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David Bloom ’13 MM ’15. Photo by Bruce Kung
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—David Bloom ’13 MM ’15
—David Bloom ’13 MM ’15
Faculty News
Pocketbook Issues Such as Raising Minimum Wages, Paid Leave, and Protecting Public Education Could Sway the American Electorate, New Levy Economics Institute Report Says
"Americans are far more progressive than either party gives them credit for. Whatever path forward Democrats choose, winning back the working class would be a long process without a big and bold vision,” says coauthor Pavlina R. Tcherneva.
Pocketbook Issues Such as Raising Minimum Wages, Paid Leave, and Protecting Public Education Could Sway the American Electorate, New Levy Economics Institute Report Says
Blithewood, home to the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.
Long-Term Voting Trends Show Democrats Losing Working Class Support Due to Absence of Clear Vision for Popular Progressive Economic Policies
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College has published a policy brief outlining economic policies that improve the lives of working-class families and could sway the American electorate. That “Vision Thing”: Formulating a Winning Policy Agenda, Levy Public Policy Brief No. 158, coauthored by Levy Economics Institute President Pavlina R. Tcherneva and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray, analyzes the shifting allegiances of American voters over the decades as the Democratic Party lost the support of its traditional base—blue-collar and rural counties—and came to be seen as the party of the educated elite, socially liberal, and relatively economically secure.
“Trump was the beneficiary of a long-term retreat of working-class voters from the Democratic Party. But becoming the party of the economically secure in a world of runaway inequality, rising precarity, and widespread frustration with many aspects of the economy does not and will not win elections. Still, as we show in this report, Americans are far more progressive than either party gives them credit for. Whatever path forward Democrats choose, winning back the working class would be a long process without a big and bold vision,” says Tcherneva.
For the first time since 1960, Democrats earned a greater margin of support among the richest third of American voters in 2024 than they did among the poorest or middle third. Meanwhile, Trump gained more vote share in counties rated as distressed—and gained less in prosperous counties—despite those counties benefiting significantly and performing better economically under President Biden’s policies that boosted government assistance. In spite of the Democratic focus on inequality, the party fails to reach the financially disadvantaged (who are the true swing voters) with their message, the report asserts.
“Democrats had neither delivered on nor even highlighted the changes that many voters wanted: policies that would provide economic benefits. They were tired of inflation that reduced purchasing power, wages that remained too low (even in supposedly good labor markets) to support their families, and many other issues related to economic precarity, including the costs of healthcare, prescription drugs, childcare and—for a significant portion—college,” write Tcherneva and Wray.
Assessing ballot measures and polling data, the Levy report identifies worker-friendly policies that would improve the wellbeing of the American working class and win elections. “Americans seem to apply two litmus tests to any proposed policy: (1) how will it impact American jobs and (2) how will it impact American paychecks,” they find. “If tariffs are expected to protect jobs, voters are behind them. If they hurt their paychecks, even conservative-leaning voters are strongly against them.”
Ballot measures indicate voters are more progressive than either party recognizes. Winning policies include: raising minimum wages, lowering taxes on earned income and social security (or eliminating them altogether for tips), making healthcare and education more affordable, protecting funding for public schools, increasing Pell grants, reducing the costs of higher education, and implementing paid sick and family leaves. Importantly, whenever asked, Americans strongly support federal programs of direct employment and on-the-job training—in the form of a federal job guarantee or national service for youths in jobs that support the community and the environment. They also care about rebuilding public infrastructure and investing in arts and culture.
Moreover, voters want policies that protect them from price increases, corporate greed, predatory interest rates, and hidden fees. They support more progressivity in the tax system and fewer tax loopholes for billionaires. They are tired of the dominance of billionaires in lobbying by special interests and campaign finance.
“Employment security, economic mobility, community rehabilitation, and environmental sustainability are winning messages. But they are especially powerful when anchored in concrete policies that directly deliver what they promise—good jobs, good pay, decent benefits, affordable health, education, food, and a peace of mind that Americans can care for loved ones without the threat of unemployment or price shocks or the loss of essential benefits,” the report concludes.
Post Date: 03-10-2025
Pavlina Tcherneva Joins WAMC’s Roundtable Panel on the State of the US Economy and How it Impacts Voters
"‘Defund, deport, deregulate, destroy.’ Trump's message plays on economic fears and anxieties,” said Tcherneva.
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Business Insider Interviews Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva about the Job Guarantee
Business Insider Interviews Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva about the Job Guarantee
Bard Professor of Economics and President of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva spoke to Business Insider about Universal Basic Employment (UBE), which is a job guarantee policy. Many countries around the globe have tested out UBE programs, but support for the policy has yet to catch on in America. “A job guarantee is really a public option for jobs. It’s a basic job that is provided irrespective of what the state of the economy is,” said Tcherneva, who is the author of The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity 2020). “We can implement it now when the economy is in a relatively calm state and then be ready when business conditions slow down and people are laid off.” Although logistically more complicated to implement than universal basic income programs, UBE has long-lasting economic benefits, argues Tcherneva. UBE would fight inflation by establishing a minimum livable wage without increasing prices elsewhere, prevent labor shortages by supplying a willing and ready workforce, and mitigate sudden financial hardship. She believes UBE is on par with Social Security as a means to shore up economic stability and that pilot programs are unnecessary. “We didn't really pilot public education to figure out whether we wanted it,” Tcherneva said. The first American UBE pilot program will launch in Cleveland in 2026. Advocates see the potential to win more bipartisan support for UBE over simply giving people checks through universal basic income.Bard Professor of Economics and President of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva.
