The Costs of Inequality: Capitalism and Democracy at Cross-Purposes
Channel: Havens Wright Center for Social Justice
Date: 25/09/2022

A lecture by Robert Wade scrutinizing the problem of income inequality, the justifications of economists and institutions to ignore it, the social and politic costs of inequality, while offering suggestions as to how the left can develop a political narrative that highlights the representation bias that benefits those at the top.

Robert H. Wade is professor of political economy at the London School of Economics.  He was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2008. His book Governing the Market (Princeton University Press, 1990, 2004) won the American Political Science Association award for Best Book in Political Economy in 1992. In 2008 The Financial Times listed him as one among “fifty of the world’s most influential economists.” Before LSE he worked at the Institute of Development Studies (Sussex University), Princeton, MIT, Brown, and the World Bank, and held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the Russell Sage Foundation, New York, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin. He has carried out field research in Pitcairn Island, Italy, India, South Korea, Taiwan, and inside the World Bank. In recent years his research and writing has concentrated on issues of industrial policy (including in the United States); global inequality; global economic and financial governance (including the G20 and the World Bank); financial crises; and the ethics of economists.