Matthew J. Fagerstrom
1st Year Economics PhD Student at the University of Pennsylvania
Selected presentations:
Feb. 2024 - IHS Graduate Student Conference
Upper House Strength, Inequality, and Democracy
Oct. 2023 - Mercatus Center Markets and Society Conference
Upper House Strength, Inequality, and Democracy
Oct. 2022 - Mercatus Center Markets and Society Conference
Wealth Inequality and Democracy
Jun. 2022 - Swarthmore Summer Brown Bag Series
Monetary Growth and Financial Sector Wages
Oct. 2020 - Villanova Political Science Department Brown Bag Series
Wealth Inequality and Democracy
Nov. 2019 - National Tax Association Conference
Wealth Inequality and Democracy
I am first-year PhD student in the economics department at the University of Pennsylvania. I have a master's degree in political science with a graduate certificate in applied statistics from Villanova and a diploma in economics from the London School of Economics. My CV can be found here.
My research interests are inequality, political and economic development, and monetary economics. I have also conducted research on the politics of central banking and tariffs.
Links to my publications can be found here:
Bagchi, S., and Fagerstrom, M. (2023). Wealth Inequality and Democracy, Public Choice, 197, 89-136.
Scholars have studied the relationship between land inequality, income inequality, and democracy extensively, but have reached contradictory conclusions that have resulted from competing theories and methodologies. However, despite its importance, the effects of wealth inequality on democracy have not been examined empirically. We use a panel dataset of billionaire wealth from 1987 to 2012 to determine the impact of wealth inequality on the level of democracy. We measure democracy using Polity scores, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) indices, and the continuous Machine Learning index. We find limited empirical support for the hypothesis that overall wealth inequality or inherited wealth inequality has an impact on democracy. However, we find evidence that politically connected wealth inequality lowers V-Dem and Machine Learning democracy scores. Following Boix (Democracy and redistribution, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2003), we investigate the hypothesis that capital mobility moderates the relationship between wealth inequality and democracy and find evidence that increased capital mobility mitigates the negative impact of politically connected wealth inequality on democracy.Bagchi, S., Curran, M., & Fagerstrom, M. (2019). Monetary Growth and Wealth Inequality , Economics Letters, 182, 23-25.
We construct a global panel data set to examine the relationship between monetary growth and wealth inequality. Dynamic panel estimates suggest that both overall and inherited wealth inequality increase with growth in the base money supply. These results hold for countries with at least one billionaire and for OECD countries.Fagerstrom, M. (2019). Who Abandoned Whom: Consistency of Constitutional Interpretations of Hamilton and Madison, Veritas: Villanova Research Journal, 1, 21-30.
Both Hamilton and Madison claim to have been abandoned by the other when it comes to their interpretation of the constitution as written in the Federalist Papers. Until now, no author has attempted to answer whether their constitutional positions on economic questions is consistent with their interpretation of the constitution in the Federalist Papers. To answer this question, I examine claims of constitutionality related to trade policy and central banking made by both Hamilton and Madison and compare such positions to Federalist Papers written by each author. Both authors are broadly consistent over time and therefore cannot justly claim to have been abandoned by the other.Links to my working papers can be found here:
Monetary Growth and Financial Sector Wages (With Michael Curran and Ryan Zalla)
We investigate the relation between monetary growth and compensation in the financial industry since the end of the Bretton Woods system. Estimating local projections, we find that the growth of the monetary base positively associates with a higher differential between financial and average wages. Our findings indicate that the effects are short lived, lending support to the temporary non-neutrality of money argued by David Hume and against the more permanent non-neutrality argued by Richard Cantillon. Our results help clarify debates on the non-neutrality of money going back to the eighteenth century.Interest Rates and Inequality: Does the Choice of Inequality Measure Matter? Since the 1980s, interest rates have declined in many of the world’s advanced economies. Concurrently, capital’s share of income and both income and wealth inequality have risen. Although there is a growing literature on the relation between monetary policy and inequality, no study has looked at income and wealth inequality across multiple samples simultaneously. Using a century of data covering the US, France, and the UK, a panel of eight countries over the period 1960-2010, and a panel of 41 countries over the period 2000-2014, I estimate local projections and find that increases in long-term interest rates always decrease inequality regardless of how it is measured. This result is robust to the choice of country and time period. Increases in capital’s share increase income inequality, but the impact of capital’s share on wealth inequality is sensitive to the sample chosen.
Works in Progress:
Did Colonial Native Codes Hinder Postcolonial Governance and Development? Evidence from 67 British, French, and Portuguese Colonies
(With Olukunle Owolabi). Accepted for presentation at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 2021Monetary Policy and Inequality in Historical Perspective
Upper House Strength, Inequality, and Democracy. Presented at the Institute for Humane Studies Graduate Conference 2024