This paper examines spatial variations in exposure to toxic air pollution from industrial facilities in urban areas of the United States, using geographic microdata from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators project. We find that average exposure in...

The financial crisis of 2007 and thereafter has taken a toll on family wealth. About $15 trillion (in 2008 dollars) --22.8%--were lost in the first 18 months of the financial crisis which started in the spring of 2007. The loss of household wealth deserves public policy attention. Wealth serves...

As the world financial crisis deepens, the task of generating decent employment has taken on more urgency, yet now faces even more obstacles then before. Of course, a key component of the solution to the current crisis will be massive expansionary fiscal actions on the part of the rich...

Robert Pollin and Jeannette Wicks-Lim consider the economic impact of two living wage proposals for Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee. Pollin and Wicks-Lim look at the overall costs of each proposal, which offer a wage of $10.80 per hour and health insurance benefits to two alternative pools...

A substantial amount of environmental justice research has taken the form of “proximity studies” that analyze the race and class composition of populations living in close proximity to general sources of pollution. Such studies often find disproportionate minority, poverty, and low-income...

The U.S. economy faces enormous questions and challenges as it attempts to recover from the collapse of 2008-09. Some of the most pressing questions are a series of longer-term, structural challenges: Can we establish a growth engine driven by something other than financial bubbles? Can we renew...

Wall Street hyper-speculation brought the global economy to its knees in 2008-09.  To prevent a 1930s-level Depression at that time, economic policymakers throughout the world enacted extraordinary measures.  These included large-scale fiscal stimulus programs, financed by major expansions in...

The authors demonstrate that the average state or local government worker earns higher wages than the average private-sector worker—but only because they are, on average, older and substantially better educated. More than half of state and local government employees in New England have a...

The factors that allow the launch of a speculative attack, such as those on he government debts of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy in 2010, are always multiple. In this case, they can be found in some simultaneous events (e.g. the regional German elections of the 9th of May), in some...