The Washington Center for Equitable Growth is proud to introduce Delivering equitable growth: strategies for the next Administration. This series of essays serves as a guide to the two presidential transition teams, highlighting academic experts and their ideas on a wide range of economic policy issues core to our country’s future. Read the essays.
Ideas about what does—and what does not—make the economy grow are at the core of our national economic debate. The U.S. economy underwent dramatic structural changes over the past three decades, with one of the most profound being the rise in economic inequality. Data from University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez shows that share of income accruing to the top one percent grew dramatically, from 34.2 percent in 1979 to 50.5 percent in 2015. Analysis from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office finds that while incomes for the top one percent grew by 187 percent between 1979 and 2013, incomes for the middle 60 percent of American households grew by just 32 percent over that same period. This period of rising inequality has been matched by a three-decade long deceleration in the rate of U.S. economic growth.
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth is proud to be a hub for economists and other scholars who are actively working to come to terms with what these changes mean—and what the research implies for policymaking. Making evidence-informed policy requires knowing the research, and, perhaps even more importantly, knowing who to rely on for smart ideas. As the next Administration gears up to govern, building out this network of ideas and scholars is critical. To that end, we introduce “Delivering equitable growth: strategies for the next Administration.” This series of essays highlights academic experts and their ideas on a wide range of economic policy issues core to our country’s future.
These essays are neither a platform nor a position statement. Rather, they represent a diverse range of academic experts writing in their own words about an economic problems facing our society, summarizing the research that defines those problems, and proposing solutions informed by that research. Scholars tackled topics ranging from policies affecting families, businesses, capital and markets, and communities. Equitable Growth provided copy editing and layout assistance for the essays.
These essays are meant to be a starting place for the next Administration’s engagement with Equitable Growth’s rapidly growing network of academics who are part of the evidence-driven conversation about the future of U.S. economic policy. We hope that our efforts provide a launch-point for elevating new voices and new ideas into the conversation, as well as highlighting the evidence behind ideas that have been part of the conversation for quite some time.
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you are interested in speaking with one of the authors or in learning more about the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
Elisabeth Jacobs
Senior Director, Policy
Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Families
The policy issues:
The tipped minimum wage
By Sylvia A. Allegretto
Economist and Co-chair, Center on Wage & Employment Dynamics
Institute for Research on Labor & Employment
University of California-Berkeley
Income volatility
By Bradley Hardy
Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration and Policy
American University
Early childhood development
By Ariel Kalil
Professor of Public Policy
Harris School of Public Policy Studies
University of Chicago
Social Security
By Jesse Rothstein
Professor of Public Policy and Economics
Director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment
University of California-Berkeley
Unemployment insurance reform
By Till von Wachter
Professor of Economics and Associate Director, California
Center for Population Research
University of California-Los Angeles
U.S. labor market mobility
By Abigail Wozniak
Associate Professor of Economics
Department of Economics
University of Notre Dame
Businesses
The policy issues:
Trade and worker welfare
By David Autor
Ford Professor of Economics
Department of Economics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Supply chains
By Susan Helper
Frank Tracy Carlton Professor of Economics
Weatherhead School of Management
Case Western University
Consumer credit
By Kyle Herkenhoff and Gordon Phillips
Assistant Professor of Economics
Department of Economics
University of Minnesota
&
C.V. Starr Foundation Professor and Academic Director
Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship
Tuck School of Business
Dartmouth College
Capital and markets
The policy issues:
Wealth transfer taxation
By Lily Batchelder
Professor of Law and Public Policy
New York University School of Law
Monetary policy
By Alan Blinder
Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs
Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies
Department of Economics
Princeton University
Home mortgages
By Atif Mian and Amir Sufi
Professor of Economics and public affairs at Princeton University
Director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance
at the Woodrow Wilson School
Princeton University
&
Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy
Booth School of Business
University of Chicago
Communities
The policy issues:
Geography of economic inequality
By Kendra Bischoff
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Cornell University
Neighborhood segregation
By Patrick Sharkey
Professor of Sociology
New York University
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