Eli Cook | University of Haifa (original) (raw)
Papers by Eli Cook
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 2020
The recent framing of our current era as a “Second Gilded Age” has been closely linked to economi... more The recent framing of our current era as a “Second Gilded Age” has been closely linked to economist Thomas Piketty's empirical findings regarding income inequality patterns in American history. Yet if we take a closer look at both the inequality data at our disposal as well as the broader social forces that have led to widening wealth gaps in recent decades, it becomes apparent that our current neoliberal era of rising inequality is far more similar to the Progressive Era than the Gilded Age. After arguing why the Progressive Era is a more apt historical analogy, this article will seek to explain why our contemporary moment has nonetheless been framed as a Second Gilded Age.
Journal of Global Intellectual History , 2022
This paper offers a history of the "Kaldor-Hicks" concept of economic efficiency from its Europea... more This paper offers a history of the "Kaldor-Hicks" concept of economic efficiency from its European birth in the 1930s to its American resurgence in the 1970s to its widespread implementation in the Global South by the early twenty-first century. While philosophers, economists and legal theorists have written widely about Kaldor-Hicks-global-minded intellectual historians have not. As a result, scholars have yet to place its creation, dissemination and ascendency into a broader historical context or examine the reasons behind its global spread. As this paper will demonstrate through the rise of cost-benefit analyses based on "willingness to pay" metrics, while Kaldor-Hicks efficiency was invented by neoclassical economists in the late 1930s, its ascent to policy dominance is part-and-parcel of the neoliberal revolution of the past half century. Linking the history of economic thought with the rise of global neoliberalism, this paper demonstrates how Kaldor-Hicks efficiency emerged as a central pillar of a new, interventionist, wealth-maximizing and market-based form of depoliticized technocratic governance that not only marginalizes distributive concerns but actively exacerbates the problem of global inequality.
Histories of Global Inequality
Since Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century took the economics world by storm in 2... more Since Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century took the economics world by storm in 2014, the study of economic inequality has quickly moved to the centre of academic inquiry and public discourse. But why was the topic of inequality largely neglected by mainstream economists for so long? In examining key economic treatises and textbooks, this chapter argues that it was the hegemonic rise of neoclassical economics which effectively marginalized the issue of economic distribution by the second half of the twentieth century. It contends that three central theoretical pillars of neoclassical economics were most responsible for this development: marginal productivity, utility theory and Pareto optimality. While these pillars emerged in the Western world, the worldwide success of neoclassical economics in the second half of the twentieth century insured that the neglect of inequality would become a global phenomenon, from India to Israel, Germany to Chile.
Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies, 2021
היסטוריה גיליון 43-44, 2019
Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, 2020
Using the unprecedented 2014 Science special issue on inequality as a conceptual guide, this arti... more Using the unprecedented 2014 Science special issue on inequality as a conceptual guide, this article examines the recent return of an assortment of fatalist arguments which claim that high levels of economic inequality are a natural, inevitable, and basic characteristic of human civilization and that, therefore, it would be incredibly difficult and damaging—if not impossible—to significantly reduce such income and wealth gaps. Classifying these varying arguments into four natural “laws” of inequality—mathematical, neoclassical, historical, and genetic—this article seeks to unpack the internal logic and external politics of such claims by placing them in their broader historical context. In so doing, this article will also show how certain aspects of Thomas Piketty’s earlier work played a key—albeit unintended—role in the recent renaissance in naturalizing inequality. In conclusion, this article reflects on other aspects of Piketty’s analysis that can be used to “denaturalize” inequality and reveal its highly contingent, political, structural, and institutional basis. Finally, the article will end with a call for historians of capitalism to pick up the denaturalizing mantle and seek to explicitly disprove and challenge the contention that high levels of inequality are all but inevitable.
Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 2020
The recent framing of our current era as a “Second Gilded Age” has been closely linked to economi... more The recent framing of our current era as a “Second Gilded Age” has been closely linked to economist Thomas Piketty's empirical findings regarding income inequality patterns in American history. Yet if we take a closer look at both the inequality data at our disposal as well as the broader social forces that have led to widening wealth gaps in recent decades, it becomes apparent that our current neoliberal era of rising inequality is far more similar to the Progressive Era than the Gilded Age. After arguing why the Progressive Era is a more apt historical analogy, this article will seek to explain why our contemporary moment has nonetheless been framed as a Second Gilded Age.
