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LPE Blog
Essay

Against Legislative Primacy

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On this blog and elsewhere, Congress has recently been cast as a cure for our decrepit democracy. This push for legislative primacy is a mistake: it valorizes a deeply undemocratic institution, relies on a selective reading of the past, and distracts us from vital debates about the policies we should be pursuing and persuading others to support.
Essay

The Dilemma of Picking Winners

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Industrial policy will often require picking winners: if there were already many domestic firms capable of producing the desired output, there would be no compelling reason for subsidy or special treatment. Yet in doing so, the government risks locking in dominant firms and foreclosing the competition it ultimately needs. How might policymakers avoid this. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: June 26

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Amy Kapczynski on LPE and social science, Sam Moyn on the class reductionist response to Gerontocracy, and Rakeen Mabud on why the affordability frame needs a power analysis. Plus, a bevy of new essays, papers, and events, covering the history of the consumer price index, left critiques of the constitution, the international right to strike, worker. . .
Essay

Affordability Politics Needs a Power Analysis

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A renewed focus on the cost of living crisis is a welcome and potentially unifying frame for the political left. Yet unless we confront the Trump administration’s consolidated economic, cultural, and bureaucratic power, any attempt to deliver an affordability agenda is bound to fail.
Essay

Age and the Lure of Class Reductionism

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Gerontocracy in America has elicited a common refrain from critics: that class, not age, is the real problem. Yet this kind of class reductionism has largely been rejected when it comes to gender and race, and age should be no exception.
Essay

Dispatches from the ALPE Convention Floor

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This past February, hundreds of scholars converged in downtown Richmond for the inaugural Association of Law and Political Economy conference. As interest in the field grows, a larger question looms: can a loose coalition on the academic left turn shared critiques of the status quo into a durable movement?
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: June 12

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Evan Behrle on income inequality, Frank Pasquale on Magnifica Humanitas, and Wanshu Cong on the informal governance of global capitalism. Plus, a new report by Sanjay Jolly on advancing a constitutional regime for labor rights, Melinda Cooper offers a typology of factions of asset-based capitalism, Elliot Lewis and Zach Lewis explain how to democratize. . .
Symposium

The Informal Governance of Global Capitalism

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The marginalization of international law under the second Trump administration has been a shock to the post-Cold War world order. Yet the impact of this development on the global economy has been far from uniform. Some of the most important sectors to trade — including telecommunications and civil aviation — were already governed primarily through informal,. . .
Essay

You Didn’t Earn That

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When defending income inequality, high-earners often appeal to an old left-wing idea: that workers are entitled to the fruits of their labor and should be paid the value of their productive contribution. But does this idea make sense in a complex, interdependent economy?
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: June 5

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Richard Joyce assesses Mark Carney’s speech at Davos, while Sarah Schindler and Kellen Zale discuss the abundance agenda’s anti-tenancy blindspot. Plus, Tanzil Chowdhury on legislative supremacy in Great Britain, Aslı Bâli on the emerging world order, Sandeep Vaheesan and Claire Kelloway on the consolidation of the US food system, some straight. . .

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