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Long after the end of explicit discrimination in the housing market, the federal government continued to manage risk for capital, perpetuating inequality.

She used her work to live an autonomous life in a time when women were often trapped by socially constructed gender roles and systematic oppression.

The 19th-century antecedent to today’s complaints of labor shortage.

Patent medicine used to be associated with fraud and profiteering. What shifted the industry's positions on medical ethics and intellectual property?

The fight over the American Jobs Plan reflects a long history of competing visions of public works—and, most of all, who should benefit from rebuilding.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said America faces an economic crisis fifty years in the making. But how can we name the long crisis, much less explain it?

When struggling with tax enforcement, rich countries have long tried to shift blame to poor countries.

The famed economist’s theories were embraced by Beltway power brokers in both parties. Finally, a Democratic president is turning the page on a legacy of ruin.

And why they’re scared we might break up with their favorite appliance.

For economist Albert Hirschman, social planning meant creative experimentation rather than theoretical certainty.

Full employment could solve job discrimination and inadequate wages.

Private insurance companies have long dominated the provision of social security in the United States, but resistance is growing.

In the 60s and 70s, spiraling prices for staples like meat and gasoline wreaked havoc on the U.S. economy, thanks to political and policy mistakes.

The new note comes 125 years after the free silver movement tried—and failed—to use currency to forge a national identity.

Lewis Hine captured the misery, dignity, and occasional bursts of solidarity within US working-class life in the early twentieth century.

Business groups have always worked with both parties to support globalization and free trade.

Democracy requires something more than a handful of super-rich universities.

Why do so many politicians think people only work if threatened or forced into doing so?

Inflation isn't inexorably a bad thing. In fact, it used to be considered good.

How a grassroots movement of farmers laid the foundation for state intervention in the economy, challenging the slaveholding South.

Consumer activists taking on the companies that support former President Donald Trump can learn from the boycott that never ended.

Booker T. Whatley introduced the concept in the 1960s for struggling Black farmers, but his agricultural contributions have been excluded from the narrative.

The Biden administration’s proposed “child allowances” draw on the feminist thought of Crystal Eastman, who advocated “motherhood endowments” 100 years ago.

Dispelling myths of entrepreneurial exceptionalism, a sweeping new history of U.S. capitalism finds that economic gains have always been driven by the state.

The filing cabinet was critical to the information infrastructure of 20th-century nation states and financial systems.

Popular politics and reconstructing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

When factories created a population of tired workers, a new frontier in fatigue studies was born.

The 1918 flu pandemic helped to usher in the Hollywood studio system. Could Covid-19 transform the industry?

The domestic slave trade was no sideshow in our history, and slave traders were not bit players on the stage.

Conservatives have weaponized Americans’ desire to help to attack the social safety net.