Speakers

Tyler Cowen

Is Average Over for Canada too?

Tyler Cowen is the Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University and also Director of the Mercatus Center.  He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1987.  His book, The Great Stagnation: How America Ate the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, was a New York Times bestseller.  He was recently named in an Economist poll as one of the most influential economists of the last decade, and last year Bloomberg Business Week dubbed him “America’s Hottest Economist.”  Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of its “Top 100 Global Thinkers” of 2011.  His book, An Economist gets Lunch, deals with the economics of food. His latest work, Average is Over: Powering America out of the Great Stagnation, focuses on the implications of growing inequality. He also co-writes a blog at www.marginalrevolution.com and he has recently initiated an on-line economics education project, MRUniversity.com.

Nolan McCarty

Inequality and Political Polarization in the United States

Nolan McCarty is the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs and Chair of the Department of Politics. He was formerly the associate dean at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His research interests include U.S. politics, democratic political institutions, and political game theory. He is the recipient of the Robert Eckles Swain National Fellowship from the Hoover Institution and the John M. Olin Fellowship in Political Economy. He has co-authored three books: Political Game Theory (2006, Cambridge University Press with Adam Meirowitz),  Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (2006, MIT Press with Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal) and Political Bubbles:  Financial Crises and the Failure of American Democracy (with Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal).  In 2010, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He earned his A.B. from the University of Chicago and his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University.

 Richard Johnston

Elections, the Party System, and Social Policy 

Richard Johnston (PhD Stanford) is Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Public Opinion, Elections, and Representation at UBC. He has also taught at the University of Toronto, the California Institute of Technology, Harvard University (Mackenzie King chair, 1994-5), and the University of Pennsylvania. He was an Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford, a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the European University Institute, and official visitor at MZES, Mannheim and the Australian National University. He is the author or co-author of five books, three on Canadian politics and two on US Politics. He has co-edited three other books and has written over 80 articles and book chapters. Much of his work focuses on elections and public opinion and in relation to this he was Principal Investigator of the 1988 and 1992-3 Canadian Election Studies and Research Director for the National Annenberg Election Survey (Penn), 2000-8. He is also engaged with the study of multiculturalism, diversity, and the welfare state and oversaw creation of the Equality, Security, and Community dataset.

David Rueda

Preferences that Matter: Inequality, Redistribution, and Voting

David Rueda is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Department of Politics and IR and Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University. He is the author of Social Democracy Inside Out (Oxford University Press, 2007) and his articles have appeared in the Annual Review of Political Science, American Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. He has received numerous research awards, including a British Academy Research Development Award for 2008-2010, and has been a fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (Princeton University) and the Summer Institute at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences (Stanford University). His current research focuses on insider-outsider politics, the determinants and consequences of inequality, and the role of the welfare state in times of crisis.

Mathew Lawrence

Citizens’ Excluded: Political Inequality in the UK, why it matters and what can be done

Mathew Lawrence is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), where he works on issues relating to political economy and democratic reform. His most recent publication was De-financialisation: a democratic reformation of finance (2014), and his forthcoming report addresses how to reverse systemic political inequality in Britain’s democracy. He is also the deputy editor of IPPR’s journal of politics and ideas, Juncture.

Nick Carnes

Why do the Rich Govern the US?

Nick Carnes is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. His new book, White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making, examines how the shortage of people from the working class in U.S. legislatures skews the policymaking process towards outcomes that are more in line with the upper class’s economic interests. He is also starting a large-scale study of the factors that discourage working-class citizens from holding public office and the programs that could help to address the shortage of workers in political institutions in the United States.

Arjumand Siddiqi

The Imprint of Inequality: Effects on Health and Developmental Outcomes Throughout the Life Course

Arjumand Siddiqi is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She holds additional appointments including in: the Department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto; the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada and the Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Dr. Siddiqi’s research examines the roles of policies, institutions and, other aspects of societies in shaping inequalities of health and human development across the lifespan. She focuses primarily on: inequalities along axes of socioeconomic status, race and, immigration within and between OECD nations; the contributions of income inequality and social policies to these inequalities and; the methods and metrics that enable scientific inquiry in this area. Dr. Siddiqi is an alumnus of the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research Global Academy and former Associate Member of its Program on Successful Societies. She was also a member of the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health Knowledge Hub on Early Child Development, and has consulted to several international agencies including the World Bank and UNICEF. Dr. Siddiqi received her doctorate in Social Epidemiology from Harvard University.

William Darity

Shades of Wealth

William Darity is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Duke Consortium on Social Equity at Duke University.

Andrew Coyne

Andrew Coyne is a journalist with the National Post. He has also had positions with Maclean’s, the Globe and Mail and the Southam newspaper chain. In addition, he has contributed to a wide range of other publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Review, Time and Saturday Night. Coyne is also a long-time member of the CBC’s popular At Issue panel on The National.

Chrystia Freeland

Chrystia Freeland is MP for Toronto-Centre. She is the author of Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. She served as deputy editor of The Global and Mail, the U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times, and editor-at-large of Thomas Reuters.

