Jan Eeckhout (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) joins the GLOBE Webinar Series to discuss his new book 'The Profit Paradox: How Thriving Firms Threaten the Future of Work' (Princeton University Press). Valeria Pulignano (University of Leuven) offered some reflections before an audience Q&A.

About the book: Over the past forty years, a handful of companies have reaped most of the rewards of technological advancements—acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating brutally unequal outcomes for workers. Instead of passing on the benefits of better technologies to consumers through lower prices, these “superstar” companies leverage new technologies to charge even higher prices. The consequences are already immense, from unnecessarily high prices for virtually everything, to fewer startups that can compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages for most workers, to severely limited social mobility. Drawing on his groundbreaking research and telling the stories of common workers throughout, Jan Eeckhout demonstrates how market power has suffocated the world of work, and how, without better mechanisms to ensure competition, it could lead to disastrous market corrections and political turmoil. A provocative investigation into how market power hurts average working people, The Profit Paradox also offers concrete solutions for fixing the problem and restoring a healthy economy.

About the author: Jan Eeckhout is ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, BSE Research Professor, and Professor of Economics at University College London. He has teaching and research interests in Macroeconomics, with a special emphasis on the labor market. He studies unemployment, labor market risk, skill diversity, inequality in cities, and the macroeconomic implications of market power.

Discussant: Valeria Pulignano
Moderator: Alex Andrione-Moylan

The GLOBE Webinar Series – The Future of Global Governance – presents the latest and most cutting-edge research in global governance and gives audience members the opportunity to directly engage with leading scholars in the field. Each webinar focuses on a significant new book that has potential to shape future thought on global governance, featuring a presentation by the author, an intervention from an expert discussant, and a Q&A session with the audience.

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