Policy & Media

Policy reports/briefs

• "A growth policy to close Britain's regional divides: What needs to be done". with Nyasha Weinberg, Dan Turner, Esme Elsden, and Ed Balls". HKS MR-CBG Associate Working Paper No. 225, February 2024. (and overview of our team's full research program on UK's regional economic inequality at this website)

• "Employer concentration suppresses wages for several million U.S. workers: antitrust and labor market regulators should respond". Washington Center for Equitable Growth Policy Brief, 26th January 2021.

• "Under the wage floor: exploring firms' incentives to comply with the minimum wage", with Lindsay Judge. Resolution Foundation Briefing Note, 8th January 2020.

Columns

• "Why CEOs should want better enforcement of labor law", The Hill, September 12 2024.

• "US firms have little financial incentive to comply with the minimum wage", Voxeu.org, April 15 2024.

• "The US economics profession's socioeconomic diversity problem", Voxeu.org, November 9 2023.

• "How to tackle the UK's regional economic inequality", Voxeu.org, March 6 2023.

• "Levelling up can still work: here's how", with Dan Turner and Ed Balls, The Times, March 6 2023.

• "Economics needs more socioeconomic diversity". Harvard Business Review, 11th June 2022.

• "Higher productivity growth boosts pay - to a greater degree in the United States than Canada", with Jacob Greenspon and Larry Summers. PIIE Realtime Economic Issues Watch, 14th April 2022.

• "Productivity and pay: A comparison of the US and Canada", with Jacob Greenspon and Larry Summers. Voxeu.org, 15th February 2022

• "Antitrust should be used as a targeted response to employer concentration, but it can't do everything", with Gregor Schubert, ProMarket, 8th December 2021.

• "What good is a minimum wage if it's stolen?", Bloomberg Opinion, 19th July 2021

• "U.S. workers need more power", with Larry Summers. Washington Post, 28th June 2020.

• “Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power”, with Larry Summers. Voxeu.org, 2nd June 2020.

• “Moving job interviews out of bedrooms matters”. Bloomberg Opinion, 6th September 2019.

• “Whither central banking?”, with Larry Summers. Project Syndicate, 23rd August 2019.

• “Want to boost U.S. productivity? Tackle inequality”. Bloomberg Opinion, 23rd July 2019.

• “What Marco Rubio gets right - and wrong - about the decline in American investment”, with Larry Summers. Washington Post, 31st May 2019.

• “On the link between US pay and productivity”, with Larry Summers. Voxeu.org., February 20th 2018.

• “Twenty years on: Is there still a case for Bank of England independence?”, with Ed Balls. Voxeu.org, May 1st 2017. 

Presentations (videos/slides)

• "To Tackle Inequality, re(Build) Worker Power". 7-minute TED-style presentation in the Harvard Inequality Program's series "Big Ideas in Inequality", November 2020. (video (starts at 25:58), slides).

• "Want to boost U.S. productivity? Tackle inequality."  Presentation at the launch of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Center at Capital Community College, Hartford, December 2019. (slides only)

• "Low productivity growth: implications for inequality" Presentation at book launch for Facing Up to Low Productivity Growth (eds. Adam Posen and Jeromin Zettelmeyer) at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington DC, March 2019.  (video (15 min), slides, and a Tweet thread summary.) 

Panel Discussions / Podcasts / Radio

• "Why Even a PhD Isn't Enough to Erase the Effects of Class". The Economics Show. October 7 2024.

• "Economics Needs More Socioeconomic Diversity". Pitchfork Economics. September 17 2024.

• "Tackling Regional Economic Inequality in the UK". Centre for Cities CityTalks Podcast. April 12 2023.

• "How to Boost Worker Bargaining Power". Bloomberg Odd Lots. August 4th 2022

•  Interview on The Mixtape with Scott Cunningham. August 3rd 2022

• "Is the Productivity-Pay Link Broken?". AEI Political Economy podcast. June 29th 2022

• "Unpacking Diversity in Economics". Moody's Talks Inside Economics podcast. June 17th 2022

• "Economics' Diversity Problem Includes Socioeconomic Diversity". NPR Marketplace. April 28th 2022

• "The Links Between Productivity and Pay" Productivity Puzzles podcast. March 9th 2022 

• "Why will 2022 be the year of the worker?" The Economist podcast. December 13th 2021

• "The Declining Worker Power Hypothesis". InequaliTalks podcast. October 13th 2021

• "Worker Power". Economists on Zoom Getting Coffee podcast. July 16th 2021.

• "Wage Suppression" The American Prospect panel discussion. July 13th 2021

• Discussion on labor markets and delivery workers. eFM This Morning (South Korea). January 4th  2020.

• "The decline in worker power and how COVID has changed it". Unfair Nation Podcast, September 29th 2020.

• "The Power of Workers". NPR "The Indicator", July 24th 2020.

Media Coverage of Research

• "The Class Gap in Career Progression: Evidence from academia" (with Kyra Rodriguez). Coverage included: Financial Times, Marginal Revolution, The Economics Show podcast (FT)

• "Incentives to Comply with the Minimum Wage in the US and UK". Coverage included: The Hill op ed; VoxEU column; MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter

• "Tackling the UK's Regional Economic Inequality: binding constraints and avenues for policy intervention" (with Dan Turner and Ed Balls. Coverage included: Financial Times (1), Financial Times (2), Guardian.

• "Socioeconomic Diversity of Economics PhDs" (with Robert Schultz). Coverage included: NPR Marketplace, Washington Post, MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter, Marginal Revolution, the Why Axis, CGD Blog, Pitchfork Economics, Moody's Inside Economics

• "The Declining Worker Power Hypothesis" (with Lawrence H. Summers):  Coverage included: WSJ Real Time Economics, New York Times, NPR's the Indicator, Marginal Revolution, Libération, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 

• "Under the Wage Floor" (with Lindsay Judge): Coverage included: FT, Guardian, BBC, Telegraph, Times, Bloomberg, Mirror

• "Productivity and Pay: Is the Link Broken?" (with Lawrence H. Summers): Coverage included:  Wall Street Journal,  Financial Times, Bloomberg, Economist.

• "Central Bank Independence Revisited" (with Ed Balls and James Howat): Coverage included: Financial Times, Guardian, Telegraph, BBC, CityAM

Selected Other Media Quotes/Mentions

• "Columbia, MIT explore the future of work with new business school courses". Bloomberg Sep 2022

• "Remote work could be the reason you don't have a job in 10 years". Fortune Sep 2022

• "5 questions on the productivity-pay gap". Faster Please Substack July 2022

• "Chomsky: Overturn of Roe shows how extreme an outlier the US has become". Truthout June 2022

• "The price of nostalgia: America's self defeating economic retreat". Foreign Affairs May/June 2022

• "Inside the secretive world of union busting". Capital and Main Dec 2021

• "A big fight lies ahead for U.S. labor to lock in pandemic gains". Bloomberg Sep 2021

• "American workers rush to take advantage of pandemic bargaining power". NBC News Aug 2021

• "Middle class pay lost pace. Is Washington to blame?" Washington Post May 2021

• "Working from home? Then maybe you should be paid more to get a bigger place, say economists". ZDNet Feb 2021

• "U.S. economy is healing, but budget office says workers have a long way to go". New York Times Feb 2021

• "Could young workers change the future of labour?" BBC Worklife Dec 2020

• "Salários, sindicatos, e Covid-19". Visão Nov 2020

• "Coronavirus: How the world of work may change forever" BBC Worklife Oct 2020

• "Covid-19 Is Dividing the American Worker", WSJ Aug 2020