James Galbraith

Why organisations work with James K. Galbraith

• A measurement record that competitors cannot match: the University of Texas Inequality Project produces global pay inequality datasets used by researchers and institutions where conventional household surveys and tax data fall short.
• Hands-on policy experience that maps directly to corporate strategy questions on China, Europe and US industrial policy, including a four-year stint as chief technical adviser on macroeconomic reform to China’s State Planning Commission.
• Co-winner of the 2014 Leontief Prize alongside Angus Deaton, an award that signals first-rank standing in the economics of inequality and welfare measurement.
• A clear, unhedged position on where mainstream macroeconomics fails, set out in books published by Oxford University Press, Simon and Schuster, Yale University Press, and University of Chicago Press, which gives audiences something to engage with rather than a survey of consensus views.
• Direct line of sight into US economic policy debates through regular columns at Project Syndicate, The Nation, and American Affairs, and former service as Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

Biography highlights

• Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin.
• Director, University of Texas Inequality Project; Senior Scholar, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.
• Co-winner, 2014 Leontief Prize (with Angus Deaton); Veblen-Commons Award, 2020.
• Elected to the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Lisbon Academy of Sciences.
• Former Executive Director, Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress; chief technical adviser, macroeconomic reform, China State Planning Commission, 1993 to 1997.
• Author of Inequality and Instability (Oxford), The End of Normal (Simon and Schuster), Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice (Yale), and Entropy Economics with Jing Chen (Chicago, 2025); The Power to Destroy forthcoming from Chicago in 2026.

Biography

Most macroeconomic commentary still treats inequality as a side effect of growth. The University of Texas Inequality Project, which Galbraith has directed for over two decades, treats it as a measurable feature of the system itself. Using UNIDO industrial payroll data and Theil decomposition, the project produces a global picture of pay inequality that often diverges from headline tax and survey data, and that has shaped how serious analysts read crises in Europe, the US and China.

Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Austin and is a Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. The 2014 Leontief Prize, shared with Angus Deaton, and the 2020 Veblen-Commons Award place him in the small group of economists whose work on distribution is recognised across both mainstream and heterodox traditions. Election to the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Lisbon Academy of Sciences confirms the international weight of the research.

The credentials sit on top of policy experience that few academic economists can claim. Galbraith ran the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress in the early 1980s and served as chief technical adviser on macroeconomic reform to China’s State Planning Commission from 1993 to 1997. He has written closely on the eurozone crisis, including Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice from Yale University Press, and on the structural drivers of slower US growth in The End of Normal.

Recent work pushes harder against the foundations of the discipline. Entropy Economics, co-authored with Jing Chen and published by the University of Chicago Press in 2025, rebuilds value and production theory on physical and biological grounds rather than on equilibrium. The Power to Destroy, due from Chicago in 2026, argues that obsolete economic ideas have shaped a generation of US policy, and that what comes next depends on which ideas governments choose to operate by.

Key speaking topics

• Global inequality and the measurement of distributional change
• Macroeconomic policy after the end of cheap money
• US industrial policy and the political economy of decline
• The eurozone, austerity, and the future of European integration
• China’s growth model and macroeconomic adjustment
• Financial instability and the limits of mainstream macroeconomics
• Post-equilibrium economics and the foundations of value

Ideal for

• Boards and investment committees making capital allocation decisions under macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty
• CFOs, chief economists, and heads of strategy at financial institutions, asset managers, and multinationals with material US, Chinese, or European exposure
• Policy-facing audiences in central banks, finance ministries, multilateral institutions, and think tanks
• Senior leadership programmes seeking a substantive economist rather than a forecaster

Audience outcomes

• A clearer view of how inequality and financial instability now shape macroeconomic outcomes, not just social ones
• A working frame for reading US, European and Chinese policy moves as parts of a single shifting system
• An informed scepticism toward conventional growth and inflation narratives, grounded in the data Galbraith’s team produces
• A direct argument about where mainstream economics is failing capital allocators and what alternative frameworks offer
• Sharper questions to bring back to internal economists, strategy teams and risk committees