Lane Kenworthy
Biographic Data
| ID | 122016 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lane Kenworthy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lane |
| FAMILY NAME | Kenworthy |
| SIGNATURE | KENWORTHY L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Arizona |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4890-7501 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 980 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Is Inequality the Problem?
To a host of thoughtful observers, economic inequality is one of our most important problems and needs to be fixed. Concern about inequality’s injustice has been overtaken by worry that inequality has harmful consequences for a host of things we care about. What does the experience of the rich longstanding-democratic nations in the era of rising inequality from 1979 to 2019 tell us? The evidence offers little support for inequality-is-harmful hyp…
Power and inequality: Determinants of Income Inequality in Rich Capitalist Democracies, 1960 to 2019
We explore the link between the distribution of power and income inequality in rich capitalist democracies since 1960. We advance understanding of the impact of government ideology, a key indicator of the distribution of power, in two ways. First, previous research has tended to focus on government ideology at the country level. We make use of party manifesto data to introduce a novel global ideology measure that captures a global shift rightward…
Economic Inequality and Plutocracy
Social Democratic Capitalism
Social democratic capitalism, which draws inspiration from Scandinavian countries, is a form of market capitalism aimed at the full realization of economic security, equality of opportunity, and shared prosperity for society’s members. In such a system, government plays a key role in improving economic and living conditions, and minimizing inequality through such mechanisms as a progressive income tax structure to cover the cost of an income floo…
Social Democratic Capitalism
What configuration of institutions and policies is most conducive to human flourishing? The historical and comparative evidence suggests that the answer is social democratic capitalism — a democratic political system, a capitalist economy, good elementary and secondary schooling, a big welfare state, pro-employment public services, and moderate regulation of product and labor markets. Lane Kenworthy shows that this system improves living standard…
Never Enough: Capitalism and the Progressive Spirit
Why the Surge in Income Inequality
Income inequality probably has had little or no effect on subjective well-being
Progress for the Poor
One of the principal goals of antipoverty efforts should be to improve the absolute living standards of the least well-off. This book aims to enhance our understanding of how to do that, drawing on the experiences of twenty affluent countries since the 1970s. The book addresses a set of questions at the heart of political economy and public policy: How much does economic growth help the poor? When and why does growth fail to trickle down? How can…
How Much Do Presidents Influence Income Inequality?
Some scholars argue that whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican has a significant impact on changes in income inequality. That influence may have declined in recent decades.
Labour Market Activation
This article provides a discussion on labour market activation. The centrality of activation to modern welfare states is addressed. Discussion of labour market activation often focuses on particular policy tools. Three labour market activation strategies are recognized. Activation strategies encompass a large number of policies and programmes, which are combined in myriad ways. The chief aim of activation is to increase the employment rate. There…
Income Inequality and Partisan Voting in the United States
Objectives. Income inequality in the United States has risen during the past several decades. Has this produced an increase in partisan voting differences between rich and poor? Methods. We examine trends from the 1940s through the 2000s in the country as a whole and in the states. Results. We find no clear relation between income inequality and class‐based voting. Conclusions. Factors such as religion and education result in a less clear pattern…
Business Political Capacity and the Top-Heavy Rise in Income Inequality: How Large an Impact
The High-Employment Route to Low Inequality
The author surveys the rise of inequality across the rich nations of the world. He is concerned that policies to reduce inequality, mostly social programs that redistribute income, may not be sustainable in coming years. There may well be a solution, he finds: maintain high levels of employment. He provides a set of policies for major nations designed to accomplish just that.
Americans' Social Policy Preferences in the Era of Rising Inequality
Rising income inequality has been a defining trend of the past generation, yet we know little about its impact on social policy formation. We evaluate two dominant views about public opinion on rising inequality: that Americans do not care much about inequality of outcomes, and that a rise in inequality will lead to an increase in demand for government redistribution. Using time series data on views about income inequality and social policy prefe…
The effect of public opinion on social policy generosity
Based on analysis of cross-country and over-time patterns in affluent countries in the late 1980s and the 1990s, Brooks and Manza contend that public opinion is a key cause of social policy generosity. A closer look at the evidence suggests reason for skepticism about this inference.