Journal of American Studies , 2020
Exploring some of the key tenets of neoliberal American culture, this article examines the histor... more Exploring some of the key tenets of neoliberal American culture, this article examines the
historical forces behind the meteoric rise of interactive “Choose Your Own Adventure” (CYOA) children’s books in the1980s. Despite selling over 250 million copies worldwide and becoming the fourth most popular children’s series of all time, the CYOA phenomenon has yet to be placed in its larger social, economic, historical or cultural context. When explaining the rise of interactive narratives, previous literature has mostly focussed on technological change – namely the invention of video games, computer consoles and hypertext narratives. Moving away from such claims, this article demonstrates how the incredible success of solely text-based CYOA books stemmed largely from the cultural ascent of individual market choice to the heart of American notions of agency, liberty, subjectivity and selfhood in the 1980s and 1990s.
Since Thomas Piketty's work took the economics discipline by storm in 2014, the study of economic... more Since Thomas Piketty's work took the economics discipline by storm in 2014, the study of economic inequality has quickly moved to the center of academic inquiry for the first time since the nineteenth century. But why was the topic of inequality and distribution largely neglected by mainstream economists for much of the twentieth century? In examining key economic treatises and textbooks, this paper argues that it was the hegemonic rise of neoclassical economics which effectively marginalized the issue of economic distribution in the twentieth century. It contends that three central theoretical pillars were most responsible for this development: marginal productivity, a utility theory and Pareto optimality.
In examining the mathematical models, theories of value, and price statistics wielded by leading ... more In examining the mathematical models, theories of value, and price statistics wielded by leading economist and social reformer Irving Fisher, this article explores the overlooked impact that Neo-classical Economics had on Progressive Era reform and thought. By offering a neoclassical theory of marginal utility that claimed that market prices reflected subjective value, Fisher formalized, le-gitimized, and popularized the use of price statistics in progressive political discourse, teaching the American people that if they wanted to argue over the nature of progress or the worthiness of a certain reform, they would have to price it first. The article argues that such a " pricing of progres-sivism " served as an important foundational precursor to the rise of neoliberal thought in the 1980s.
A biographic history of investment banker Henry Goldman, he of Goldman Sachs fame.
Why do we equate monetary prices with value?
he article discusses the book "Debt: The First 5000 Years," by David Graeber, in relation to the ... more he article discusses the book "Debt: The First 5000 Years," by David Graeber, in relation to the Rolling Jubilee debt repayment project by the organization Strike Debt, which stemmed from the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) social movement. Other topics include Graeber's anarchist views in relation to Marxist politics,
Places the history of Pikettymania into historical context.
Book Reviews by Eli Cook
Review of Gregory Clark's book "The Son Also Rises" in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Talks by Eli Cook
Books by Eli Cook
How did Americans come to quantify their society’s progress and well-being in units of money? In ... more How did Americans come to quantify their society’s progress and well-being in units of money? In today’s GDP-run world, prices are the standard measure of not only our goods and commodities but our environment, our communities, our nation, even our self-worth. The Pricing of Progress traces the long history of how and why we moderns adopted the monetizing values and valuations of capitalism as an indicator of human prosperity while losing sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life.
Eli Cook roots the rise of economic indicators in the emergence of modern capitalism and the contested history of English enclosure, Caribbean slavery, American industrialization, economic thought, and corporate power. He explores how the maximization of market production became the chief objective of American economic and social policy. We see how distinctly capitalist quantification techniques used to manage or invest in railroad corporations, textile factories, real estate holdings, or cotton plantations escaped the confines of the business world and seeped into every nook and cranny of society. As economic elites quantified the nation as a for-profit, capitalized investment, the progress of its inhabitants, free or enslaved, came to be valued according to their moneymaking abilities.
Today as in the nineteenth century, political struggles rage over who gets to determine the statistical yardsticks used to gauge the “health” of our economy and nation. The Pricing of Progress helps us grasp the limits and dangers of entrusting economic indicators to measure social welfare and moral goals.