Post Date: 08-20-2024
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Pavlina Tcherneva Discusses the Recent Stock Market Sell-Off on Background Briefing with Ian Masters
Pavlina Tcherneva Discusses the Recent Stock Market Sell-Off on Background Briefing with Ian Masters
Bard Professor of Economics and President of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva spoke with journalist Ian Masters about Monday’s panic on Wall Street and fears that it may presage a recession. “I’m not exactly sure if it’s a panic, or an opportunity to liquidate some positions,” said Tcherneva. “The real question for us is, would that then ripple through the rest of the economy? At this moment, I’m not detecting unsustainable processes in financial markets to cause the kind of effects on the real economy as we saw in 2008.” Tcherneva, who watches the data on labor markets and public investments very closely, believes that the US labor market still has significant room to grow, pointing out that we have yet to recover our employment-to-population ratio or labor force participation rate to pre-COVID levels. She believes the government needs to keep investing in the economy to sustain the recovery. “We set the economy on a really strong growth path in the last four years . . . If we pull out too quickly, if we allow an administration to impose drastic cuts to these public programs, this is where I think we can be certain that a recession will come.”Trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Photo by Scott Beale CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Post Date: 08-06-2024
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The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College Welcomes Pavlina R. Tcherneva as New President
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College Welcomes Pavlina R. Tcherneva as New President
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College has appointed Pavlina R. Tcherneva as its next president, succeeding Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, who has held the role since its founding in 1986.Pavlina R. Tcherneva, president of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.
“After 38 years as president of the Levy Institute, the time has come to pass the baton to the new generation,” Papadimitriou announced. “I can think of no one better than Pavlina to lead the Levy Institute into its next phase of development in exploring solutions to the economic challenges that lie ahead.” Papadimitriou will remain at the Institute as president emeritus and senior scholar.
Tcherneva, who first joined the Levy Institute in 1997 as a forecasting fellow, has been a scholar at the Institute since 2007, specializing in modern money and public policy. She is a professor of economics at Bard College and founding director of the Bard-OSUN Economic Democracy Initiative. Her book The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity 2020), one of the Financial Times economics books of 2020 and published in nine languages, is a timely guide to the benefits of one of the most transformative public policies being discussed today.
“I am honored and energized to take this new role and am grateful to Dimitri Papadimitriou for building a world-class institution that has influenced economic policy in the US and abroad. I am especially excited to support the work of my colleagues whose research has placed the Levy Institute among the most-cited non-profits in the world,” stated Tcherneva. “My mission is clear: to continue to curate cutting-edge research, grow our graduate programs, and amplify the Institute's impact on policy. We have produced some of the most influential work on financial instability, money, inequality, gender, and employment policy and we will continue to make these impacts and expand the Institute's reach.”
She added, “Our work matters. Financial markets crash. Mainstream theories fail. At the Levy Economics Institute, we will continue to do what we do best: make sense of the senseless, find patterns in the chaos of global economics, and produce actionable policies for a safe, sustainable, and stable economy.”
Since 1986, the Levy Institute and its scholars have reinvigorated heterodox economics, with contributions to macroeconomic theory, modeling, and policy targeting financial and economic stability for the US economy and the rest of the world. The Levy Institute has also developed a distinct research program on the distribution of income and wealth featuring two measures of economic well-being (LIMEW) and time and income poverty (LIMTIP) that will help shift official measures of living standards in the years ahead; is one of few institutions with a focus on gender equality and the economy; and has graduated scholars from its MA and MS degree programs in Economic Theory and Policy, who go on to play significant roles in economic think tanks, international organizations, governments, and the world of finance.
Post Date: 07-09-2024
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Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva’s Work on the Job Guarantee Becomes Focus of US National High School Debate Topic
Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva’s Work on the Job Guarantee Becomes Focus of US National High School Debate Topic
Thousands of high school students across the United States have been studying the work of Bard Professor of Economics and Research Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva in preparation for their national debate tournaments. The official resolution for the 2023–24 High School Policy Debate Topic reads: “The United States federal government should substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by adopting a federal jobs guarantee, expanding Social Security, and/or providing a basic income.” Tcherneva’s book The Case for a Job Guarantee was included in the compilation of research, which the Library of Congress prepares each year, pertinent to the annually selected national debate topic. As this year’s debate season progressed, the federal jobs guarantee policy has emerged as the overwhelming favorite policy for student debate teams on the affirmative. As a result, there are at least a few thousand students across the United States who have gotten very well acquainted with Tcherneva’s work over the past three months.Bard Professor of Economics and Research Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva.
