Thursday, March 10, 2016
2 p.m.
McKinney Conference Room
Monica Prasad is a professor of sociology at Northwestern University. Her areas of interest are comparative historical sociology, economic sociology, and political sociology. She has published books and articles on the rise of neoliberalism, the development of tax systems, the effects of carbon taxes, and the persistence of poverty in America.
Her most recent book The Land of Too Much (co-winner of the American Sociological Association's award for the best book in sociology) develops a demand-side theory of comparative political economy to explain the surprisingly large role of the state in the U.S., its origins in the 19th century revolution in agricultural productivity, and its consequences for undermining a European-style welfare state and leaving U.S. economic growth dependent on "mortgage Keynesianism."
She is currently a fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation, working on a book about the origins of the 1981 "Laffer curve" tax cut.