Conference Presentations by Eli Cook
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 2020
The recent framing of our current era as a “Second Gilded Age” has been closely linked to economi... more The recent framing of our current era as a “Second Gilded Age” has been closely linked to economist Thomas Piketty's empirical findings regarding income inequality patterns in American history. Yet if we take a closer look at both the inequality data at our disposal as well as the broader social forces that have led to widening wealth gaps in recent decades, it becomes apparent that our current neoliberal era of rising inequality is far more similar to the Progressive Era than the Gilded Age. After arguing why the Progressive Era is a more apt historical analogy, this article will seek to explain why our contemporary moment has nonetheless been framed as a Second Gilded Age.
Journal of Global Intellectual History , 2022
This paper offers a history of the "Kaldor-Hicks" concept of economic efficiency from its Europea... more This paper offers a history of the "Kaldor-Hicks" concept of economic efficiency from its European birth in the 1930s to its American resurgence in the 1970s to its widespread implementation in the Global South by the early twenty-first century. While philosophers, economists and legal theorists have written widely about Kaldor-Hicks-global-minded intellectual historians have not. As a result, scholars have yet to place its creation, dissemination and ascendency into a broader historical context or examine the reasons behind its global spread. As this paper will demonstrate through the rise of cost-benefit analyses based on "willingness to pay" metrics, while Kaldor-Hicks efficiency was invented by neoclassical economists in the late 1930s, its ascent to policy dominance is part-and-parcel of the neoliberal revolution of the past half century. Linking the history of economic thought with the rise of global neoliberalism, this paper demonstrates how Kaldor-Hicks efficiency emerged as a central pillar of a new, interventionist, wealth-maximizing and market-based form of depoliticized technocratic governance that not only marginalizes distributive concerns but actively exacerbates the problem of global inequality.
Histories of Global Inequality
Since Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century took the economics world by storm in 2... more Since Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century took the economics world by storm in 2014, the study of economic inequality has quickly moved to the centre of academic inquiry and public discourse. But why was the topic of inequality largely neglected by mainstream economists for so long? In examining key economic treatises and textbooks, this chapter argues that it was the hegemonic rise of neoclassical economics which effectively marginalized the issue of economic distribution by the second half of the twentieth century. It contends that three central theoretical pillars of neoclassical economics were most responsible for this development: marginal productivity, utility theory and Pareto optimality. While these pillars emerged in the Western world, the worldwide success of neoclassical economics in the second half of the twentieth century insured that the neglect of inequality would become a global phenomenon, from India to Israel, Germany to Chile.
Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies, 2021
היסטוריה גיליון 43-44, 2019
Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, 2020
Using the unprecedented 2014 Science special issue on inequality as a conceptual guide, this arti... more Using the unprecedented 2014 Science special issue on inequality as a conceptual guide, this article examines the recent return of an assortment of fatalist arguments which claim that high levels of economic inequality are a natural, inevitable, and basic characteristic of human civilization and that, therefore, it would be incredibly difficult and damaging—if not impossible—to significantly reduce such income and wealth gaps. Classifying these varying arguments into four natural “laws” of inequality—mathematical, neoclassical, historical, and genetic—this article seeks to unpack the internal logic and external politics of such claims by placing them in their broader historical context. In so doing, this article will also show how certain aspects of Thomas Piketty’s earlier work played a key—albeit unintended—role in the recent renaissance in naturalizing inequality. In conclusion, this article reflects on other aspects of Piketty’s analysis that can be used to “denaturalize” inequality and reveal its highly contingent, political, structural, and institutional basis. Finally, the article will end with a call for historians of capitalism to pick up the denaturalizing mantle and seek to explicitly disprove and challenge the contention that high levels of inequality are all but inevitable.
Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 2020
The recent framing of our current era as a “Second Gilded Age” has been closely linked to economi... more The recent framing of our current era as a “Second Gilded Age” has been closely linked to economist Thomas Piketty's empirical findings regarding income inequality patterns in American history. Yet if we take a closer look at both the inequality data at our disposal as well as the broader social forces that have led to widening wealth gaps in recent decades, it becomes apparent that our current neoliberal era of rising inequality is far more similar to the Progressive Era than the Gilded Age. After arguing why the Progressive Era is a more apt historical analogy, this article will seek to explain why our contemporary moment has nonetheless been framed as a Second Gilded Age.
