Mark Joseph Stelzner

Most of Mark Stelzner’s research is focused on better understanding income inequality in the United States. He has conducted research on the evolution of labor laws during the Gilded Age and over the last forty years, the relationship between labor laws and inequality, the income shares of top earners in the late 1860s, the connection between support for workers and technological change, the evolution of antitrust administration since the 1960s, the link between inequality and politics, the connection between monopsony power and wage discrimination between like workers of different race, ethnicities, and gender groups, the degree to which Americans have overpaid for private medical care, the importance of slavery to the antebellum US economy, and the sources of productivity gains of enslaved workers during the same period. His work has been featured in the Economic Report of the President, the Economist, the Nation, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the Center for American Progress, History, and other venues.

For the last few years, Mark Stelzner has begun to explore the connection between consumption, growth, and happiness. He has published a paper on the connection between conspicuous consumption, economic growth and happiness – modeling the disconnect between happiness and income after a certain level of development is reached. And he is currently in the process of publishing a book on overconsumption and capitalism.

Recent academic publications:

• Stelzner, M. and Beckert, S. (2023). The Contribution of Enslaved Workers to Output and Growth in Antebellum America in the Antebellum United States. The Economic History Review. 
• Stelzner, M. and Bahn, K. (2021). Wage Discrimination and Monopsony Power.  The Review of Black Political Economy. 
• Stelzner, M. (2021). Growth, Consumption, and Happiness: Modeling the Easterlin Paradox. Journal of Happiness Studies. 
• Stelzner, M. and Paul, M. (2020). Monopsony and Collective Action in an Institutional Context. Review of Social Economy. 
• Stelzner, M. and Nam, D. (2020). The Big Cost of Big Medicine: Calculating the Rent in Private Healthcare.  Review of Social Economy. 
• Stelzner, M. and Chaturvedi, M. (2020). Deregulating Antitrust Policy.  Cambridge Journal of Economics. 
• Stelzner, M. (2020). Slavery and Capitalism. Labor History. 
• Stelzner, M., Hoyt, E., and Toushita, R. (2020). Structured Conflict: Changes in Federal and State Labor. Working paper: Political Economy Research Center. 
• Stelzner, M. (2018). The labor injunction and peonage—how changes in labor laws increased inequality during the Gilded Age. Journal of Post Keynesian Economics. 

Recent popular articles and policy papers:

• Bahn, K. and Stelzner, M. (2020). How racial and gendered pay discrimination persists under monopsony in the United States.  Washington Center for Equitable Growth.  
• Paul, M. and Stelzner, M. (2019). Rethinking collective action and U.S. labor laws in a monopsonistic economy.  Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

Majoring in Economics.

Visit the Economics department website.