Charles J. Whalen, 2024 Veblen-Commons Award Recipient
Charles J. Whalen is a research fellow in The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, University at Buffalo. His work is driven by a career-long focus on analyzing economic challenges confronting American workers, identifying policy paths to achieving and sustaining broadly shared prosperity, and highlighting the value of worker engagement in economic decision-making. Inspired by political economists operating at the crossroads of institutional and post-Keynesian economics (a group always a decade or more ahead of the economic mainstream), Whalen’s research advances post-Keynesian institutionalism, with special attention to how the key features of money manager capitalism (such as financialization and a relentless drive for “shareholder value”) fuel the problems of worker insecurity, inequality, and industrial decline.
Whalen, who has benefitted greatly from looking at the economy from different vantage points (working not only in academia, but also as an economic journalist, government economist, and consultant to companies and unions), served as president of the Association for Evolutionary Economics (2018) and edited several collaborative research volumes, including Political Economy for the 21st Century (M.E. Sharpe 1996), Institutional Economics: Perspectives and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World (Routledge, 2022) and A Modern Guide to Post-Keynesian Institutional Economics (Edward Elgar, 2022). His latest book, Reforming Capitalism for the Common Good (Edward Elgar, 2022), contains a collection of essays written over the course of his career. He studied at Cornell University (industrial and labor relations) and The University of Texas at Austin (economics).