Jobs with Equality
Economic and social shifts have led to rising income inequality in the world's affluent countries. This is worrisome for reasons of fairness and because inequality has adverse effects on other socioeconomic goods. Redistribution can help, but government revenues are threatened by globalization and population aging. A way out of this impasse is for countries to increase their employment rate. Increasing employment enlarges the tax base, allowing t…
Product Review: Demanding Work: The Paradox of Job Quality in the Affluent Economy
Inequality and Sociology
Sociologists have contributed relatively little to our understanding of rising inequality of earnings and income in the United States. The author considers both why that has been the case and the degree to which it matters. Suggestions are offered about how a comparative perspective can help to shed some light on developments in the United States
Inequality, public opinion and redistribution
According to the "median-voter" hypothesis, greater inequality in the market distribution of earnings or income tends to produce greater generosity in redistributive policy.We outline the steps in the causal chain specified by the hypothesis and attempt to assess these steps empirically.Prior studies focusing on cross-country variation have found little support for the median-voter model.We examine over-time trends in eight nations during the 198…
Institutional coherence and macroeconomic performance
Journal Article Institutional coherence and macroeconomic performance Get access Lane Kenworthy Lane Kenworthy Department of Sociology, University of Arizona, AZ, USA Correspondence: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Socio-Economic Review, Volume 4, Issue 1, January 2006, Pages 69–91, https://doi.org/10.1093/SER/mwj032 Published: 18 October 2005
Rising Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution in Affluent Countries
We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study to examine household market inequality, redistribution, and the relationship between market inequality and redistribution in affluent OECD countries in the 1980s and 1990s. We observe sizeable increases in market household inequality in most countries. This development appears to have been driven largely, though not exclusively, by changes in employment: in countries with better employment performance,…
Advancing Socio-Economics: An Institutionalist Perspective
Theories and Practices of Neocorporatism
The modern territorial state and the capitalist market economy superseded a political–economic order that consisted of a plethora of corporate communities endowed with traditional rights and obligations, such as churches, estates, cities, and guilds. Organized collectivities of all sorts, more or less closely related to the economic division of labor, regulated cooperation and competition among their members and negotiated their relations with ea…
Quantitative Indicators of Corporatism
In this article, it is assumed that corporatism consists of various types of institutional arrangements whereby important political-economic decisions are reached via negotiation between, or in consultation with, peak-level representatives of employees and employers (or other interest groups and the state). The article offers an overview of the forty-two prominent or useful indicators of corporatism suggested in the literature. All these indicato…
Rising Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution in Affluent Countries
We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study to examine household market inequality, redistribution, and the relationship between market inequality and redistribution in affluent OECD countries in the 1980s and 1990s. We observe sizeable increases in market household inequality in most countries. This development appears to have been driven largely, though not exclusively, by changes in employment: in countries with better employment performance,…
Inequality, public opinion and redistribution
According to the "median-voter" hypothesis, greater inequality in the market distribution of earnings or income tends to produce greater generosity in redistributive policy.We outline the steps in the causal chain specified by the hypothesis and attempt to assess these steps empirically.Prior studies focusing on cross-country variation have found little support for the median-voter model.We examine over-time trends in eight nations during the 198…
Gender Inequality in Political Representation: A Worldwide Comparative Analysis
Americans' Social Policy Preferences in the Era of Rising Inequality
Rising income inequality has been a defining trend of the past generation, yet we know little about its impact on social policy formation. We evaluate two dominant views about public opinion on rising inequality: that Americans do not care much about inequality of outcomes, and that a rise in inequality will lead to an increase in demand for government redistribution. Using time series data on views about income inequality and social policy prefe…
Varieties of welfare capitalism
