In 2007, the wealthiest 1% of families controlled more than 23% of income in the U.S. for the first time since 1928.
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Energized by the rich dialogue she witnessed at Tobin’s spring inequality conference, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) offered to co-host a roundtable discussion between policymakers and scholars in Washington, D.C. The meeting brought together key administration officials and Congressional leaders with Tobin-affiliated scholars to explore the potential consequences of dramatic economic inequality in the United States.
Shortly after the September release of their acclaimed book, Winner-Take-All Politics, Jacob Hacker (Yale University, Political Science) and Paul Pierson (University of California-Berkeley, Political Science) headlined a panel discussion in Cambridge co-sponsored by the Tobin Project and the Harvard Kennedy School.
What are the ingredients integral to a healthy democracy? In September, the Tobin Project invited eight top scholars with expansive and overlapping perspectives to consider the fundamental institutions and processes that constitute a sustainable and vibrant democracy. The group paid particular attention to the role of civil society and education in democratic societies.
In the spring of 2010, the Tobin Project issued a call for fellowship aplications from students doing work that addresses the intersection between democratic institutions and economic markets. Fellowships were awarded to fourteen students, whose projects ranged from "Policymaking at the U.S. Federal Reserve" to "Farming Families, Farm Policy, and the Business of Southern Agriculture, 1940-1980." Many of the felloship recipients came together in September for the first fall meeting of the Democracy & Markets forum.
In August, a New York Times article highlighted the potential link between income inequality and financial crises, drawing on the work of David Moss (Harvard Business School), Margaret Blair (Vanderbilt University Law School), and Richard Freeman (Harvard University, Economics), whose research in this area was developed at Tobin's
As part of the Tobin Project’s National Security inquiry into "Power through its Prudent Use," scholars Deepak Malhotra (Harvard Business School) and Jeremi Suri (University of Texas-Austin, History) traveled to Washington, D.C. in July to share their research with members of the policymaking community.
In the wake of the financial crisis, it became clear that existing models of the financial system were not only mistaken, but lacking real-world perspective and empirical foundation. Confronting these deficiencies, the Tobin Project supported a workshop in June, entitled "Behavioral and Institutional Research and Financial Regulation," to forge a better understanding of our financial system and develop innovative social-science based frameworks that illuminate its workings.
Personal identity, long a concern of sociology, is now being incorporated into economic models thanks to the pioneering work presented in Identity Economics (Princeton University Press, 2010), a new volume by Nobel Prize-winning economist and longtime Tobin Project friend, George Akerlof (University of California-Berkeley, Economics), and co-author Rachel Kranton (Duke University, Economics).
Over the past three decades, the United States has become richer, but significantly more unequal. In 2007, the most affluent 1% of American families received more than 23% of total income for the first time since 1928. While the causes of this dramatic rise in inequality are widely researched, far less is known about its potential effects on our economy, our democracy, and our society.
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At a 2011 meeting for authors of the Preventing Capture volume, Sabeel Rahman (Harvard Law School) discusses an idea with Richard Revesz (NYU Law School).