Where are the data files?
On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Jonathan Nitzan <[email protected]> wrote: > Hager, Sandy Brian. 2013. Public Debt, Ownership and Power: The > Political Economy of Distribution and Redistribution. Unpublished PhD > Dissertation, Political Science, York University, Toronto, pp. 1-231. > > ABSTRACT > > This dissertation offers the first comprehensive historical examination > of the political economy of US public debt ownership. Specifically, the > study addresses the following questions: Who owns the US public debt? Is > the distribution of federal government bonds concentrated in the hands > of a specific group or is it widely held? And what if the identities of > those who receive interest payments on government bonds are distinct > from those who pay the taxes that finance the interest payments on the > public debt? Does this mean that the public debt redistributes income > from taxpayers to public creditors? Who ultimately bears the burden of > financing the public debt? > > Despite centuries of debate, political economists have failed to come to > any consensus on even the most basic facts concerning ownership of the > US public debt and its potential redistributive effects. Some claim that > the public debt is heavily concentrated and that interest payments on > government bonds redistribute income regressively from poor to rich. > Others insist that the public debt has become very widely held and > instead redistributes income progressively. The lack of consensus, I > argue, boils down to both the empirical and theoretical problems that > plague existing studies. > > Empirically, only a handful of studies have attempted to map the > ownership pattern of US federal government bonds, and even fewer have > made efforts to measure the redistributive effects associated with a > given ownership pattern. And to make matters worse, those few studies > that do attempt to map the pattern of US public debt ownership make > little effort to theorize in any systematic way the distributive and > redistributive dimensions of the public debt. > > Anchored within a ‘capital as power’ theoretical framework, my purpose > in this is to shed some much-needed light on the dynamics of > distribution and redistribution that lie at the heart of the public > debt. I show for the household and corporate sectors how over the past > three decades, and especially in the context of the current crisis, the > ownership of federal bonds and federal interest has become rapidly > concentrated in the hands of dominant owners, the top 1% of households > and the 2,500 largest corporations. Over the same period the federal > income tax system has done little to progressively redistribute the > federal interest income received by dominant owners. In this way, this > dissertation argues that, since the early 1980s, the public debt has > come to reinforce and augment the power of those at the very top of the > hierarchy of social power. > > [This thesis was nominated for the York University Dissertation Prize.] > > FULL TEXT: http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/382/ > > *** > > Recent additions and updates to the Bichler & Nitzan Archives: > http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/perl/latest > > Free to repost and circulate with due attribution under the Creative > Commons License (attribution-noncommercial-no derivative). To > unsubscribe, reply to this email with "unsubscribe" in the subject field. > > -- > Jonathan Nitzan > Political Science || Social and Political Thought > York University > 4700 Keele St. > Toronto, Ontario, M3J-1P3 > Canada > > Voice: (416) 736-2100, ext. 88822 > Fax: (416) 736-5686 > Email: nitzan at yorku.ca > > Website:http://bnarchives.net > Discussion Forum:http://www.yorku.ca/cmass/forum/ > Journal:http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/research/recasp/index.html > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