Journal Article Varieties of welfare capitalism Get access Alexander Hicks, Alexander Hicks Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Lane Kenworthy Lane Kenworthy Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Socio-Economic Review, Volume 1, Issue 1, January 2003, Pages 27-61, https://doi.org/10.1093/soceco/1.1.27 Published: 01 January 2003 Article history Received: 29 October 2001 Revisi…
Wage-Setting Measures: A Survey and Assessment
Wage setting has been one of the most heavily studied institutions in the field of comparative political economy over the past two decades, and quantitative measures of wage-setting arrangements have played a major role in this research. Yet the proliferation of such measures in recent years presents researchers with a sizable array from which to choose. In addition, some scholars are rather skeptical about the validity and/or reliability of thes…
Quantitative Indicators of Corporatism
In this article, it is assumed that corporatism consists of various types of institutional arrangements whereby important political-economic decisions are reached via negotiation between, or in consultation with, peak-level representatives of employees and employers (or other interest groups and the state). The article offers an overview of the forty-two prominent or useful indicators of corporatism suggested in the literature. All these indicato…
Cooperation and Political Economic Performance in Affluent Democratic Capitalism
Research on comparative political economic performance has traditionally followed two separate tracks, one concerned with collective economic gain (growth and efficiency) and the other focused on distribution and redistribution. Cooperative institutions offer a key to understanding cross–national variation among the affluent capitalist democracies in both facets of political economic performance. These institutions cluster along two dimensions: n…
Corporatism and Unemployment in the 1980s and 1990s
A number of studies have found an association between corporatist institutions and low unemployment in the 1970s and/or 1980s. Three gaps in our understanding of corporatism's labor market effects are addressed here: (1) Which of the two principal forms of corporatism-corporatist wage-setting or union participation in economic policymaking, or both-generates these effects? (2) What are the causal mechanisms? (3) Did these effects continue in the …
Institutional coherence and macroeconomic performance
Journal Article Institutional coherence and macroeconomic performance Get access Lane Kenworthy Lane Kenworthy Department of Sociology, University of Arizona, AZ, USA Correspondence: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Socio-Economic Review, Volume 4, Issue 1, January 2006, Pages 69–91, https://doi.org/10.1093/SER/mwj032 Published: 18 October 2005
Do Social-Welfare Policies Reduce Poverty? A Cross-National Assessment
Most social scientists, policymakers, and citizens who support the welfare state do so in part because they believe social-welfare programs help to reduce the incidence of poverty. Yet a growing number of critics assert that such programs in fact fail to decrease poverty, because too small a share of transfers actually reaches the poor, or because such programs create a welfare/poverty trap, or because they weaken the economy. This study assesses…
Inequality and Sociology
Sociologists have contributed relatively little to our understanding of rising inequality of earnings and income in the United States. The author considers both why that has been the case and the degree to which it matters. Suggestions are offered about how a comparative perspective can help to shed some light on developments in the United States
Do Affluent Countries Face an Incomes-Jobs Trade-Off
According to an influential view, in the United States pay for less skilledworkers is lowand government benefits are stingy, but this facilitates the creation of newjobs and encourages such individuals to take those jobs. Inmuch of WesternEurope, relative pay levels are higher for those at the bottom and benefits are more generous, but this is said to discourage job creation and job seeking. This article offers a comparative assessment of this tr…
Income Inequality and Partisan Voting in the United States
Objectives. Income inequality in the United States has risen during the past several decades. Has this produced an increase in partisan voting differences between rich and poor? Methods. We examine trends from the 1940s through the 2000s in the country as a whole and in the states. Results. We find no clear relation between income inequality and class‐based voting. Conclusions. Factors such as religion and education result in a less clear pattern…
The effect of public opinion on social policy generosity
Based on analysis of cross-country and over-time patterns in affluent countries in the late 1980s and the 1990s, Brooks and Manza contend that public opinion is a key cause of social policy generosity. A closer look at the evidence suggests reason for skepticism about this inference.
