Heller-Hurwicz Office Hours Heller Hurwicz

UMN Economics Professor Jo Mullins says that cash assistance programs play a crucial role for poor households with children. "We know that from a pure accounting sense, if we look at what households in the United States get from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, i.e. cash welfare, what they get from food stamps, what they get from the Earned Income Tax Credit, and more recently, the Child Tax Credit. You know, if you add all those things up, we know that they play a significant role in poverty reduction and the rates of exposure of children to what official statistics would call the poverty rate."

In late 2023, the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice revised their Merger Guidelines, and lowered the threshold for labor market concentration, making clear that the labor market concentration is going to be an important factor in antitrust policy going forward. Hear University of Minnesota economist Kyle Herkenhoff discuss the history of M&A policy and the new 2023 Merger Guidelines. 

According to Herkenhoff and his co-author's research, roughly 10% of markets in the U.S. are “single-firm markets,” meaning one company controls the jobs in that region. Additionally, in those single-firm markets, they find that workers are paid roughly 30% less than competitive wages and that monopsony power is pervasive across American industries and cities.

"We made a lot of progress in, you know, gender wage gaps and earnings gap, and so on, throughout the 70’s, the 80’s and early 90’s," says Federal Reserve Bank Researcher Anusha Nath. "And after all the policy changes that were made … we still see a huge wage gap, whether it's by gender, or whether it's by race. So even today, some of the latest numbers suggest that women earn 82 cents to $1 that men earn, if you look at the Black-white gap, it's 87 cents to $1, for Blacks versus whites."

Hear UMN Economics Professor Hannes Malmberg share why education/skills are widely acknowledged as central for economic development, yet their precise role remains uncertain. 

"What we're trying to look at is the interconnection between how much does the lack of big firms connect to the lack of education in a skilled workforce," says Malmberg. "We often assume that economic growth is a well defined concept, you know? Some countries are rich, some countries are poor. I think it's an assumption you should question. And you should look at the data."

Join us for the first episode of our new season of Office Hours. Hear HHEI Director Kjetil Storesletten discuss why inequality has increased since the 1970s.

"We worry that some people are getting a rotten deal," says UMN Economics Professor Kjetil Storesletten. "And there is perhaps a trade off between what is fair and what is efficient … we've seen the biggest increase in inequality in the century over the last [few] decades, and that's concerning to many."

Scientists agree: global warming is the result of CO2 produced by human activity, and urgent action is needed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. What isn't clear is how this should be done in a global market economy. Fortunately, economic analysis can be used to figure out what policies have the best chance of success given economic and political realities. Tune in to hear Per Krusell, Professor at the Institute for Economic Studies at Stockholm University, discuss the economic approach to reducing carbon emissions. Originally recorded on September 22, 2022.