Mark Joseph Stelzner

Mark Stelzner’s research is focused on better understanding income inequality in the United States. He has explored a number of topics including 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 for like workers of different race, ethnicities, and gender groups, the degree to which Americans have overpaid for private medical care, and slavery in antebellum America. In the recent years, Stelzner has also started research on consumption and happiness. His work has been featured in the Economist, the Nation, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the Center for American Progress, History, and other venues.

Recent academic publications:

• Stelzner M. (Exp. 2026). Growth Machines: On the Hollow Joys of Consumption in the Desert of Economic Life. University of Chicago Press.
• 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.
• Stelzner, M. (2020). Slavery and Capitalism. Labor History.
• Stelzner, M. (2018). The labor injunction and peonage—how changes in labor laws increased inequality during the Gilded Age. Journal of Post Keynesian Economics.
• Stelzner, M. and Cerrutti, E. (2018). Workers and Technological Change in the United States. Labor History, 59(6), 657-675.
• Stelzner, M. (2017). The new American way—how changes in labour law are increasing inequality. Industrial Relations Journal.
• Stelzner. (2015). Income Inequality in the United States in the Late 1860s. Journal of Economic History. Vol. 75, No. 3.

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.