation, adaptation, and infrastructure investment studying the dynamics of the transition to a low fossil-fuel economy.
