Recent research shows that economic opportunity is distributed unevenly by geography and that economic convergence across regions has diminished. Economically distressed areas are often rural and have experienced decreased labor force participation, decreased health, and increased deaths of despair. Two long-standing research questions are whether assistance should be focused on distressed places or the people in these places and whether or not policy should nudge people in distressed places to migrate to areas with more economic opportunity.
The U.S. adopted a nationality-based immigration quota system in the 1920s to reduce the inflow of Eastern and Southern Europeans (ESE) and to preserve the ethnic character of the nation. But these quotas may have had unintended negative consequences for American science and innovation by keeping out scientists and inventors from these ethnic groups. To what extent did the quotas prevent foreign-born scientists from entering the U.S. and to what extent did native-born scientists become less productive as a result of not being able to work with foreign-born colleagues?
In 1870, the average Black household held 3 percent of the wealth held by the average white household; 150 years later, Black households hold only 10 percent of the wealth held by whites. These disparities limit the capacity of Black households to invest in physical and human capital and to buffer economic shocks. While a large literature examines factors contributing to these inequities, few economists have examined the role of the Great Depression and associated policies in shaping Black socioeconomic mobility.
Police training is considered a key approach to reducing police violence and disparate treatment. However, few have studied the impact of training on the incidence of force and there is little evidence that such interventions will mitigate racial and ethnic disparities. Economists Matthew Ross and CarlyWill Sloan will examine police training programs and their impact on the use and escalation of force and the extent to which trainings mitigate racial and ethnic disparities.
Differences in academic achievement between high and low socioeconomic status (SES) children arise at an early age. Understanding the origins of these disparities is essential for designing effective policy responses. Most studies have focused either on parents’ inability to afford inputs (e.g., nutrition or preschool) or knowledge gaps among low-income parents.
While there is evidence regarding discrimination against Muslims, few studies focus on reducing it. Research from behavioral economics, psychology, and political science suggests that conversation-based interventions may reduce prejudice against out-groups, at least in the short term. Economist Yan Chen, political scientist Ann Lin, and computer scientist Kentaro Toyama will analyze and compare the effects of two conversation-based interventions in a randomized online experiment, using a representative sample of the U.S. population.
Despite increasing attention and resources dedicated to workplace diversity and inclusion, much remains unknown and unquantified. This poses challenges to designing and evaluating policies and programs to effectively detect and address bias and systemic inequality in the workplace. Economist Jeffrey Flory and his colleagues will conduct a field experiment to examine the effects of workplace diversity and inclusivity on worker behavior and employee composition.
Books
Hijacking the Agenda
Economic Power and Political Influence
About This Book
Winner of the 2022 Gladys M. Kammerer Award from the American Political Science Association
“Hijacking the Agenda should have a big impact on how we think about Congress, policymaking, and political inequality. It provides an ambitious and creative analysis of an often-overlooked dimension of political power—the outsized role of the wealthy and well-organized in determining whose problems get addressed and whose get ignored.”
—Larry M. Bartels, May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science, Vanderbilt University
“To know who governs, we must know who controls the governing agenda. In this innovative book, four top political scientists show that the congressional agenda is disproportionately shaped by economic elites and the politicians most friendly to and funded by them. Combining sophisticated quantitative analysis and compelling case studies, Hijacking the Agenda sets a new standard for research on inequality and American democracy—and sounds a loud warning that all scholars and citizens should hear.”
—Jacob Hacker, Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science, Yale University
Why are the economic concerns of lower- and middle-class Americans so often ignored by Congress, while the economic goals of the wealthiest are prioritized, often resulting in policies promoting their interests? In Hijacking the Agenda, political scientists Christopher Witko, Jana Morgan, Nathan J. Kelly, and Peter K. Enns examine why Congress privileges the concerns of businesses and the wealthy over those of average Americans. They go beyond demonstrating this bias to document how and why economic policy is skewed in favor of the rich.
The authors analyze over 20 years of floor speeches by thousands of members of Congress to examine how campaign contributions and independent expenditures on behalf of candidates help set the national economic agenda. They find that legislators receiving more support from business and other wealthy interests were more likely to discuss the deficit and other upper-class priorities, while those receiving more assistance from unions were more likely to discuss issues important to the lower and middle class, such as economic inequality and wages. This attention imbalance matters because when members of Congress talk about certain issues, their speech is often followed by legislative action. While unions use their resources to push back against wealthy interests, spending by the wealthy dwarfs that of unions, often giving the upper class the upper hand.
The authors use case studies analyzing financial regulation and the minimum wage to demonstrate how the economic power of the wealthy enables them to advance their agenda. In each case, the authors examine structural power, or the power that comes from a group’s economic position, and kinetic power, the power that comes from the ability to mobilize organizational and financial resources in the policy process. They show how business uses its structural power and resources to effect policy change in Congress, as when the financial industry in the late 1990s promoted passage of a bill that eviscerated financial regulations put in place after the Great Depression. Likewise, when business wants to preserve the status quo, it uses its power to keep issues off of the legislative agenda, as when inflation erodes the value of the minimum wage and its declining purchasing power leaves minimum-wage workers in poverty. Although groups representing lower- and middle-class interests, particularly unions, are sometimes able to shape policy if conditions are right, they lack structural power and have limited financial resources. As a result, the wealthy have considerable advantages in the policy process, advantages that only intensify as their economic power becomes more concentrated and policymakers continue to see policies beneficial to business as beneficial for all.
Hijacking the Agenda is an illuminating account of the way economic power influences the congressional agenda and policy process to privilege the wealthy and marks a major step forward in understanding the politics of inequality.
CHRISTOPHER WITKO is professor of public policy and political science and associate director of the School of Public Policy at Pennsylvania State University.
JANA MORGAN is professor of political science at the University of Tennessee.
NATHAN J. KELLY is professor of political science at the University of Tennessee.
PETER K. ENNS is professor of government at Cornell University and executive director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.