One of LPE’s foundational commitments, as Sanjukta Paul reminds us, is that law constitutes markets – and that, as a result, we are free to constitute them differently. But this simply begs the question: how ought we constitute them? This is where political theory can be useful. As Sam Bagg points out, many LPE scholars already understand that democracy must have something…
As the COVID-19 crisis rages on, individuals around the world are now thrown into a work-from-home, digitally-enabled “new normal” of the workplace. For most white-collar workers, homes have become offices, and boundaries between work and domestic life are being reshuffled. This shift, however, is just an acceleration of prior developments well under way since the beginning…
This post was originally published at Jacobin. Last Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The decision brings employment law in line with public opinion: a majority of Americans favor employment protections for LGBT…
We are assured Amna will have more to say here at the Blog, but for now check out her account of the abolitionist movement has developed into the type of coalition that can make real change in this moment.
“We’re all in this together” has become a familiar call for strengthening our sense of community and social responsibility during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this phrase can obscure deep social inequities, this recognition of our interdependence presents an opportunity to connect economic justice and public health. COVID-19 has instilled a new public understanding that our…
If you think shortages—in goods like toilet paper, meat, and masks—came in with the pandemic, think again. Shortages are periods during which demand exceeds supply, and they’re an inescapable feature of all markets, all the time. When an investor bids up the price of Apple stock because none is available at current prices, that’s a…
The price of food increased 2.6% in April, the largest single-month increase since 1974, but food industry executives are insisting that the country has enough food. So why are prices going up? The explanation provided by the industry is that consumers are buying more than they need, creating shortages. But a shortage is not a…
To combat the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government has enacted relief packages totaling nearly $2.5 trillion, with more aid likely to come. The fourth and latest effort contains $75 billion in grants for hospitals, and $25 billion to improve coronavirus testing. As economist Austan Goolsbee has rightly noted, “the number one rule of virus economics…
As the COVID19 pandemic and economic crises continue to ravage the country, it is increasingly clear that the virus is not just a public health challenge: it is also exposing deep systemic failures of governance, and disparities of political power. Black and brown Americans are the most likely to die from this virus, a reflection…
Learned Hand once described the task of the Federal Trade Commission as “discover[ing] and mak[ing] explicit those unexpressed standards of fair dealing which the conscience of the community may progressively develop.” In a previous post, I argued that moving consumer protection law beyond consumer sovereignty requires recovering this way of thinking, common among Progressives and…
The consumer is at the center of the neoliberal’s moral universe. For both neoclassical welfarists and Hayekian moralists, the consumer is the Everyman. For, whatever else we do, we are all consumers. The “free market” has value because it forces the firms that control the process of production and distribution to compete for our business.…
Adrian Vermeule recently made a stir with his proposal for a “common-good constitutionalism.” He argued that originalism had “outlived its utility” now that the right had gained power on the federal bench. Instead it was time for a “substantively conservative approach to constitutional law and interpretation.” We got only a few peaks at the substance,…
This is the second post on ‘Money in Context.’ You can read the first post here. The observation with which I closed Part 1 implicates a challenge – or perhaps better put, it extends an invitation. In light of the inherently infrastructural role played by payment systems and their associated monies in any ‘exchange economy’…
This is the first of two posts on Money in Context. Read Part II here. We’ve all heard the adage. ‘Time is money.’ The utterer usually means that time can be spent earning money, so that to ‘waste time’ is to incur a pecuniary opportunity cost. But there’s another sense in which money is time – or…
We often hear that the current COVID crisis came “out of the blue,” that “nobody” was expecting it.* But anyone with a decent grasp of pressing issues in public health knew the risks of pandemics. As I wrote in 2014: [R]eduction in hospital facilities and other resources, although “efficient” in normal times, may prove disastrous if there…
