The UC Irvine Center for Economics & Public Policy, School of Social Sciences and Department of Economics present

"How Redistributive Public Policies Contributed to the Great Recession"
with Casey Mulligan, Professor, University of Chicago

Monday, May 7, 2012
6:00-7:15 p.m.
Engineering Lecture Hall 100

Casey Mulligan is an economics professor at the University of Chicago. His arguments about the role of government policy in contributing to the Great Recession focus on both labor and housing markets. First, he argues that more than a dozen rule changes for the Unemployment Insurance and transfer programs have led to reduced incentives to work. Second, because mortgage write-downs used in response to the housing crisis are being tied to income, such practices can perpetuate unemployment. In short, while most commentators attribute the Great Recession to demand-side influences, Mulligan has a unique perspective -- that government and banking sector policies have inadvertently raised the tax on working so much that labor supply has fallen sharply, and that this, rather than deficient aggregate demand, has made the recession so deep and prolonged.  

Mulligan is the author of Parental Priorities and Economic Inequality, which focused on the transmission of economic status from one generation to the next. His research has also covered capital and labor taxation, the gender wage gap, Social Security, voting, and the economics of aging. His latest book, The Labor Market and the Great Recession: How Redistribution Distorted the Economy, is in production with Oxford University Press. Mulligan is published regularly in The New York Times Economix Blog.

For further information, please contact Sandy Cushman, scushman@uci.edu or 949-824-3344.