“Winner-Take-All Economics” Professional Inquiry and Public Discourse on Material Inequality
By Jonathan Pryor
What can account for the failure of economists to extend a firm guiding hand into the public discourse on material inequality in contemporary America? This paper reviews historical and modern economic literature and then extends its focus to the debates in the public sector, private opinion, “think tanks,” the news media, the private sector, special interest groups, and popular culture. The intractable social, political and economic complexity of the problem and the influence of competing interests deter attempts at economic interpretation. Economists should respond to the public need by devoting greater attention to descriptive and prescriptive analyses, developed with an appreciation of the competing interests and activities of the various sectors that must accept any response.
Advisor: Craufurd Goodwin | JEL Codes: A11, A13, B12, B13, B14, B15 | Tagged: Economic Inequality, Income Inequality, Wealth Inequality
Marketing Laboratory Experiments: The Resistible Rise of Laboratory Markets
by Paul Slattery
Abstract
This paper will endeavor to develop a history of market experimentation. It will begin with a discussion of its earliest manifestations in the work of Edward Chamberlin, tracing its development through the dominance of Vernon Smith, Charles Plott and their students, and ending with its prospects for the future. It will pay particular attention to the iterative process by which market experimentation developed and gained presence in a changing disciplinary context. In the earlier period of market experimentation, spanning from Edward Chamberlin’s work in the 1940s through the mid 1970s, the substantial research will lend itself to rather comprehensive analysis. However, from the mid 1970s on, the proliferation of market experimentation will require restricting the purview to only the most substantial developments.
Professor Craufurd Goodwin, Faculty Advisor
Understanding the Role of the Arts and Women in the Economy: The Contributions of Creative Literature.
by Danielle P. Petrilli
Abstract
This article considers the role of the arts and women in the economy from the late 19th into the early 20th century. Throughout this time period, the economics discipline did very little to address the place of either the arts or women in the modernizing economy and what little was done, on the whole, lacked complexity. This article thus begins with a brief outline of the views of the arts and women in the economy by economists during this time, but finding a greater wealth of information on these topics within creative literature, uses the work of prominent novelists as its primary research material
Professor Crauford Goodwin, Faculty Advisor
JEL Codes: B54, Z11,
