Confronting Inequality: How Societies can Choose Inclusive Growth

The Peterson Institute for International Economics held an event to discuss the important new book, Confronting Inequality: How Societies can Choose Inclusive Growth, on January 31, 2019. The book’s authors, Jonathan Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Andrew Berg of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), along with PIIE Nonresident Senior Fellow Jason Furman and Heather Boushey of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, discussed this critical topic.

Inequality has drastically increased in many countries around the globe over the past three decades. The widening gap between the very rich and everyone else is often portrayed as an unexpected outcome or as the tradeoff that must be accepted to achieve economic growth. In this book, Ostry, Loungani, and Berg show that this increase in inequality has in fact been a political choice—and explain what policies we should choose instead to achieve a more inclusive economy.

Andrew Berg is deputy director of the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development. Prakash Loungani is an assistant director in the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office. Jonathan D. Ostry is deputy director of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund.

Jason Furman is Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and nonresident senior fellow at PIIE. Previously he served eight years as a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, including serving as the 28th chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017.

Heather Boushey is the executive director and chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She previously served as chief economist for Hillary Clinton’s transition team, and as an economist for the Center for American Progress and the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress.