Economics and Human Rights

PROGRAM DIRECTOR: James Heintz

Transforming Economic Thinking to Achieve Social Justice

Economic policy has not adequately addressed the pressing challenges we face today: extreme poverty, widespread joblessness and precarious employment, increased inequality, and large-scale environmental threats. A new book, Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice, by PERI Associate Director James Heintz and co-authors Radhika Balakrishnan and Diane Elson, shows how human rights have the potential to transform economic thinking and policy-making with significant consequences to social justice. They make a case for a new normative and analytic framework, based on a broader range of objectives than such standard narrow goals as GDP growth.

Read “Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice: The Radical Potential of Human Rights”

Good Intentions, Better Outcomes: Shifting the Debate About Social Protection and Informality

The introduction of social protections for individuals engaged in paid employment frequently comes up against arguments that such measures would have adverse impacts on employment, reduce access to formal jobs, and result in greater informality. PERI researchers James Heintz and Jayati Ghosh critically evaluate such arguments and provide responses to the claim that social protections lead to higher informality. They also consider the challenges involved in providing social protection to different types of workers, including not only those employed by others but specifically the self-employed and unpaid workers.

Read paper from PERI’s Working Paper Series