MIT Press
Combating Inequality: Rethinking Government's Role
Key Metrics
- Olivier Blanchard
- MIT Press
- Paperback
- 9780262547253
- -
- -
- Political Science > Public Policy - Economic Policy
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Economic inequality is the defining issue of our time. In the United States, the wealth share of the top 1% has risen from 25% in the late 1970s to around 40% today. The percentage of children earning more than their parents has fallen from 90% in the 1940s to around 50% today. In Combating Inequality, leading economists, many of them current or former policymakers, bring good news: we have the tools to reverse the rise in inequality. In their discussions, they consider which of these tools are the most effective at doing so.
The contributors express widespread agreement that we need to aim policies at economic inequality itself; deregulation and economic stimulus will not do the job. No longer does anyone ask, in relation to expanded social programs, Can we pay for it? And most believe that US taxes will have to rise--although they debate whether the progressivity should focus on the revenue side or the expenditure side, through broad-based taxes like the VAT or through a wealth tax aimed at the very top of the income scale. They also consider the philosophical aspects of inequality--whether it is bad in itself or because of its consequences; the risks and benefits of more radical interventions to change the nature of production and trade; and future policy directions.
Contributors
Daron Acemoglu, Philippe Aghion, Danielle Allen, Ben Ansell, David Autor, Sheri Berman, Marianne Bertrand, Olivier Blanchard, Lucas Chancel, William Darity Jr., Peter Diamond, Christian Dustmann, David T. Ellwood, Richard Freeman, Caroline Freund, Jason Furman, Hilary Hoynes, Lawrence F. Katz, Wojciech Kopczuk, N. Gregory Mankiw, Nolan McCarty, Dani Rodrik, Jesse Rothstein, Emmanuel Saez, T. M. Scanlon, Heidi Shierholz, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Stefanie Stantcheva, Michael Stynes, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, Philippe Van Parijs, Gabriel Zucman
Author Bio
Olivier Blanchard is the C. Fred Bergsten Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A citizen of France, Blanchard has spent most of his professional life in the United States. After obtaining his PhD in economics from MIT in 1977, he taught at Harvard University and returned to MIT in 1982. He was chair of the economics department from 1998 to 2003. In 2008, he took a leave of absence to serve as economic counsellor and director of the research department at the International Monetary Fund where he stayed until 2015. He then joined the Peterson Institute.
Blanchard has worked on a wide set of macroeconomic issues, including the role of monetary and fiscal policy, speculative bubbles, the labor market and determinants of unemployment, economic transition in former communist countries, and the nature of the Global Financial Crisis. In the process, he has worked with numerous countries and international organizations.
Blanchard is the author of many books and articles, including two textbooks on macroeconomics, one at the graduate level with Stanley Fischer and the other at the undergraduate level. He is a past editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the NBER Macroeconomics Annual and founding editor of American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. He is a fellow and former Council member of the Econometric Society, a past president of the American Economic Association, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Source: Peterson Institute for International Economics
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