According to Chris Gentry, program manager of the Policy Debate League for Chicago Public Schools, “Almost every affirmative team across the country is running a jobs guarantee case, and to do so they are pulling heavily on Tcherneva’s publications.” During one weekend tournament, Gentry realized that essentially every debate relied on Tcherneva’s work. In just one round that he was judging, 10 different articles or books that she wrote had been quoted. “At least twice this last weekend, I heard ‘well that’s not what Tcherneva is trying to get at here,’” he added. Another high school debate coach in Los Angeles confirmed that Tcherneva has likely been the most cited author in high school debate this year, and as a result the student debaters are quite familiar with her work.
“Personally, I can’t think of a greater impact of my work than seeing young people engage with it, study it, and defend its principles,” says Tcherneva. After meeting with a group of high school student debaters this month, she adds, "The questions the students asked about the job guarantee were probing, well-informed, thoughtful, and inspired—with a keen focus on social justice. I hope that some of them will become policy makers.”
Inspired by this nationwide student engagement, Tcherneva has also opened up spots in her summer workshop “Public Finance and Economic Policy” to select high-school debate students interested in going deeper into Modern Monetary Theory and the job guarantee. Organized and hosted by Bard College and the OSUN Economic Democracy Initiative (EDI), this five-day workshop taking place online June 17–21 is for undergraduate students interested in public policy to tackle economic instability and insecurity, and in understanding the financing capacity and policy space available to governments to pursue these aims. Applications from high school debate students will be reviewed in April and early May. Students can apply here.
Tcherneva also recently developed a resource tool jobguarantee.org, created and maintained by Bard College students and alumni, with the support of OSUN, for anyone interested in learning more about the job guarantee policy innovation.
Centered on the well-being of some of the most vulnerable parts of the US population, the 2023–24 national debate topic of “Economic Inequality” prevailed over “Climate Change” and represents a pressing issue at the forefront of our collective societal consciousness.
Post Date: 04-03-2024
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Psychologist Sarah Dunphy-Lelii Considers the Politics of Sudden Power Transfer Among Chimpanzees
Psychologist Sarah Dunphy-Lelii Considers the Politics of Sudden Power Transfer Among Chimpanzees
In “The Chimpanzee Wars,” a recent post to Wild Cousins, her Psychology Today UK blog, Associate Professor of Psychology Sarah Dunphy-Lelii engages in a thought experiment about how the state of knowing and of understanding of who knows and who doesn’t know could potentially impact the politics of power transfer within dominance hierarchies of chimpanzees.Sarah Dunphy-Lelii.
Among more than 200 Ngogo chimpanzees living in Kibale National Park, Uganda, one undisputed alpha named Jackson ruled for years until internal conflicts split the largest known chimpanzee community into two warring factions—Westerners and Centrallers. After Jackson is killed from injuries sustained in a battle, no younger alpha males step up to seize leadership of the Centrallers. A likely explanation, according to researchers, is that they didn’t know Jackson was dead. Only one Centraller, a potential alpha named Peterson, witnessed his death, and none found his body. Theoretically, Peterson could have used this position to his advantage. “Chimpanzees are socially sophisticated. Their dominance hierarchies are not based solely on physical strength. What we might call politics—the accumulation of social capital through strategic alliances over time—play a significant role in the rise to leadership. Under conditions like this one, between the Westerners and the Centrallers, insight into others’ states of knowledge could be decisive,” writes Dunphy-Lelii. She notes, however, that evidence to date suggests chimps, like Peterson, are not using this information the way humans would.
Post Date: 05-02-2023
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Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva Interviewed on Background Briefing with Ian Masters
Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva Interviewed on Background Briefing with Ian Masters
Ian Masters spoke with Pavlina Tcherneva, associate professor of economics at Bard College, research associate at the Levy Economics Institute, and author of The Case for a Job Guarantee (2020), on his nationally syndicated radio program Background Briefing. In the episode, “As Pundits Warn of Recession and Inflation, We Get the Best Economic News Since 1969,” Masters asks Tcherneva for her take on the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report, which added 517,000 jobs in January 2023 and stunned most economists and people who continue to harbor a doomsday mentality about the economy.Pavlina Tcherneva.
According to Tcherneva, two years after the COVID-induced crisis, such good news about low unemployment levels tells us that “public policy has tools. It can act boldly, quickly and bring jobs back.” She points out, however, that these low unemployment numbers also reflect the 5.7 million people who are not looking for work, and 4 million people who are working part-time but would like to have full-time jobs.
“Part of the anxiety still being experienced in the labor market is that the jobs are there but they are not exactly these well-paying jobs with very good benefits and good working conditions. On that front, there is more to be accomplished. Let us remember our minimum wage is still $7.25, and no one can live on $7.25 an hour,” she asserts.
Tcherneva sees the big fiscal policies implemented over the last two years by the Biden administration, which do not overly focus on the financial sector or prioritize tax cuts for the wealthy, as all good news. Still, she advocates for more economic progress. “The question for me is did we come out of the pandemic with better jobs, better conditions for working families than we had going into the pandemic?”
Post Date: 02-14-2023
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