I study the sources and consequences of wealth concentration and the role of taxation in shaping long-run economic outcomes. My work examines how wealth inequality affects growth, investment, political power, and economic opportunity.
Artificial intelligence and automation are transforming production and labor markets. My research investigates how these technologies affect wages, employment, wealth concentration, productivity growth, and the distribution of economic gains.
Economic growth depends not only on innovation but also on the distribution of income, wealth, and market power. My work explores the interactions between demand, productivity, accumulation, and structural change in modern economies.
Persistent disparities in wealth and economic opportunity cannot be fully understood through conventional market-based explanations alone. My research draws on stratification economics to analyze the institutional and historical forces shaping racial and wealth inequality.
Books
Growth, Distribution, and Effective Demand: Classical and Post-Keynesian Perspectives, Daniele Tavani and Duncan Foley, Editors. Forthcoming, Routledge Frontiers in Political Economy, 2026.
Spanning theoretical and empirical contributions in the tradition of classical political economy and post-Keynesian economics, this volume explores the relationship between economic growth and the distribution of income and wealth.
The book makes a case for a rigorous empirically informed alternative economic scholarship providing more progressive and inclusive policy prescriptions than the dominant neoclassical paradigm. Mainstream economics has only recently showed interest in the problems with the distribution of income and wealth. Conversely, issues of distribution have been central in the debate among heterodox economists working in the classical and post-Keynesian tradition. The book begins by laying out “stylized facts” on the recent evolution of income distribution in the United States; it then moves to addressing the relationship between distribution, technical change, and trade in classical models, and presents a series of contributions along post-Keynesian lines on the interactions between demand and distribution, as well as policy implications. It then addresses the problems of path-dependence, hysteresis, and the potential instability arising from fiscal consolidation for economic growth, the distribution of income and wealth, and long-run growth.
This volume marks a significant contribution to the literature on alternative approaches to macroeconomics, income distribution and economic policy.
Growth and Distribution, Second Edition, with Duncan K. Foley and Thomas R. Michl. Harvard University Press, 2019.
A major revision of an established textbook on the theory, measurement, and history of economic growth, with new material on climate change, corporate capitalism, and innovation.
Authors Duncan Foley, Thomas Michl, and Daniele Tavani present Classical and Keynesian approaches to growth theory, in parallel with Neoclassical ones, and introduce students to advanced tools of intertemporal economic analysis through carefully developed treatments of land- and resource-limited growth. They cover corporate finance, the impact of government debt and social security systems, theories of endogenous technical change, and the implications of climate change. Without excessive formal complication, the models emphasize rigorous reasoning from basic economic principles and insights, and respond to students’ interest in the history and policy dilemmas of real-world economies.
In addition to carefully worked out examples showing how to use the analytical techniques presented, Growth and Distribution presents many problems suitable for inclusion in problem sets and examinations. Detailed answers to these problems are available. This second edition includes fresh data throughout and new chapters on climate change, corporate capitalism, models of wealth inequality, and technical change.
Refereed Journal Articles
Aggregate demand externalities and capacity utilization: a response to Gahn (2023), with Luke Petach. Review of Keynesian Economics, forthcoming.
This article defends and clarifies the aggregate-demand-as-externality view of capacity utilization against critiques raised by Gahn (2023). Tavani and Petach argue that aggregate demand externalities—spillovers whereby one agent's spending decisions affect the returns to others—help explain why economies can settle at persistently low or variable rates of utilization rather than converging to a unique normal level. The piece engages classical-Marxian and Keynesian traditions, addressing questions of whether utilization is an endogenous long-run variable or a gravitational anchor. By responding directly to methodological objections, the authors sharpen the theoretical case for treating demand conditions as central determinants of accumulation and distribution, contributing to ongoing debates in heterodox macroeconomics about the stability and normality of utilization.
The end of laissez-faire in classical-Marxian Models of growth and distribution, with Luke Petach. Review of Political Economy, DOI: 10.1080/09538259.2026.2619944, February 2026.
