Featured Publications

Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed?
(And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries)
By Jared Bernstein

In his latest book, Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries), senior economist Jared Bernstein answers a multitude of questions about the economy and discusses the phenomenon of rising inequality and the fact that most workers have not benefited from recent economic growth.

>> Read more
>> Order now 

By Ray Marshall

The Case for Collaborative School Reform argues that the most successful school reforms will be undertaken collaboratively between teachers, school district officials, and union leaders. The study focuses on the superior results of the reform efforts of the Toledo School District and the Toledo Federation of Teachers, an innovative and collaborative teachers union in a representative urban school district. Toledo’s experience not only demonstrates the value of union-management collaboration to focus the parties’ attention and efforts on school reform, but also illustrates the evolution of school policies toward a greater focus on student achievement.

>> Read more
>> Order now

 

The Teaching Penalty
Teacher Pay Losing Ground
By Sylvia Allegretto, Sean P. Corcoran, and Lawrence Mishel
For decades, researchers have asked whether teacher compensation has kept pace without side job opportunities, and whether compensation is sufficiently competitive to attract the quality of instructors desired. While the popular view is that teacher pay is relatively low and has not kept up with comparable professions over time, new claims suggest that teachers are actually well compensated when work hours, weeks of work, or benefits packages are taken into account.

The Teaching Penalty reviews recent analyses of relative teacher compensation and provides a detailed analysis of trends in the relative weekly pay of elementary and secondary school teachers. It finds that teacher compensation lags that of workers with similar education and experience, as well as that of workers with comparable skill requirements, like accountants, reporters, registered nurses, computer programmers, clergy, personnel officers, and vocational counselors and inspectors. Incorporating benefits into the analysis does not alter the general picture of teachers having a substantial wage/pay disadvantage that eroded considerably over the last 10 years.

>> Read more
>> Order now

Vouchers and Public School Performance
School choice and vouchers have become an increasingly important part of that educational reform policy debate. The debate is rooted in ideological differences between market proponents, who attach greater importance to individual choice, and supporters of a publicly run educational system, who place greater importance on equity, commonality, and public accountability. In a new book, Vouchers and Public School Performance, authors Martin Carnoy, Frank Adamson, Amita Chudgar, Thomas Luschei, and John Witte ask whether there is evidence that increased competition among schools introduced by a large-scale voucher plan in an urban school district, Milwaukee, resulted in improved student performance in public elementary schools. The study uses data from an extensive choice reform in Milwaukee's Public School District, a district with the typical educational problems of an American urban center, but unusual in that it has had a voucher plan targeted at low-income students since 1990—the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

>> Read more
>> Order now

Enriching Children, Enriching the Nation
By Robert Lynch

Research is increasingly demonstrating that the policy of investing in high-quality prekindergarten programs provides a wide array of significant benefits to children, families, and society as a whole, including job creation, inequality reduction, education and health care improvement, and reduced crime rates. In a new EPI book, Enriching Children, Enriching the Nation: Public Investment in High-Quality Prekindergarten, Robert G. Lynch examines the costs and benefits of both a targeted and a universal prekindergarten program and shows the positive impact of these programs on the economy, federal and state budgets, crime, and the educational achievement and earnings of children and adults.

>> Read more
>> Order now

Talking Past Each Other
By David Kusnet, Lawrence Mishel, Ruy Teixeira

In a series of focus groups in 2005 and 2006, EPI asked middle-class Americans to discuss their economic insecurities. The discussions revealed not only a profound ambivalence about the economy, but also a widening gap between the ways that everyday Americans and influential elites talk about the economy. Co-authored by David Kusnet, Lawrence Mishel, and Ruy Teixeira, Talking Past Each Other: What Everyday Americans Really Think (and Elites Don't Get) About the Economy discusses that gap and how to bridge it, allowing for changing economic, social, and political conditions. The study includes a special section that offers 12 suggestions for how to 'speak American' when talking about economics.

>> Read more
>> Order now

The State of Working America 2006/2007
By Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Sylvia Allegretto

The Economic Policy Institute and Cornell University Press has released the final edition of The State of Working America 2006/2007.

Prepared biennially since 1988, EPI's flagship publication sums up the problems and challenges facing American working families, presenting a wide variety of data on family incomes, taxes, wages, unemployment, wealth, and poverty—data that enables the book's authors to closely examine the impact of the economy on the living standards of the American people. The State of Working America 2006/2007 is an exhaustive reference work that will be welcomed by anyone eager for a comprehensive portrait of the economic well-being of the nation.

The State of Working America 2006-2007 is now available for purchase.
>> Read more
>> Order now 

Bestsellers

 

1. Class and Schools 
2. Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed?
3. The State of Working America 2006/07
4. Enriching Children, Enriching the Nation 
5. The Teaching Penalty

EPI Publications Catalog 2008
Want an idea of the breadth of subjects the Institute covers? It's easy with the EPI 2008 publications catalog, available by mail or online as an easy PDF download.