The Newcomer Dividend

Wharton’s Zeke Hernandez hopes to bend the immigration debate toward a question rooted in his own research on capital investment and business formation: What do natives stand to gain? 

Fighting Poverty With Cash

Several decades since the last big income experiment was conducted in the US, School of Social Policy & Practice assistant professor Amy Castro Baker has helped deliver promising data out of Stockton, California, about the effects of giving people no-strings-attached money every month. Now boosted by a new research center at Penn that she’ll colead, more cities are jumping on board to see if guaranteed income can lift their residents out of poverty. Will it work? And will policymakers listen?

Inequality Economics

Tax the rich! And the poor. But not the way we do it now, nor necessarily for the usual reasons. As an economist pushing his field to grapple with inequality, Wharton’s Benjamin Lockwood may change the way you think about the government’s broadest power.

Prophet of Prosperity

Simon Patten, who led the Wharton School during the Progressive Era, was a pioneer of the economics of abundance, theorist of the second industrial revolution, and intellectual godfather of the New Deal. His descent into obscurity poses provocative questions about how the field has evolved.

Man in a Hurry

Former New Orleans mayor and current president and CEO of the National Urban League Marc Morial C’80 is on a mission to reclaim the organization’s role as the economic voice of black and urban America and of all those who are “weak, disadvantaged, and dispossessed.”