This paper interrogates the role of policy and state intervention within classical-Marxian growth frameworks that have traditionally emphasized self-regulating market dynamics. Tavani and Petach show how incorporating active fiscal and institutional forces reshapes long-run outcomes for growth, employment, and income distribution, challenging the notion that these economies gravitate to laissez-faire equilibria on their own. Building on Keynes's famous phrase, the authors argue that distributional conflict and demand management require a visible governmental hand. The analysis integrates the state as a structural actor rather than an external shock, offering a synthesis of classical accumulation theory with modern concerns about stagnation and inequality, and clarifying when and how policy alters the trajectory of capitalist economies.
Institutional changes, Effective Demand and Inequality: a Structuralist Model of Secular Stagnation, with Vinicius Cicero. Metroeconomica, Early View, May 2025.
This article develops a structuralist macroeconomic model linking institutional change to secular stagnation—an era of chronically weak demand and slow growth. Tavani and Cicero examine how shifts in labor-market institutions, bargaining power, and distributional norms depress effective demand and widen inequality over the long run. Rather than treating stagnation as a purely monetary or technological phenomenon, the model foregrounds the reciprocal feedback between the functional distribution of income and aggregate spending. The authors demonstrate how weakened worker power and rising profit shares can trap an economy in low-growth trajectories. The contribution offers a coherent institutional narrative for post-crisis stagnation, connecting political-economic transformations to measurable macroeconomic outcomes within a formal demand-led growth framework.
Labor Market Institutions, Technical Change, and Inequality: Demand-Side Secular Stagnation, with Luca Zamparelli. Review of Political Economy, 38 (3): 1012-1030, 2026.
Tavani and Zamparelli model how the interaction of labor-market institutions and the direction of technical change generates demand-side secular stagnation. The paper asks how declining worker bargaining power and labor-saving innovation jointly influence the wage share, effective demand, and long-run growth. By endogenizing both institutional strength and the choice of technique, the authors show that inequality-increasing dynamics can suppress consumption and investment, producing persistent underperformance. The framework distinguishes demand-side stagnation from supply-side explanations, emphasizing distributional mechanisms. Their results clarify why policies affecting unionization, minimum wages, and innovation incentives carry macroeconomic consequences beyond their immediate labor-market effects, contributing to debates on whether inequality is a cause—not merely a symptom—of stagnant advanced economies.
Group Conflict, Racial Inequality, and Stratification, with Brendan Brundage. Review of Black Political Economy, Online First, August 2024.
This paper formalizes stratification economics by modeling how conflict between social groups reproduces racial inequality over time. Tavani and Brundage move beyond individual-level explanations to treat group identity and relative position as central economic variables. They analyze how competition over resources, discrimination, and the defense of relative advantage sustain persistent wealth and income gaps between racial groups, rather than allowing convergence. The model captures strategic behavior in which dominant groups act to preserve their standing, embedding disparity into the economy's structure. By grounding stratification economics in formal dynamics of group conflict, the authors offer analytical tools for understanding why racial inequality endures across generations, contributing rigor to a growing heterodox research program on race and economics.
Secular Stagnation: a Classical-Marxian View, with Manuel David Cruz. Review of Keynesian Economics vol. 11 (4), 554-584, October 2023.
Tavani and Cruz reinterpret secular stagnation through a classical-Marxian lens, contrasting it with the mainstream and Keynesian accounts that dominate the literature. The paper argues that persistent slow growth arises from the internal dynamics of accumulation, distribution, and profitability rather than from savings gluts or a falling natural interest rate. By emphasizing class distribution and the profit rate as drivers, the authors show how capitalist economies can experience prolonged periods of subdued growth endogenously. The model connects stagnation tendencies to distributional conflict and the pace of accumulation. Their contribution enriches the stagnation debate by supplying a distinctly classical-Marxian mechanism, offering an alternative both to Summers-style secular stagnation and to purely demand-led Keynesian interpretations.
Classical and Keynesian Models of inequality and Stagnation, with Codrina Rada, Rudiger von Arnim, and Luca Zamparelli. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 211, pp. 442-461, July 2023.
This article compares classical and Keynesian modeling traditions to assess how each explains the joint dynamics of inequality and stagnation. The authors build a unifying framework that clarifies where the two approaches diverge in their treatment of savings, investment, distribution, and the closure of growth models. By juxtaposing supply-led classical mechanisms with demand-led Keynesian ones, the paper shows how assumptions about causality shape predictions about whether rising inequality stimulates or depresses long-run growth. The comparative analysis helps reconcile seemingly contradictory findings across heterodox macroeconomics. The contribution is both methodological and substantive, offering readers a map of the theoretical terrain and demonstrating how model closure determines conclusions about the inequality-stagnation nexus in contemporary capitalist economies.
