We study a series of sustained growth models in which households' preferences are affected by the consumption of other households as summarized by average consumption. In endogenous growth models, the equilibrium paths involve lower savings and lower growth than the corresponding efficient...

Using data on household balance sheets from the Survey of Consumer Finances and data on macroeconomic rates of return from Jordà et al. (2019) we construct two alternate series for household rates of return by race from 1989 to 2016. Our estimates suggest a persistent racial gap in the rate of...

We study a two-class model of growth and the distribution of income and wealth at the intersection of contemporary work in classical political economy and the post-Keynesian tradition. The key insight is that aggregate demand is an externality for individual firms: this generates a strategic...

A longstanding criticism to Keynesian and Kaleckian growth theories is the question: why would firms operating with underutilized capacity still accumulate capital stock? This paper offers an answer by analyzing the choice of capacity utilization and accumulation in a strategic setting. The...

Four alarming stylized facts have characterized the recent economic history of the United States: (i) a fall in labor productivity; (ii) a fall in the labor share, (iii) an increase in the capital income ratio, and (iv) an increase in the wealth share owned by top income earners. In this paper,...

This paper studies the effect of religion on the economic progress of Black Americans after Reconstruction. Southern religious institutions-particularly the Southern Baptist church-played a key role in the development of the Lost Cause mythology that helped legitimate the white supremacist...

This paper studies two formal models of long run growth with a medium-run distributive cycle, both of which feature causal links from the rise in inequality to a deterioration of long run macroeconomic performance. Both versions feature an endogenous income-capital ratio: one through the...

In this paper we set up a baseline, but nevertheless advanced and complete model representing detailed goods market dynamics, heterogeneous labor markets, dual and cross-dual wage-price adjustment processes, as well as counter-cyclical government policies. The cyclical movements of output...

The Goodwin (1967) model of the growth cycle assigns distributional conflict a central role in the dynamics of capital accumulation, but is silent on the determinants of technical change. Following Shah and Desai (1981), previous studies focused on the effects of the direction, or bias of...

Following a methodology proposed by Jantzen and Volpert (2012), we use IRS Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) data for the United States (1921-2012) to estimate two Gini-like indices representing inequality at the bottom and the top of the income distribution. We also calculate the overall Gini index...