Unions, Wages, and the Common Interest
Three models have dominated recent research on the relationship between labor unions, wage behavior, and national economic performance: a simple linear model, a parabolic model, and a political model. This article argues that an unemployment-mediated linear model is theoretically preferable. In a context of low unemployment, encompassing labor movements can be expected to restrain wage demands, whereas localized unions have much less incentive to…
Why the Surge in Income Inequality
Civic Engagement, Social Capital, and Economic Cooperation
In Making Democracy Work and a recent article in The American Prospect, Robert Putnam argues that the same factors he believes contribute to a healthy polity-civic engagement and social capital-also foster economic prosperity. They do so, in his view, by encouraging cooperation. The author argues that Putnam is right to emphasize the value of cooperative economic behavior, but that he overstates the contribution of civic activism and social capit…
Equality and efficiency: The illusory tradeoff
Scholars and policy makers have traditionally assumed that nations face a tradeoff between income equality and economic efficiency. Greater equality is believed to reduce investment and dampen work incentives. A heterodox view suggests that a more egalitarian distribution of income may have beneficial efficiency effects by augmenting consumer demand and/or encouraging workers to cooperate in upgrading competitiveness. This paper offers an empiric…
In Search of National Economic Success: Balancing Competition and Cooperation
The Fall and Rise of Market Liberalism The Efficiency of Constraint Equality and Efficiency The Illusory Trade-Off Too Much Government? Labor Organization and the Common Interest The Economics of Cooperation
Advancing Socio-Economics: An Institutionalist Perspective
Business Political Capacity and the Top-Heavy Rise in Income Inequality: How Large an Impact
Never Enough: Capitalism and the Progressive Spirit
Income inequality probably has had little or no effect on subjective well-being
Are Industrial Policy and Corporatism Compatible
As intense international competition along with rapidly changing product markets and technology have come to dominate the economic environment for firms, industries, and nations, government pursuit of a coordinated, proactive industrial policy has increasingly been viewed as a key to national economic success. Owing largely to its utility in generating consensus-formation, corporatist concertation has been suggested by a number of commentators as…
What do we do now
Equality and efficiency: The illusory tradeoff
Scholars and policy makers have traditionally assumed that nations face a tradeoff between income equality and economic efficiency. Greater equality is believed to reduce investment and dampen work incentives. A heterodox view suggests that a more egalitarian distribution of income may have beneficial efficiency effects by augmenting consumer demand and/or encouraging workers to cooperate in upgrading competitiveness. This paper offers an empiric…
“The More Things Change…”: Business Litigation and Governance in the American Automobile Industry
Business litigation is a relatively neglected area of corporate governance, particularly given its enormous rise in the United States over the past generation. As a preliminary effort to engage this issue, we examine dispute avoidance and resolution in the automotive sector since the early 1970s-focusing on relationships between auto manufacturers and their suppliers and dealers. We generally presume intercorporate litigation to be a “last resort…
The More Things Change: Business Litigation and Governance in the American Automobile Industry
Restructuring for Innovation: The Remaking of the U.S. Semiconductor Industry
In Search of National Economic Success: Balancing Competition and Cooperation
Unions, Wages, and the Common Interest
Three models have dominated recent research on the relationship between labor unions, wage behavior, and national economic performance: a simple linear model, a parabolic model, and a political model. This article argues that an unemployment-mediated linear model is theoretically preferable. In a context of low unemployment, encompassing labor movements can be expected to restrain wage demands, whereas localized unions have much less incentive to…
In Search of National Economic Success: Balancing Competition and Cooperation
The Fall and Rise of Market Liberalism The Efficiency of Constraint Equality and Efficiency The Illusory Trade-Off Too Much Government? Labor Organization and the Common Interest The Economics of Cooperation
Civic Engagement, Social Capital, and Economic Cooperation
In Making Democracy Work and a recent article in The American Prospect, Robert Putnam argues that the same factors he believes contribute to a healthy polity-civic engagement and social capital-also foster economic prosperity. They do so, in his view, by encouraging cooperation. The author argues that Putnam is right to emphasize the value of cooperative economic behavior, but that he overstates the contribution of civic activism and social capit…
Cooperation and Political Economic Performance in Affluent Democratic Capitalism
Research on comparative political economic performance has traditionally followed two separate tracks, one concerned with collective economic gain (growth and efficiency) and the other focused on distribution and redistribution. Cooperative institutions offer a key to understanding cross–national variation among the affluent capitalist democracies in both facets of political economic performance. These institutions cluster along two dimensions: n…