Pandemics and Economic Activity: a Framework for Policy Analysis, with Peter Flaschel, Giorgos Galanis, and Roberto Veneziani. Review of Behavioral Economics, 9: 1-44, 2022.
Written in the wake of COVID-19, this paper builds an integrated framework for analyzing how epidemics interact with economic activity and how policy can manage the resulting trade-offs. The authors couple epidemiological dynamics with a macroeconomic model of production and demand, allowing infection and economic behavior to influence one another. They examine how interventions—lockdowns, health investment, income support—affect both public health and output over time. The framework captures feedback loops between disease spread, labor supply, and aggregate demand that simpler models miss. By offering a structured tool for evaluating policy under pandemic conditions, the contribution helps clarify the conditions under which health and economic objectives conflict or align, informing debates on optimal crisis response.
The Distributive Cycle: Evidence and Current Debates, with Jose Barrales, Ivan Mendieta-Munoz, Codrina Rada, and Rudiger von Arnim. Journal of Economic Surveys, 36(2): 468-503, 2022.
This survey reviews theory and empirical evidence on the distributive cycle—the recurring interaction between the wage share and economic activity associated with Goodwin-type models. The authors synthesize decades of research on whether growth is profit-led or wage-led and how employment and distribution co-move over the business cycle. They assess competing econometric methods, data choices, and identification strategies that have produced divergent findings, and clarify the sources of disagreement in current debates. By organizing a fragmented literature, the paper provides a reference point for researchers and highlights open questions about causality and cycle mechanics. The contribution is a comprehensive stocktaking that situates the distributive cycle within broader discussions of growth, distribution, and macroeconomic dynamics.
Aggregate Demand Externalities, Income Distribution, and Wealth Inequality, with Luke Petach. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 60: 433-446, 2022.
Tavani and Petach analyze how aggregate demand externalities shape the joint evolution of income distribution and wealth inequality. When individual spending decisions generate spillovers that affect aggregate outcomes, the resulting coordination failures influence how income is distributed and how wealth accumulates across groups over time. The paper builds a formal model connecting these demand externalities to long-run distributional outcomes, showing how underconsumption or coordination problems can entrench inequality. By linking a Keynesian demand mechanism to the dynamics of wealth concentration, the authors bridge short-run macroeconomics and long-run distribution. The contribution clarifies a channel through which demand conditions—not just factor returns or savings behavior—help determine who accumulates wealth, adding to structuralist accounts of rising inequality.
Path Dependence and Stagnation in a Classical Growth Model, with Thomas R. Michl. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 46(1): 195-281, 2022.
Tavani and Michl introduce path dependence into a classical growth model to show how temporary shocks can leave permanent marks on an economy's trajectory. Rather than converging to a unique equilibrium, the model allows history to matter: episodes of weak demand or crisis can shift the economy onto a lower long-run growth path, producing stagnation. The authors formalize hysteresis within a classical framework of accumulation and distribution, demonstrating that the absence of self-correcting forces makes policy consequential for long-run outcomes. This challenges the notion of a natural growth rate to which economies inevitably return. The contribution offers a theoretical foundation for understanding persistent post-crisis underperformance and the durable effects of demand shortfalls in capitalist economies.
Path Dependence, the Covid-19 Crisis, and Inequality in the United States. European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies:Intervention 18(2): 198-206, 2021.
This paper applies the logic of path dependence to the U.S. experience of the COVID-19 crisis, arguing that the pandemic shock risks entrenching higher inequality and lower growth for the long term. Tavani examines how crisis-driven disruptions to employment, income, and wealth can propagate through hysteresis mechanisms, so that a transitory event produces permanent distributional consequences. The analysis connects the immediate economic fallout of the pandemic to structural features of the American economy that amplify and lock in inequality. By emphasizing that recovery is not automatic, the paper makes the case for active policy to prevent lasting damage. The contribution links crisis economics to distributional dynamics in a specific national context.
Differential Rates of Return and Racial Wealth Inequality, with Luke Petach. Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy 4(3): 115-165, 2021.
