The Center for Political Economy has selected nine projects — from 13 faculty/scholars and three student collaborators — as recipients of its 2024-2025 faculty grants.

Center faculty grants support the generation of new knowledge and networks, facilitate the exchange of discoveries, accelerate the identification of key challenges, and expand the methods scholars use in their research. This year’s grant recipients will lead projects that align with three of the Center’s Idea Labs, which mobilize intellectual resources around the following themes: Firms and Industrial Policy; Work and Labor; and Money and Finance. 

The winning projects are led by colleagues from multiple disciplines and schools, including Arts and Sciences, Business School, Journalism School, and Barnard College. They include the following:

The Northern Enlightenment: Political Economy of Improvement

This project aims to enhance understanding of the political economy of Sweden in the 17th century, particularly its focus on the advancement of natural knowledge and the harnessing of nature’s abundance as the key to improvement, in contrast to the British, French and Dutch political economies of the time with their focus on labor as the source of wealth. Wennerlind and collaborators will be organizing a two-day conference and publishing an edited volume with essays from the conference. Pictured at right, from top to bottom:

• Carl Wennerlind, professor and chair, History Department, Barnard College 
• Collaborator: Christopher Brown, professor, History Department, Columbia University

Social Study of Forced Disappearance

The Social Study of Forced Disappearance Lab, a collaboration between Columbia and Barnard faculty, the Columbia library, and multiple Mexican institutions, investigates the emergence of forced disappearances in Mexico as a growing strategy for the violent regulation of local economies and the production of social order, as the Lab aims to shift the public knowledge and memorialization of disappearance. Their grant will support a workshop series, a public-facing website and a year-end conference. Pictured at right, from top to bottom:

• Claudio Lomnitz, Campbell Family Professor and Chair, Anthropology Department
• Collaborator: Naor Ben-Yehoyada, assistant professor, Anthropology Department, Columbia University 
• Collaborator: Nara Milanich, professor, History Department, Barnard College 
   

Rikers Island Longitudinal Study

This is a subproject of the Rikers Island Longitudinal Study, a study investigating the factors that influence pretrial outcomes for about 300 New Yorkers facing new criminal charges in order to inform the policy process for reducing pretrial detention, which is key to shutting down the Rikers Island Jail Complex. The subproject will explore the relationship between the social conditions of poverty, such as untreated health problems, substance use disorders, and housing insecurity, to income and employment, and the effects of long criminal court processes on employment and precarious work. Pictured at right, from top to bottom:

• Bruce Western, Bryce Professor of Sociology and Social Justice, Sociology Department

• Collaborator: Samantha Plummer, associate research scholar, Justice Lab

Clause and Effect: Field Experiments about Employer Noncompete Agreements

This project will examine the impact of employer noncompete agreements on both workers and firms by conducting large field experiments with two finance firms and their hiring of HR professionals. Specifically, the project aims to understand the effect of noncompete agreements on worker mobility, wage dynamics, innovation, and the broader labor market. The project researchers will produce a paper summarizing their findings. Pictured at right, from top to bottom:

• Bo Cowgill, assistant professor in Management Division, Business School
• Collaborator: Evan Starr, associate professor, University of Maryland
• Collaborator: Brandon Friberg, PhD student, Business School
• Collaborator: Zikai Xu, PhD student, Department of Economics, Columbia University
   

Anti-Monopoly as Industrial Policy

Richard John seeks to challenge assumptions within anti-monopoly thought and practice by reconstructing distinct anti-monopoly visions centered on commerce, land, industry, and knowledge. To this end, John will use grant funding to carry out three projects related to his research agenda: the compilation of a union list of notable anti-monopoly publications that he would make accessible to the public via Columbia’s Academic Commons; the preparation of a prosopographical directory of self-identified anti-monopolists; and the computer-assisted analysis of three keywords: “monopoly,” “industrial,” and “consumer.”

• Richard John, professor of History and Communications, Journalism School

Social Norms and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Bangladeshi Knitwear Factories

This project will investigate the impact of social norms on firm productivity in six Bangladeshi knitwear factories through the use of field experiments and incentivized surveys designed to examine how communication between high- and low-status individuals may affect information flow and worker productivity. The project team hypothesizes that, in certain settings:, high-status individuals (e.g., men) are unwilling to receive productivity- improving information from low-status individuals (e.g., women);, that this dynamic is costly to the firm;, and that it limits the career advancement of low-social status groups. The main output of the project will be an academic paper published in a peer-reviewed academic economics journal. Pictured at right, from top to bottom:

• Laura Boudreau, assistant professor in Economics Division, Business School
• Collaborator: Sakib Mahmood, research fellow, BRAC Institute of Governance and Development
• Collaborator: Oren Reshef, assistant professor, Strategy & Entrepreneurship, Washington University in St. Louis

Markets for Climate Experts

This research project investigates the role of increased demand for climate experts in climate policymaking, as government regulators seek experts to develop and enforce climate policies and firms seek those same experts to influence policy and evaluate climate risks to their businesses. Investigators will perform observational and experimental analysis to examine how heightened private sector demand for climate expertise impacts governments' recruitment and retention of climate experts, thus influencing the quality of climate policy, and will also conduct an online field experiment to evaluate strategies for bolstering climate expertise within government and enhancing job prospects for climate professionals. Pictured at right, from top to bottom:

• Calvin Thrall, assistant professor, Political Science Department
• Collaborator: Noah Zucker, assistant professor of International Relations, London School of Economics
• Collaborator: Simran Singh, PhD student, International Relations

Monetary Policy, Labor Income Inequality and Credit

This research project aims to investigate how monetary policy affects income inequality among firms and the role of the credit channel in the transmission mechanism. Furthermore, it aims to establish a novel link between labor, macroeconomics, and finance literature by examining the importance of credit frictions in the propagation of monetary policy to the dispersion of workers' wages. The objective of the project is to prepare a research paper submitted for publication in a top journal of economics or finance. Pictured at right, from top to bottom:

• Dominik Supera, assistant professor in Finance Division, Business School

• Collaborator: Martina Jasova, assistant professor, Economics Department, Barnard College

Diverging Effects of Financialization for Patients and Health Care Providers

This project examines how financialization influences healthcare practices and the experiences of both patients and providers through qualitative interviews. Zhou aims to understand how financialization may compound social advantages and disadvantages by evaluating its impacts on underserved groups with regards to doctor-patient relationships, health behaviors, and clinical practices in comparison to its impacts on privileged groups. Findings from this project will lay the groundwork for applications for additional funding as well as conference presentations and articles.

• Amy Zhou, assistant professor, Sociology Department, Barnard College