About

The economic shocks generated by the financial meltdown of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic have catalyzed a wide range of fresh thinking. Not just financial or viral crises, but soaring inequalities, transformations to the scale of firms, often beyond effective regulation, inadequate investments in public goods, and global supply chain limitations have called into question the adequacy of inherited economic frameworks, especially radical market-based approaches that often go hand in hand with budgetary austerity.  

At the same time, a new intellectual ferment is underway. We are witnessing a sprouting of post-neoliberal theory and an empirical turn in applied research, and liberation from a fixation on efficiency as the primary criterion to evaluate market outcomes. Further, scholarship concerning the zone of political economy is bringing economics into conversation with other disciplines, as scholars respond to the multiple dimensions of inequality—attending not only to vital assets like housing and medical care, but also to access to dignity and respect, heightened political as well as economic uncertainty, and fractured institutions.

The Columbia Center for Political Economy is motivated by these contemporary circumstances, with confidence that renewed thinking in economics and interdisciplinary engagement can generate feasible policy ideas, advance equitable prospects to better secure and share prosperity, help ensure a sustainable environment, and undergird representative democracy. 

With support from the Hewlett Foundation, the center builds upon initiatives and programs across Columbia University, spanning disciplines and fields of inquiry including economics, history, law, political science, sociology, public health, engineering, and data science. The center seeds new research, prompts scholarly publications and policy outputs, fosters curricular materials that will feed into textbooks and coursework, and creates and deepens networks of scholars and practitioners among the Columbia community and beyond. 

At the core of its work, the center is developing “idea labs'' to serve as intellectual and policy incubators across distinct themes.