Tavani and Petach investigate how differences in the rates of return earned on wealth across racial groups contribute to persistent racial wealth gaps. Beyond disparities in income or savings, the paper shows that when groups systematically earn different returns on their assets, wealth inequality can widen even absent new discrimination in labor markets. The authors model and examine this return-differential channel, highlighting how portfolio composition, asset access, and structural barriers translate into divergent wealth accumulation over time. The finding reframes the racial wealth gap as partly a problem of unequal returns, not just unequal starting points. The contribution strengthens stratification economics by identifying a specific, quantifiable mechanism that perpetuates racial disparities in wealth across generations.
Labor-augmenting Technical Change and the Wage Share: New Microeconomic Foundations, with Luca Zamparelli. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 56: 27-34, 2021.
This paper provides fresh microeconomic foundations for why technical change tends to be labor-augmenting and how this shapes the wage share of income. Tavani and Zamparelli model firms' optimizing decisions about the direction of innovation, deriving conditions under which the economy exhibits Harrod-neutral technical progress consistent with balanced growth. By grounding the direction of technical change in explicit microfoundations rather than assuming it, the authors clarify the link between innovation choices and functional income distribution. The results speak to long-standing puzzles about the stability of the wage share and the nature of long-run growth. The contribution bridges induced-innovation theory and distribution, offering a rigorous account of why economies display particular patterns of factor-saving technical change.
Consumption Externalities and Growth: Theory and Evidence for the United States, with Luke Petach. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 183: 976-997, 2021.
Tavani and Petach examine how consumption externalities—where individuals' spending depends on the consumption of others through emulation or status competition—affect growth and distribution in the United States. The paper develops theory in which such interdependent preferences generate demand and accumulation dynamics distinct from standard models, then tests the implications with U.S. data. The authors show that keeping-up-with-others behavior can influence savings, effective demand, and long-run growth outcomes. By combining formal modeling with empirical evidence, the paper substantiates the macroeconomic relevance of relative-consumption motives. The contribution highlights how social interdependence in consumption shapes aggregate outcomes, offering a behavioral-macro perspective on American growth and linking micro-level status concerns to economy-wide dynamics.
Firm Beliefs and Long-Run Demand Effects in a Labor-Constrained Model of Growth and Distribution, with Luke Petach. Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 31(2): 353-377, 2020.
This article explores how firms' beliefs and expectations shape long-run demand and distribution within a labor-constrained growth model. Tavani and Petach show that when firms' subjective expectations influence investment, aggregate demand can exert lasting effects on growth even under labor supply constraints—breaking the classical dichotomy that relegates demand to the short run. The authors model how self-fulfilling beliefs and coordination shape the economy's long-run position. The result is that demand conditions and firm sentiment retain relevance for accumulation and distribution over extended horizons. The contribution integrates evolutionary and Keynesian insights, demonstrating that expectations are not merely transient noise but structural determinants of where a labor-constrained economy settles in terms of growth and income shares.
Income Shares, Secular Stagnation, and the Long-run Distribution of Wealth, with Luke Petach. Metroeconomica 71 (1): 235-255, 2020.
Tavani and Petach connect the functional distribution of income to secular stagnation and the long-run distribution of wealth. The paper shows how shifts in wage and profit shares influence savings, demand, and the pace of accumulation, thereby shaping both the tendency toward stagnation and the concentration of wealth over time. By modeling the feedback between income shares and wealth dynamics, the authors demonstrate that distributional changes can generate persistent low growth alongside rising wealth inequality. The analysis links three phenomena—income distribution, stagnation, and wealth concentration—within a single coherent framework. The contribution clarifies how the erosion of the wage share can simultaneously depress aggregate demand and entrench inequality, offering a distributional account of contemporary stagnation.
Climate Change, Innovation, and Growth: the Contributions of William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, with Anders Fremstad and Luke Petach. Review of Political Economy 31 (3): 336-355, 2019.
Prompted by the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economic Science, this paper assesses the contributions of William Nordhaus and Paul Romer to the economics of climate change and endogenous growth, offering a critical heterodox appraisal. Tavani, Fremstad, and Petach explain how Nordhaus's integrated assessment models and Romer's theory of technological innovation reshaped mainstream thinking about long-run growth and environmental constraints. The authors evaluate the strengths and limitations of each framework, particularly regarding distribution, discounting, and the adequacy of policy prescriptions for the climate crisis. By situating these celebrated contributions within broader political-economy debates, the paper highlights what mainstream growth theory illuminates and what it obscures. The contribution serves as both an accessible exposition and a critical engagement with influential ideas on climate and growth.
