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Interview

What Rolls Downhill

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Recent calls for mandatory retirement in academia are a reminder that class and other social hierarchies are something like mountains with increasingly dense fog toward their peaks: the higher up one is, the less one understands that upon which and above which one stands.
Essay

Cradle to the Grave

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As Sam Moyn has recently argued, “class reductionism” fails to explain differentiation along the generational gradient — a pattern clearly visible in economics, politics, and ideology. Yet a clear picture of how age mediates class would reveal not gerontocracy, but capitalism and the fractionated class system it produces.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: July 24

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Madison Condon and Luke Herrine on the economics that Law & Economics ignores, Jeremy Bearer-Friend and Sarah Polcz on why we should tax AI equity, Matt Bodie on the persistence of shareholder primacy, and Diana Reddy on theorizing discrimination for the bad jobs economy. Plus, two PhD scholarships available at UNSW Law, a set of new papers from the. . .
Symposium

Twilight of the Gods

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Contemporary proponents of law and economics claim to have abandoned the idea that law is an instrument for maximizing economic efficiency and wealth. Corporate law scholars haven’t yet heard the good news.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: July 10

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Fifteen of our favorite films on law and political economy, Jeff Gordon proposes an anti-entrenchment industrial policy, M. Sandhu makes the case against legislative primacy, Aslı Bâli revisits The Constitutional Bind during the interregnum, and R.H. Lossin looks back at early-20th-century criminal syndicalism laws. Plus, a CFP for the Conference of. . .
Essay

Property, Sabotage, and the Origins of Anti-Left Repression

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Between 1917 and 1921, twenty-one states passed criminal syndicalism laws. These laws, which were intended to help eliminate the Industrial Workers of the World, have largely faded from public memory. Looking back, however, we can see a formula for anti-left repression that has proven durable and widely appealing: the limitation of political speech and. . .
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.

LPE Masthead

Managing Editor James Brandt Editoral Board Zohra Ahmed Corinne Blalock Veena Dubal Luke Herrine Amy Kapczynski Aziz Rana Kate Redburn Ntina Tzouvala Lisa Washington Noah Zatz Student Editors Liz Brown Edie Conekin-Tooze Eve Zelickson
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