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LPE Originals

The Antitrust Case Against Gig Economy Labor Platforms

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In the fight to regulate the gig economy, unions, workers, and their allies have only fought half the battle: they have tried to defend the definition of employment against technology-enabled erosion. Antitrust prohibitions against vertical restraints, which prevent firms from exercising control in the absence of an employment relationship, offer a complementary strategy to address the threat posed to workers by the gig economy.
LPE Originals

Merger Policy for a Fair Economy

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Over the past four decades, a tidal wave of corporate mergers has resulted in industry concentration, higher prices, and reduced productive capacity. The U.S. wireless industry in the 2010s offers a case study of the public benefits of strong anti-merger law.
LPE Originals

From Steel to Health Care to Broke

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In Braddock, Pennsylvania – home to America’s first mill for the mass production of steel – more than a third of residents now live beneath the poverty line. How did Braddock go from a steel town to a hospital town to broke?

LPE Originals

Financial Regulation, Price Stability, and the Future

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Financial regulation lies at the core of sound inflation management. Accordingly, progressives seeking to turn the page on the past few decades of failed macroeconomic policymaking should not hesitate to bring the full scope of financial regulatory tools to bear in the pursuit of just price stability.
LPE Originals

Communities of Extraction

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In regions marred by extractive industry, a just transition requires redressing the political isolation and subordination of people living at the fenceline.
LPE Originals

The Making of a Caregiving Crisis

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A system of employer-based health benefits created not only a fragmented health care financing structure but also an extremely powerful and consolidated industry that now resists changes to that structure.

LPE Originals

Labor Law and Employer Domination: From Steel to Care

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Postwar steelworkers and contemporary healthcare workers inhabited strikingly different economic circumstances. Yet in both eras, courts allocated to companies various powers they could use to impose market discipline on workers, thereby facilitating the degradation of work.
LPE Originals

The Making of a New Working Class

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What happens when the factory is gone and the working class has been rendered dispersed and invisible? In this post, Gabriel Winant kicks off a symposium on his recent book, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America.
LPE Originals

A Just Transition for Finance

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The quest for “non-extractive finance” is filled with legal hurdles. This post examines how lawyers can support organizers working to imagine and build a better financial system.
LPE Originals

Let Them Eat Cake: Inflation Beyond Monetary Policy

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In developing countries, inflation is often driven by the failure of the food supply chain. While economists are well-aware of this, they do not adequately value policies other than monetary policy for responding to inflation. It is time to discard this short-sighted approach.