No one is Alone: Strategic Complementarities, Capacity Utilization, Growth, and Distribution, with Luke Petach, 2019. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 50: 203-215, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.strueco.2019.07.001
Tavani and Petach analyze how strategic complementarities—situations where agents' optimal choices reinforce one another—affect capacity utilization, growth, and distribution. When firms' or households' decisions are mutually reinforcing, the economy can support multiple equilibria and demand-driven outcomes that persist over time. The paper formalizes how these interactions influence the normal rate of utilization and long-run distributional results, challenging models that assume a unique, supply-determined equilibrium. The authors show that coordination among agents matters for macroeconomic performance. The contribution enriches structuralist growth theory by embedding strategic complementarity at its core, demonstrating how interdependence generates demand-led dynamics and helping explain why economies may become stuck at inefficient levels of utilization and growth rather than converging to a single optimum.
Marx-Biased Technical Change and Income Distribution: a Panel Data Analysis, with Travis Campbell, 2019. Metroeconomica, https://doi-org/10.1111/meca.12247.
This empirical paper tests the hypothesis of Marx-biased technical change—innovation that raises labor productivity while increasing capital intensity—and its implications for income distribution. Using panel data across countries or industries, Tavani and Campbell examine whether observed patterns of technical change conform to the labor-saving, capital-using bias predicted by classical-Marxian theory. The analysis links the direction of technical change to movements in the wage and profit shares, providing evidence on a long-debated theoretical claim. By bringing systematic empirical methods to bear on the question, the authors assess how well the Marx-biased characterization describes real economies. The contribution grounds classical-Marxian growth theory in data, clarifying the empirical relationship between technological progress and functional income distribution.
Growth, Income Distribution, and the `Entrepreneurial State', with Luca Zamparelli. Journal of Evolutionary Economics 30, 117-141.
Building on Mazzucato's concept of the entrepreneurial state, Tavani and Zamparelli model how public investment in innovation shapes growth and income distribution. The paper formalizes the role of state-funded research and development in driving technical change, examining how the returns to publicly financed innovation are distributed between capital and labor. The authors explore whether an active, innovation-oriented state can raise growth while affecting inequality, depending on how the gains from state-led technical progress are shared. By embedding public innovation spending in a growth-and-distribution framework, the paper clarifies the macroeconomic and distributional stakes of industrial and innovation policy. The contribution provides analytical rigor to debates about the state's role in fostering technological change and shaping distributional outcomes.
Endogenous Technical Change in Alternative Theories of Growth and Income Distribution, with Luca Zamparelli. Journal of Economic Surveys Vol. 31 No. 5: 1272-1303, 2017.
This survey reviews how different schools of thought treat endogenous technical change and its consequences for growth and income distribution. Tavani and Zamparelli compare neoclassical, evolutionary, classical, and Keynesian approaches, clarifying how each theorizes the sources and direction of innovation and its distributional effects. They organize a diverse literature around common questions: what induces technical change, whether it is labor- or capital-saving, and how it interacts with the wage and profit shares. By mapping the theoretical landscape, the paper highlights points of convergence and disagreement across paradigms. The contribution is a valuable reference for researchers, synthesizing decades of work on induced innovation and offering a comparative framework for understanding the interplay of technical change, growth, and distribution.
Government Spending Composition, Aggregate Demand, Growth, and Distribution, with Luca Zamparelli. Review of Keynesian Economics, Vol. 5 No. 2: 239-258, 2017.
Tavani and Zamparelli examine how the composition of government spending—not just its overall level—affects aggregate demand, growth, and income distribution. The paper distinguishes among types of public expenditure, such as productive investment versus transfers or consumption, and models their differing macroeconomic and distributional consequences. The authors show that shifting the mix of spending can alter growth trajectories and the distribution of income between classes, even holding the fiscal deficit constant. This refines Keynesian fiscal analysis by emphasizing the structure of public budgets. The contribution provides policymakers and theorists with insight into how the qualitative makeup of government expenditure shapes long-run outcomes, underscoring that fiscal policy design has distributional and growth effects beyond simple aggregate stimulus.
