ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: THE UNHAPPY COLLISION OF ECONOMIC CRISIS AND INEQUALITY
Periodic crisis is a feature of capitalist economies, long noted by Marx, Keynes, Minsky, Kindleberger, and a plethora of heterodox economists. So, too, is the reproduction of intergroup inequality, whether by race, gender, or class. The large number of economic crises over the past several decades – originating in both developed and developing countries – has
weighed more heavily on economically and socially subordinate groups. But increased inequality is not only an effect of economic crisis. At the most basic level, economic inequality is a structural vulnerability that can itself lead to financial crisis. Some observers have gone so far as to suggest that gender inequality
is at the root of the 2008 global economic crisis (Elisabeth Prügl 2012). France’s then Finance Minister, Christine Lagarde (2010), for example, claimed that had the Lehman Brothers been the Lehman Sisters, financial managers would likely have exhibited a greater sense of responsibility and pragmatism. Others, such as Scott E. Page (2007), have argued more generally that homogenous organizations that lack intellectual, ethnic, and gender diversity perform more poorly than more heterogeneous organizations. Inequality as evidenced by homogeneity, Page argues, limits the breadth of ideas and perspectives and, as a result, hampers the quality of decision making. The various strands of crisis theory, and their relationship to distributional
dynamics, have not yet come together to form a unified whole. In part that is because assessments of the distributional effects of the crisis are fragmented. Most heterodox macroeconomic studies examine income and employment effects while feminist studies not only disaggregate these effects by gender, but also frame the issues in a broader conception of wellbeing and nonmarket dimensions of the economy. Another reason is that assessments differ in the degree to which they encompass a framework that identifies the structural factors that lead to the crisis in the first place. Moreover, there is often a weak understanding of the role of different forms of inequality as a causal factor in creating conditions of fragility that are conducive to crises. Heterodox macroeconomists and those concerned with intergroup inequality therefore have a lot to learn from each other in providing a deeper analysis of economic crises. In this introduction, we do not provide a synopsis of the contents of the
studies making up the special issue, but rather take a different approach. The primary goal of this introduction is to sketch a framework for bringing together the various strands of analysis about the causes, consequences, and policy ramifications of economic and financial crises, with a specific focus ondistributional dynamics. Specifically, the framework presentedhere aims to facilitate a conversation between macroeconomic theorists of crises and instability, on the one hand, and feminist economists and scholars of intergroup inequality, on the other. The studies in this volume elaborate on various aspects of these themes. Our goal here is to show how these threads are intertwined. By bringing these avenues of scholarship under one roof, we wish to generate the intellectual cross-fertilization that can yield a more robust analysis of crises, with an ability to highlight multiple forms of inequality and not only short-run but also longer-run impacts.