Keith Neuman

Keith Neuman, Ph.D. was appointed in November 2011 as the inaugural Executive Director of the Environics Institute.Keith’s previous role at Environics was as Group Vice President responsible for the research company’s Public Affairs and Environment-Energy research practice areas, providing leading-edge public opinion research in such areas as energy and environment, natural resources, health care, municipal services, justice, transportation, social policy and Aboriginal issues. Since the 1980s, Keith has conducted a wide range of public opinion and social research projects for public, private and non-profit sector organizations, with leading research firms in Toronto, Halifax and Ottawa.Keith holds a Ph.D. in Social Ecology from the University of California, and holds the credential of Certified Marketing Research Professional (CMRP). He is a frequent media commentator on social trends and public opinion.

Stephen Gordon

The American Dream and the Canadian One Percent

Stephen Gordon is Professor of Economics at l’Université Laval and a fellow of the Centre interuniversitaire sur le risque, les politiques économiques et l’emploi (CIRPÉE).

Thomas Lemieux

Earnings Inequality in Canada and Abroad

Thomas Lemieux is Professor of Economics and Director of the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia. He received his B.A. at Université Laval in 1984, his M.A. at Queen’s University in 1985, and his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1989. Professor Lemieux has held positions at MIT and the Université de Montréal prior to joining the faculty at UBC in 1999. He is a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a founding co-editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, and currently holds a Bank of Canada Fellowship. Most of his recent research focuses on the causes and consequences of the increase in earnings inequality in industrialized countries.

Jeff Borland 

Labour Market Inequality: the Australian Experience 

Jeff Borland is Truby Williams Professor of Economics at the University of Melbourne.  His research interests are analysis of the operation of labour markets in Australia, program and policy evaluation and design, Australian economic history, and sports economics.  He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and in 2010 was the Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University.  Jeff publishes a monthly ‘Snapshot’ on the Australian labour market.

Erica Fuchs

Economic Downturns, Inventor Mobility, and Technology Trajectories.

Erica R.H. Fuchs is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on the role of government in technology development and the effect of location on the competitiveness of new technologies. Dr. Fuchs was selected in 2012 as World Economic Forum Young Scientist (top 40 under 40, internationally). Her NSF CAREER award supported research focuses on rethinking national innovation systems. Over the past three years, Dr. Fuchs has been playing a growing role in national and international meetings on the future of U.S. advanced manufacturing, including advising the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology during a one-day workshop and welcoming President Obama during his 2011 visit to Carnegie Mellon to announce the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership. She currently serves on the U.S. Advisory Committee to the International Commission for Optics and previously served on the National Research Council committee on future trends and challenges in optical science. She is a member of the Advisory Editorial Board for Research Policy. Before coming to CMU, Dr. Fuchs completed her Ph.D. in Engineering Systems at M.I.T. in June 2006. She received her Masters and her Bachelors degrees also from M.I.T. in Technology Policy (2003) and Materials Science and Engineering (1999), respectively. Dr. Fuchs spent 1999-2000 as a fellow at the United Nations in Beijing, China. Her work has been published among other places in Science, Research Policy, and Management Science; and has been covered on National Public Radio and in the New York Times. Dr. Fuchs has been an invited speaker at a wide range of venues including the World Economic Forum Summer Davos, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Peter F. Cowhey

The Information and Production Disruption and the Question of Equality

Peter Cowhey is Dean and Qualcomm Professor of Communications and Technology Policy at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UC San Diego. In 2009, he served as Senior Counselor to Ambassador Kirk in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative where he advised on the agenda for trade policy while supervising multiple USTR offices. In the Clinton Administration he served as Senior Counselor and then Chief of the International Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission during its overhaul of its global competition policies and forging of a WTO agreement on telecommunications services. Cowhey is former Director of the UC system’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and head of policy studies for the California Institute on Telecommunications and Information Technology. Cowhey was the Chief Policy Officer for the Aspen Institute’s International Digital Economy Accords project. He is also the chairman of the CONNECT Innovation Institute and Vice Chair of the California Council on Science and Technology. He serves on the boards of the Grameen Foundation and the Institute of the Americas. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Cowhey holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Martin Kenney

Digital Platforms and Winner Take All Economics 

Martin Kenney is Professor of Human and Community Development at the University of California, Davis.

William Lazonick

Skill Development and Sustainable Prosperity: Collective and Cumulative Careers versus Skill-Biased Technical Change

William Lazonick is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he directs the Center for Industrial Competitiveness. He is co-founder and president of The Academic-Industry Research Network.

Douglas Noonan

Entrepreneurship to Alleviate Inequality: Policy Challenges and Opportunities

Douglas Noonan is Associate Professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and Director of Research, Public Policy Institute at Indiana University.

Amos Zehavi

Severing the Innovation-Inequality Link: Distribution Sensitive Science & Technology Policies in Israel

Amos Zehavi is a senior lecturer with a joint appointment at the departments of political science and public policy at Tel Aviv University. His main areas of interest are comparative social policy, the political implications of privatization, innovation policy, and mechanisms of institutional change. He has recently published in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Administration & Society, Research Policy, Regulation & Governance, and Social Policy and Administration.