Integrating Engineering Outputs from Natural Disaster Models into a Dynamic Spatial Computable General Equilibrium Model of Centerville, with Harvey Cutler, Martin Shields, and Sammy Zahran. Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure Vol. 1 No. 3-4: 169-187, 2016.
This interdisciplinary paper develops a method to integrate engineering assessments of natural-disaster damage into a dynamic spatial computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of a regional economy. Tavani and coauthors link physical damage estimates—such as structural losses from earthquakes or floods—to economic modeling, enabling more realistic analysis of how disasters propagate through local economies over space and time. The framework captures spatial spillovers and dynamic recovery paths that static approaches miss. By bridging engineering and economics, the authors improve the evaluation of disaster impacts and the design of resilient infrastructure investment. The contribution offers policymakers a rigorous tool for assessing regional economic consequences of natural hazards and for prioritizing mitigation and recovery strategies.
A Tale of Two Ginis in the US, 1921-2012, with Markus Schneider. International Review of Applied Economics, Vol. 30 No. 6: 677-692, 2016.
Tavani and Schneider analyze long-run U.S. inequality by distinguishing between two Gini coefficients that capture different dimensions of the income distribution. Covering nearly a century, the paper examines how measures sensitive to different parts of the distribution—such as the middle versus the top—tell distinct stories about how American inequality evolved. The authors show that relying on a single summary statistic can obscure important structural changes, and that the divergence between the two Ginis reveals shifts in where inequality is concentrated. By tracking these measures over 1921-2012, the paper documents the changing anatomy of U.S. inequality. The contribution underscores the importance of decomposing inequality measures and offers a richer empirical portrait of long-run distributional change.
Public Capital, Redistribution and Growth in a Two-class Economy, with Luca Zamparelli. Metroeconomica Vol. 67 No. 2: 458-476, 2016.
This paper studies how public capital and redistribution interact to shape growth in a two-class economy of workers and capitalists. Tavani and Zamparelli model the government's provision of productive public capital alongside redistributive policy, analyzing how these tools jointly affect accumulation and the distribution of income between classes. They explore the conditions under which public investment complements or conflicts with redistribution in promoting growth. The two-class structure allows the authors to trace how fiscal choices reallocate resources and influence class-based outcomes. The contribution clarifies the growth-distribution trade-offs and complementarities inherent in fiscal policy, showing that public capital can enhance growth while redistribution alters who benefits, offering theoretical guidance on designing fiscal policy in class-divided economies.
Endogenous Technical Change, Employment and Distribution in the Goodwin Model of the Growth Cycle, with Luca Zamparelli. Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics, Vol. 19 No. 2: 209–226, 2015.
Tavani and Zamparelli extend the classic Goodwin growth-cycle model by introducing endogenous technical change, examining how induced innovation alters the cyclical interaction between employment and income distribution. In the standard Goodwin framework, the wage share and employment oscillate in a predator-prey dynamic; the authors ask how allowing firms to choose the direction and pace of technical change reshapes these cycles. They analyze the resulting nonlinear dynamics and the stability of the growth cycle. By endogenizing technical change, the paper enriches a canonical model of distributive conflict with a realistic account of innovation. The contribution shows how technological choices feed back into employment and distribution dynamics, deepening understanding of the mechanisms driving cyclical fluctuations in capitalist growth.
Credit-Driven Investment, Heterogeneous Labour Markets and Macroeconomic Dynamics, with Matthieu Charpe, Peter Flaschel, Hans–Martin Krolzig, Christian Proano, and Willi Semmler. Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Vol. 10 No. 1: 163-181, 2015.
This paper models macroeconomic dynamics arising from credit-driven investment interacting with heterogeneous labor markets. The authors incorporate financial factors—credit availability and its influence on firms' investment—alongside segmented or heterogeneous labor markets to capture richer employment and distributional dynamics. They analyze how the interplay of finance and labor-market structure generates fluctuations and potential instability in output, employment, and distribution. By combining credit-driven demand with realistic labor-market features, the model departs from representative-agent macroeconomics. The contribution offers a framework for understanding how financial conditions and labor heterogeneity jointly shape business cycles and macroeconomic performance, relevant to post-crisis interest in the links among finance, labor, and instability in modern economies.
