Global Economy
The Global Economy Program provides research, communications, and networking support to dynamic economic justice movements in the United States and around the world. Our goal is to speed the transition to an equitable and sustainable economy while reversing today’s extreme levels of economic and racial inequality and excessive corporate and Wall Street power. The program focuses its work on six inter-related areas:
Inequality and CEO Pay
The program collaborates with a broader IPS team to produce Inequality.org and a related weekly newsletter that highlights the latest data and the sharpest strategies to reverse extreme inequality in the United States and around the world. The program is also a leading resource on one key driver of inequality — runaway CEO pay. For more than two decades, our annual report series “Executive Excess” has drawn extensive media coverage to the issue of CEO pay and practical solutions. A newer report series, “A Tale of Two Retirements,” is the first to track the staggering gap in retirement benefits between wealthy CEOs and ordinary Americans.
Featured Resource
Recent Posts Related to CEO Pay
- Clobbering a Shill for Overpaid CEOs
- CEO Pay Tax Break in GOP Health Bill
- Return of the Railroad Robber Baron
- A State Treasurer Defends CEO Pay Law
- Standing Up for ‘Bullied’ CEOs
- 5 Ways to End CEO Pay Subsidies
- How the Racial Wealth Gap is Spelled Out Through Retirement Savings
- The failure of Bill Clinton’s CEO pay reform – Politico
- This City Just Came Up With a Novel Way to Fight Inequality: Taxing Corporations With Extreme Pay Gaps
Trade, Investment, and Mining
The program works with grassroots activists around the world to advance alternative international trade and investment policies that elevate environmental, human, and labor rights above narrow corporate interests. In recent years program staff have played a lead role in supporting a successful campaign in El Salvador to defend against global mining corporations’ attempts to steamroll local resistance to harmful extractives projects.
Featured Article
Recent Posts Related to Trade, Investment, and Mining
Black Workers Initiative
The Black Worker Initiative aims to help expand opportunities for black worker organizing and thereby greatly contribute to the revitalization of the U.S. labor movement as a whole. This program is deeply committed to helping achieve both the historic and contemporary aims of the labor and civil rights movements.
Featured Report
Recent Posts Related to Black Worker Initiative
Wall Street and Global Finance
IPS staff play lead roles in coalitions working to restore the financial sector to its proper purpose of serving the real economy. We track the reckless Wall Street bonus culture, for example through our annual “Off the Deep End” report on the size of the financial industry bonus pool versus the cost of paying restaurant servers and domestic workers a living wage. We also advance innovative reforms such as a small tax on Wall Street speculation to curb short-term trading and generate massive revenue for urgent public needs, such as fixing our crumbling national infrastructure.
Featured Report
Recent Posts Related to Global Finance
Low-Wage Workers
IPS staff play lead roles in coalitions working to restore the financial sector to its proper purpose of serving the real economy. We track the reckless Wall Street bonus culture, for example through our annual “Off the Deep End” report on the size of the financial industry bonus pool versus the cost of paying restaurant servers and domestic workers a living wage. We also advance innovative reforms such as a small tax on Wall Street speculation to curb short-term trading and generate massive revenue for urgent public needs, such as fixing our crumbling national infrastructure.
Featured Report
Recent Posts Related to Low-Wage Workers
Inequality.org
Inequality.org and a related weekly newsletter are key resources for the public at large, journalists, teachers, students, academics, activists, and others seeking information and analysis on wealth and income inequality. Here, we collect the latest developments on inequality and keep readers abreast of relevant information concerning the widening wealth gap. We highlight stories from activists on the front lines of the fight against extreme inequality and share information that can be used for ongoing campaigns.
Latest Work

Postal Pay Cuts Provoked a General Strike in Finland. US Postal Workers Deserve the Same Solidarity.

We Need a Progressive Alternative on Trade — and NAFTA 2.0 Isn’t It

A Holiday Comeback for Toys 'R' Us?

How to Stop CEOs from Earning 1,000 Times More Than Their Workers

Making Sense of the Latest IRS Income Stats

Sanders, Lee, and Tlaib Lead Effort to Tax Huge CEO-Worker Pay Gaps

It’s Not Just a ‘Coup’: Bolivia’s Democracy Is in Meltdown

Student Athletes Are Workers — They Should Get Paid

The NBA's China Fiasco Shows What Businesses Value

Abusive North American Companies Pay Off Latin American Police to Harass Critics

Where Is 'Line Worker Barbie'?

California Takes On the NCAA and Allows College Athletes to Get Paid

Paying the Boss 1,000 Times More Than a Worker Encourages Reckless Corporate Behavior

We’ve Waited Too Long for Corporations to Fix the CEO-Worker Pay Gap on Their Own

As CEO-Worker Pay Gap Soars, Sanders Unveils Plan

Trump’s Public Charge Rule Is an Attack on Legal Immigrants

Celebrate American Excellence — With Equal Pay

3 Bills to Rein in Executive Pay

What Kind of Trade Policy Should Progressives Support?

‘The Squad’ Keeps the Focus on Bold, Inequality-Busting Policies
View more >
Experts
Reports

Report: CEO-Worker Pay Ratios in the Banking Industry

Report: Corporate Tax Cuts Boost CEO Pay, Not Jobs

Report: The CEO Pay Tax Break in the Republican Health Care Proposal

Report: The Wall Street Bonus Pool and Low Wage Workers

Report: A Tale of Two Retirements

Help Spread the Word: #CanURetire

Executive Excess 2016: The Wall Street CEO Bonus Loophole

Utilities Pay Up

Mining, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Conflict: OceanaGold and the El Dorado Foundation in El Salvador

Off the Deep End: The Wall Street Bonus Pool and Low-Wage Workers

CEO Stock(ing) Stuffers

A Tale of Two Retirements

Executive Excess 2015: Money to Burn

Peoples Sovereignty vs. Impunity Inc.: Counterpower and Struggles for Justice