Do Social-Welfare Policies Reduce Poverty? A Cross-National Assessment
Most social scientists, policymakers, and citizens who support the welfare state do so in part because they believe social-welfare programs help to reduce the incidence of poverty. Yet a growing number of critics assert that such programs in fact fail to decrease poverty, because too small a share of transfers actually reaches the poor, or because such programs create a welfare/poverty trap, or because they weaken the economy. This study assesses…
Gender Inequality in Political Representation: A Worldwide Comparative Analysis
Wage-Setting Measures: A Survey and Assessment
Wage setting has been one of the most heavily studied institutions in the field of comparative political economy over the past two decades, and quantitative measures of wage-setting arrangements have played a major role in this research. Yet the proliferation of such measures in recent years presents researchers with a sizable array from which to choose. In addition, some scholars are rather skeptical about the validity and/or reliability of thes…
National Labour Relations in Internationalized Markets: A Comparative Study of Institutions, Change, and Performance
Corporatism and Unemployment in the 1980s and 1990s
A number of studies have found an association between corporatist institutions and low unemployment in the 1970s and/or 1980s. Three gaps in our understanding of corporatism's labor market effects are addressed here: (1) Which of the two principal forms of corporatism-corporatist wage-setting or union participation in economic policymaking, or both-generates these effects? (2) What are the causal mechanisms? (3) Did these effects continue in the …
Theories and Practices of Neocorporatism
The modern territorial state and the capitalist market economy superseded a political–economic order that consisted of a plethora of corporate communities endowed with traditional rights and obligations, such as churches, estates, cities, and guilds. Organized collectivities of all sorts, more or less closely related to the economic division of labor, regulated cooperation and competition among their members and negotiated their relations with ea…
Quantitative Indicators of Corporatism
In this article, it is assumed that corporatism consists of various types of institutional arrangements whereby important political-economic decisions are reached via negotiation between, or in consultation with, peak-level representatives of employees and employers (or other interest groups and the state). The article offers an overview of the forty-two prominent or useful indicators of corporatism suggested in the literature. All these indicato…
Do Affluent Countries Face an Incomes-Jobs Trade-Off
According to an influential view, in the United States pay for less skilledworkers is lowand government benefits are stingy, but this facilitates the creation of newjobs and encourages such individuals to take those jobs. Inmuch of WesternEurope, relative pay levels are higher for those at the bottom and benefits are more generous, but this is said to discourage job creation and job seeking. This article offers a comparative assessment of this tr…
Varieties of welfare capitalism
Journal Article Varieties of welfare capitalism Get access Alexander Hicks, Alexander Hicks Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Lane Kenworthy Lane Kenworthy Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Socio-Economic Review, Volume 1, Issue 1, January 2003, Pages 27-61, https://doi.org/10.1093/soceco/1.1.27 Published: 01 January 2003 Article history Received: 29 October 2001 Revisi…
Advancing Socio-Economics: An Institutionalist Perspective
Rising Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution in Affluent Countries
We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study to examine household market inequality, redistribution, and the relationship between market inequality and redistribution in affluent OECD countries in the 1980s and 1990s. We observe sizeable increases in market household inequality in most countries. This development appears to have been driven largely, though not exclusively, by changes in employment: in countries with better employment performance,…
Institutional coherence and macroeconomic performance
Journal Article Institutional coherence and macroeconomic performance Get access Lane Kenworthy Lane Kenworthy Department of Sociology, University of Arizona, AZ, USA Correspondence: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Socio-Economic Review, Volume 4, Issue 1, January 2006, Pages 69–91, https://doi.org/10.1093/SER/mwj032 Published: 18 October 2005
Product Review: Demanding Work: The Paradox of Job Quality in the Affluent Economy
Inequality and Sociology
Sociologists have contributed relatively little to our understanding of rising inequality of earnings and income in the United States. The author considers both why that has been the case and the degree to which it matters. Suggestions are offered about how a comparative perspective can help to shed some light on developments in the United States
Economics (36 works) · Political science (27 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (23 works) · Politics (19 works) · Inequality (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Labour economics (12 works) · Mathematics (12 works) · Business (11 works) · Demographic economics (10 works)