Capitalists, Workers, and Managers: Wage Inequality and Effective Demand, with Ramaa Vasudevan. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Vol. 30: 120–131, 2014.
Tavani and Vasudevan analyze wage inequality by introducing a three-class structure of capitalists, workers, and managers, and examining its consequences for effective demand. Rather than treating labor as homogeneous, the paper distinguishes managerial compensation from ordinary wages, showing how the rise of high managerial pay reshapes income distribution and aggregate demand. The authors model how shifts among these three groups affect consumption, savings, and demand-led growth. This framework speaks to the growth of top labor incomes and their macroeconomic implications. The contribution clarifies how within-labor inequality—particularly the managerial share—affects effective demand, extending demand-led growth theory to account for the increasingly stratified structure of labor income in contemporary capitalist economies.
Redistribution in a Neo-Kaleckian Two-Country Model, with Rudiger von Arnim and Laura Carvalho. Metroeconomica, Vol. 65 No. 3: 430-459, 2014.
This paper extends neo-Kaleckian demand-led growth theory to an open, two-country setting to study the international effects of redistribution. Tavani, von Arnim, and Carvalho examine how a change in income distribution in one country—such as a shift toward wages or profits—affects demand, growth, and trade in both economies through their linkages. The two-country structure captures spillovers that closed-economy models miss, showing how one nation's distributional policy can transmit abroad. The authors analyze whether redistribution is expansionary or contractionary once international interdependence is accounted for. The contribution enriches Kaleckian macroeconomics with an open-economy dimension, clarifying how distributional changes propagate across borders and informing debates about coordinated versus unilateral wage and demand policies.
Daily Variation in Natural Disaster Casualties: Information Flows, Safety, and Opportunity Costs in Tornado Versus Hurricane Strikes, with Sammy Zahran and Stephan Weiler, Risk Analysis, Vol. 33 No. 7: 1265-1280, 2013.
This empirical study examines why tornado casualties vary systematically by time of day and week, using an economic framework centered on information flows, safety behavior, and opportunity costs. Tavani, Zahran, and Weiler argue that people's exposure and protective responses depend on how readily warning information reaches them and on the costs of taking shelter at different times. Analyzing tornado-event data, the authors show that variation in casualties reflects behavioral and economic factors, not just physical hazard intensity. The framework treats safety as a decision shaped by incentives and information availability. The contribution brings economic reasoning to disaster risk analysis, offering insight into how the timing of events and communication channels affect human vulnerability and how warning systems might be improved.
Bargaining over Productivity and Wages when Technical Change is Induced: Implications for Growth, Distribution, and Employment, Journal of Economics, Vol. 109 No. 3: 207-244, 2013.
In this single-authored paper, Tavani models how bargaining between workers and firms over both productivity and wages shapes growth, distribution, and employment when technical change is induced by economic incentives. He integrates the theory of induced innovation with distributional conflict, showing how the outcomes of wage bargaining feed back into firms' choices about labor-saving technical change. The analysis traces the resulting dynamics for the wage share, growth, and employment, revealing how conflict over the gains from productivity influences the direction of technological progress. The contribution unifies bargaining theory and endogenous technical change within a growth-and-distribution framework, clarifying how the balance of power between capital and labor helps determine both the pace of innovation and long-run distributional and employment outcomes.
Wage Bargaining and Induced Technical Progress in a Linear Economy: Model and Application to the US (1963-2003), Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Vol. 23 No. 2: 117-126, 2012.
This single-authored paper develops a linear-economy model in which wage bargaining induces technical progress, then applies the framework to U.S. data. Tavani shows how the outcome of bargaining between workers and firms over wages influences firms' incentives to adopt labor-saving technical change, linking distributional conflict to the direction of innovation. The linear structure allows tractable analysis of how bargaining power maps into productivity growth and the wage share. By confronting the model with U.S. evidence, the paper assesses whether observed patterns of technical progress and distribution are consistent with the induced-innovation mechanism. The contribution provides both a theoretical account and an empirical application, strengthening the case that wage bargaining is a driver of technological change and distributional dynamics in advanced economies.
Embedding Care and Unpaid Work in Macroeconomic Modeling: a Structuralist Approach, with Elissa Braunstein and Irene van Staveren. Feminist Economics, Vol. 17 No. 4, 2011.
