The rise of financialization has led to lower living standards and reduced growth in the U.S.

The last 30 years has seen a massive rise in the importance of financial instruments in the American economy. But what has been the impact of this shift in corporate investment strategy? In new research, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey writes that the concentration of wealth and power in the financial service industry has led to lower living standards and weaker state investment in citizens and infrastructure. He argues that tax and fiscal policies should promote investment in production and employment over financial strategies by non-finance firms

Occupations, workplaces or jobs? An exploration of stratification contexts using administrative data

Occupations have long been held by sociologists, from the older status attainment tradition to the more recent micro-class tradition, to be at the center of stratification writ large. Occupations are specifically argued to be central to shaping wages. Indeed, this has been understood as the comparative advantage of sociology relative to economics in understanding wage setting. However, an undercurrent has for decades existed in sociology that suggests other contexts, mainly workplaces and jobs, may be as important if not more important stratification contexts. Until recently data with the capacity to simultaneously assess all three contexts has been virtually non-existent. In this paper we use administrative data from five countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan, and South Korea) to assess the relative contributions of occupations, establishments, and jobs to wages. Our core finding is that there is no universal link between occupations and wages, with occupations explaining between 30 and 56 % of wage variance across country-years. As well, in all countries except Finland establishments explain more of the variance in wages than do occupations. Jobs and establishment figure prominently in the social organization of wages, and must be included in theoretical models and whenever possible in empirical analyses of social stratification

Beware Financialization, Attractive and Dangerous, but Mostly Dangerous

One of the central projects of neoliberalism has been the financialization of the global economy. Financialization refers to both the rising political and economic power of financial service firms and the growing importance of financial, rather than production, strategies in the rest of the economy. In the US case at least, financialization also accompanied a shift from values associated with employment and production to a normative elevation of financial investment. In the US the financialization dimension of neoliberalism has increased national and global systemic risk, increased income inequality between sectors of the economy, capital and labor and among classes of workers, and at the same time has led to decreased employment and a less productive economy. The lesson is that, despite the surface attractiveness of globalized finance, financialization is a particular dangerous dimension of neoliberal politics and polic

SUNDOWN ON THE SUNBELT? GROWTH WITHOUT DEVELOPMENT IN THE RURAL SOUTH

This report produces a series of policy proposals designed to address the shortcomings and comparative disadvantages of rural Southern economic development. The policy proposals are based on careful social science research described in the body of this report. While the research is largely based on the North Carolina case, the policy recommendations should be carefully considered throughout the Southern region where the political and economic division between sunbelt blessed urban areas and poor rural places is evident. This executive summary first outlines the. central research findings and then lists the policy proposals. The reader interested in the basis for reaching these recommendations needs to read the research reported in Chapters One through Five. If your interest is confined to further details on the policy proposals Chapter Six might be a good place to start

The Comparative Organizational Inequality Network: Toward an Economic Sociology of Inequality

List of authors: Donald Tomaskovic-Devey with Nina Bandelj, Irene Boeckmann, István Boza, David Cort, Dustin Avent-Holt, Olivier Godechot, Gergely Hajdu, Martin Hällsten, Lasse Folke Henriksen, Andrea Hense, Are-Skeie Hermansen, Joon Han, Feng Hou, Jiwook Jung, Aleksandra Kanjuo-Mrčela, Joseph King, Naomi Kodama, Alena Krizkova, Zoltán Lippényi, Silvia Maja Melzer, Eunmi Mun, Andrew Penner, Trond Petersen, Andreja Poje, Anthony Rainey, Mirna Safi, and Zaibu TufailThe international Comparative Organizational Inequality Network (COIN) asks: • What factors drive overall income inequality within and between workplaces? • How do workplaces exacerbate or mitigate the impact of individual distinctions, such as education level, gender, or immigrant status? • How do inequality-generating mechanisms vary as a function of institutional context