SCHWARTZ CENTER FOR ECONOMIC POLICY ANALYSIS
TRANSREGIONAL CENTER FOR DEMOCRATIC STUDIES
The Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), made possible through a generous gift from Irene and Bernard L. Schwartz, is the economic policy research arm of the Department of Economics at the New School for Social Research. The activities of SCEPA are organized around three broad areas: economic growth and development, equity and living standards, and employment. The center focuses on the United States economy, but always with an eye on global implications. The underlying purpose of SCEPA’s research is to determine the conditions under which a more stable, equitable, and prosperous economy is possible, both in the United States and globally, and to develop domestic and international policies necessary to bring about these conditions. Teresa Ghilarducci is the Irene and Bernard L. Schwartz Professor in Economic Policy Analysis and the director. William Milberg, associate professor of economics, coordinates program planning. Jeff Madrick is the director of policy research and editor of Challenge magazine.
Building on The New School for Social Research’s interdisciplinary tradition, the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, directed by Elzbieta Matynia, Associate Professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies, creates and conducts cross-departmental programs aimed at addressing the pressing new issues and special needs of graduate study and advanced research that have arisen in our globalizing world. Following the social and political transformations of recent years, when two contradictory processes—globalization and increasing fragmentation into ethnic enclaves—have come to dominate the imagination of both scholars and policy-makers, TCDS’s integrated set of activities draws on the region, as well as those borderlands that both separate and unite regions, as a promising perspective from which to examine the complex relationships between the local and the global.
The primary work of the center is organized around a number of facultystudent research teams. Each year the center hires a number of graduate student research assistants who are assigned to a faculty research leader. Current faculty-led research projects include the study of economic insecurity, especially with regard to retirement income, health care, and mandated savings; and a study of the equity and effectiveness of tax expenditures and Social Security reform is just beginning. Research on workplace standards and financial performance identifies the labor relations practices of the large publicly traded companies in the United States. Other important projects include: net borrowing trends in the U.S., the sustainability of U.S. trade and budget deficits, the effects of productivity growth on employment, and the evolution of the wages of American workers. A past project focused on the development of new indicators of employment and inequality: The Labor Market Indicators Project integrated job quality into measures of U.S. labor market strength. Another project developed a unique indicator allowing an international comparison of income inequality called the Vast Majority Income Index. The center publishes its research in scholarly working papers and in a series of policy notes that are distributed widely. The center also supports a series of high-profile public lectures, workshops, publications, and conferences. The annual Schwartz Lecture features a major public figure in economic policy. Past speakers include Laura Tyson, Amartya Sen, James K. Galbraith, and Paul Krugman. The Robert Heilbroner Memorial Lecture on the Future of Capitalism Series features a distinguished, scholarly talk on long-term economic trends. These events are used to gain a greater understanding of questions of economic justice and how the profit-seeking activities of private firms might also serve broader social goals, such as the creation of good jobs, the improvement of public health and education, the diffusion of socially useful new technologies, and the reduction of economic inequality. The center is also the sponsor of the David Gordon Award for the outstanding graduate student research paper and the annual student conference. For more information, contact: Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis 6 East 16th Street, 11th floor New York, NY 10003 Telephone: 212.229.5901 x4911 Fax: 212.229.5903 Email: cepa@newschool.edu Website: www.newschool.edu/cepa
The Center’s programs, designed to foster a better understanding of how the concerns of “new” and “old” democracies are today beginning to converge, focus on issues relating to democracy, identity, culture, and society at the local, national, and, above all, regional level, primarily in the Center’s target regions—Central and Eastern Europe; Central Asia and the Caucasus; sub-Saharan Africa; and North America. Concepts and Concerns: TCDS’s initiatives in these regions rely on the Center’s long-standing overseas partnerships, dating from semi-clandestine collaboration between members of The New School and independent scholars in Central and Eastern Europe during the 1980s. Today, the Center’s expanded educational activities work to advance the study of how societies embedded in different cultural and historical contexts pursue their respective debates on—and solutions to—common problems of democratization and diversity, civil society and civic life, and globalization. The Center’s programs facilitate collaborative discussion, study, and research. By promoting mutual learning and sharing of intellectual and social experiences, TCDS helps to shorten distances between geographically and culturally distinct regions and peoples. TCDS’s programs are also aimed at building bridges between academic research and the “real world” of democratic practice, where policies and local strategies are designed and civic innovation comes to life. For this reason, the Center’s partners and collaborators include scholars who are also actively involved in public life and in efforts to strengthen civil society. Programs: Along with annual lecture series and conferences, visiting professorships and collaborative teaching, the TCDS Electronic Learning Network, and the semiannual publication of the TCDS Bulletin, TCDS’s flagship projects have been the annual Democracy and Diversity Graduate Summer Institutes held in Krakow, Poland since 1992, and in Cape Town, South Africa, since 1999. In each of these uniquely intensive three-week programs, up to 40 young scholars and civic leaders from around the world engage through discussion and debate in a rigorous quest for a deeper and more textured understanding of the challenges to democracy throughout the contemporary world. Faculty are drawn from The New School and from universities in the host region. Students from The New School for Social Research receive full course credit for two seminars they select from the four offered at each of the institutes. Most importantly, participation has proved to be a deeply transformative experience for many, both personally and professionally. TCDS now has an extensive and active alumni network of over 1500 individuals, active in over 75 countries in the fields of academia, government, and civil society. In the summer of 2009, building on the success of the Krakow Democracy and Diversity Institute from 1992 through 2008, TCDS is moving the institute to Wroclaw, Poland (formerly Breslau, Germany) with an expanded program entitled: “The New World Meets the New Europe.” This new institute, located in a city of richly multicultural roots in the borderland between Western and Eastern Europe, is designed to facilitate intellectual and experiential insights into a momentous experiment now under way: the peaceful construction of transnational Europe. In an increasingly interdependent world fraught with violent conflicts, wars, and ethnic and religious tensions, it is vital to understand the past and present lessons involved in this extraordinary experiment in transborder—and transregional—institution building. 71