Most macroeconomic models ignore the unpaid care work — raising children, maintaining households, sustaining workers — that makes market production possible. This paper builds care directly into a structuralist macro model, treating labor as a produced input whose productivity depends on the care people receive. Braunstein, Van Staveren and Tavani introduce "caring spirits," analogous to Keynes's animal spirits, to capture how strongly a society invests in human capacities. The model distinguishes "altruistic" from "selfish" economies and shows that raising women's wages expands output in the former but contracts it in the latter — and that more equal sharing of care between men and women makes the growth-friendly outcome more likely. Gender equality, in short, can be macroeconomically efficient.
Estimated Non-linearities and Multiple Equilibria in a Model of Distributive-Demand Cycles, with Peter Flaschel and Lance Taylor. International Review of Applied Economics, Vol. 25 No. 5, 2011.
Tavani, Flaschel, and Taylor investigate nonlinearities and multiple equilibria in a model of distributive-demand cycles, where the interaction between income distribution and aggregate demand generates recurrent fluctuations. Departing from linear specifications, the authors estimate nonlinear relationships that allow the economy to exhibit several equilibria and richer cyclical behavior. They show how these nonlinearities shape the stability and dynamics of the distributive cycle, potentially producing regime-dependent outcomes. By bringing empirical estimation to a nonlinear structuralist model, the paper connects theory with data on distribution and demand. The contribution advances the analysis of Goodwin-type cycles by demonstrating that nonlinear dynamics and multiple equilibria are empirically relevant, deepening understanding of the complex feedback between distribution and effective demand in macroeconomic fluctuations.
Global Stratification Economics and International Extraction, with Brendan Brundage and William Darity Jr. Working Paper 2609, Department of Economics, The New School for Social Research, August 2026.
Theoretical Approaches in Stratification Economics, with Brendan Brundage and Dan McGee. NBER Working Paper 34619, January 2026.
Aggregate Demand Externalities and Capacity Utilization: a Response to Gahn (2023), with Luke Petach. SSRN Working Paper No. 5924967, December 2025.
The Classical Model of Growth and Distribution, Working Paper 2311, Department of Economics, The New School for Social Research, November 2023.
Classical Political Economy and Secular Stagnation, with Manuel Cruz Luzuriaga. FMM Working Paper No. 71-2021.
Pandemics and Aggregate Demand: a Framework for Policy Analysis, with Peter Flaschel, Giorgos Galanis, and Roberto Veneziani. PKES Working Paper No. 2025.
Gender Wage equality and Investment in Care: Modeling Equity and Production, with Elissa Braunstein. CWE-GAM Working Paper 2020-10.
Book Chapters
The Classical Model of Growth and Distribution. Chapter 1 in Setterfield, M., ed, 2026: Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Growth. Forthcoming, Routledge.
A Structuralist Model of the Wage-Price Spiral with Non-Linear Demand Pressure Terms, with Peter Flaschel and Lance Taylor. Chapter 4 in Flaschel, P., and Luchtenberg, S. 2012: Roads to Social Capitalism, Edward Eldgar.
The Distributive Cycle with a Non-Linear Wage-Phillips Curve. In Chiarella, C., Flaschel, P., and Semmler, W. (2011): Reconstructing Keynesian Macroeconomics - Part I: Partial Perspectives. Routledge.
Reprints
Daily Variation in Natural Disaster Casualties: Information Flows, Safety, and Opportunity Costs in Tornado Versus Hurricane Strikes, with Sammy Zahran and Stephan Weiler. In Preparing for, Responding to, and Recovering from Hurricane Flooding Disasters, Risk Analysis Virtual Special Issue, September 2018.
Endogenous Technical Change in Alternative Theories of Growth and Income Distribution, with Luca Zamparelli. Chapter 6 in In Veneziani, R., and Zamparelli, L., eds. (2018): Analytical Political Economy, Wiley.
Non-refereed Journal Articles
Le Teorie Economiche Alternative e la Crisi. Critica Marxista No. 3-4, 2011: 51-55 (In Italian).
Popular Writings
The Genoa protesters were right about global capitalism. Jacobin, July 2026.
Artificial Intelligence, the Future of Work, and Inequality. Liberal Arts Magazine, Spring 2019, Colorado State University. Republished by Phys.org, May 2019.