Mark Joseph Stelzner

Mark Stelzner’s research falls into two categories: labor inequality in the United States and consumption and happiness.  He has explored a number of topics including the contribution of enslaved workers to gross national product and per capita growth in the two decades before the Civil War, increased monitoring of enslaved workers over the antebellum period, the connection between southern slavery and the growth of early factory production in New England and the rise of New York City as a national finance hub, the economic functions of lynchings in the Jim Crow South, and the many motivations for consumption, how consumption only has a tenuous link with happiness, and potential solutions for remaking consumption and the economy more generally.  His work has been featured in the Economist, the Nation, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the Center for American Progress, History, Against the Grain, and other venues. 

Recent academic publications:

• Stelzner M. (2026). Growth Machines: On the Hollow Joys of Consumption in the Desert of Economic Life. University of Chicago Press. 
• Beckert, S., & Stelzner, M. (2024). Productivity Growth of Enslaved Workers. Social Science History, 1-29.
• Stelzner M. and Darity, W. (2025). The Economic Functions of Extrajudicial Violence in the Jim Crow South.  Explorations in Economic History. 
• Stelzner, M. and Beckert, S. (2024). The Contribution of Enslaved Workers to Output and Growth in Antebellum America in the Antebellum United States.  Economic History Review.    
• Stelzner, M. and Paul, M. (2023). Monopsony and Collective Action in an Institutional Context. Review of Social Economy. 
• Stelzner, M. and Bahn, K. (2022). Wage Discrimination and Monopsony Power.  The Review of Black Political Economy. 
• Stelzner, M. (2022). Growth, Consumption, and Happiness: Modeling the Easterlin Paradox. Journal of Happiness Studies. 
• Stelzner, M. and Nam, D. (2022). 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. 

Recent popular articles and policy papers:

• Bahn, K., Stelzner, M., and Openchowski, E. (2020). Wage discrimination and the exploitation of workers in the U.S. Labor Market. Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
• 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.
• Bivens, J., Morrissey, M. and Stelzner, M. (2018). Fiscal commission has the wrong prescription for Connecticut. Economic Policy Institute.

Majoring in Economics.

Visit the Economics department website.