Journal of American Studies , 2020
Exploring some of the key tenets of neoliberal American culture, this article examines the histor... more Exploring some of the key tenets of neoliberal American culture, this article examines the
historical forces behind the meteoric rise of interactive “Choose Your Own Adventure” (CYOA) children’s books in the1980s. Despite selling over 250 million copies worldwide and becoming the fourth most popular children’s series of all time, the CYOA phenomenon has yet to be placed in its larger social, economic, historical or cultural context. When explaining the rise of interactive narratives, previous literature has mostly focussed on technological change – namely the invention of video games, computer consoles and hypertext narratives. Moving away from such claims, this article demonstrates how the incredible success of solely text-based CYOA books stemmed largely from the cultural ascent of individual market choice to the heart of American notions of agency, liberty, subjectivity and selfhood in the 1980s and 1990s.
Since Thomas Piketty's work took the economics discipline by storm in 2014, the study of economic... more Since Thomas Piketty's work took the economics discipline by storm in 2014, the study of economic inequality has quickly moved to the center of academic inquiry for the first time since the nineteenth century. But why was the topic of inequality and distribution largely neglected by mainstream economists for much of the twentieth century? In examining key economic treatises and textbooks, this paper argues that it was the hegemonic rise of neoclassical economics which effectively marginalized the issue of economic distribution in the twentieth century. It contends that three central theoretical pillars were most responsible for this development: marginal productivity, a utility theory and Pareto optimality.
In examining the mathematical models, theories of value, and price statistics wielded by leading ... more In examining the mathematical models, theories of value, and price statistics wielded by leading economist and social reformer Irving Fisher, this article explores the overlooked impact that Neo-classical Economics had on Progressive Era reform and thought. By offering a neoclassical theory of marginal utility that claimed that market prices reflected subjective value, Fisher formalized, le-gitimized, and popularized the use of price statistics in progressive political discourse, teaching the American people that if they wanted to argue over the nature of progress or the worthiness of a certain reform, they would have to price it first. The article argues that such a " pricing of progres-sivism " served as an important foundational precursor to the rise of neoliberal thought in the 1980s.
A biographic history of investment banker Henry Goldman, he of Goldman Sachs fame.
Why do we equate monetary prices with value?
he article discusses the book "Debt: The First 5000 Years," by David Graeber, in relation to the ... more he article discusses the book "Debt: The First 5000 Years," by David Graeber, in relation to the Rolling Jubilee debt repayment project by the organization Strike Debt, which stemmed from the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) social movement. Other topics include Graeber's anarchist views in relation to Marxist politics,
Places the history of Pikettymania into historical context.
Review of Gregory Clark's book "The Son Also Rises" in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
How did Americans come to quantify their society’s progress and well-being in units of money? In ... more How did Americans come to quantify their society’s progress and well-being in units of money? In today’s GDP-run world, prices are the standard measure of not only our goods and commodities but our environment, our communities, our nation, even our self-worth. The Pricing of Progress traces the long history of how and why we moderns adopted the monetizing values and valuations of capitalism as an indicator of human prosperity while losing sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life.
Eli Cook roots the rise of economic indicators in the emergence of modern capitalism and the contested history of English enclosure, Caribbean slavery, American industrialization, economic thought, and corporate power. He explores how the maximization of market production became the chief objective of American economic and social policy. We see how distinctly capitalist quantification techniques used to manage or invest in railroad corporations, textile factories, real estate holdings, or cotton plantations escaped the confines of the business world and seeped into every nook and cranny of society. As economic elites quantified the nation as a for-profit, capitalized investment, the progress of its inhabitants, free or enslaved, came to be valued according to their moneymaking abilities.
Today as in the nineteenth century, political struggles rage over who gets to determine the statistical yardsticks used to gauge the “health” of our economy and nation. The Pricing of Progress helps us grasp the limits and dangers of entrusting economic indicators to measure social welfare and moral goals.