James K. Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and a professorship in Government at The University of Texas at Austin.

Galbraith holds degrees from Harvard University (BA) and in economics from Yale University (MA, M.Phil, PhD). He was Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress in the early 1980s. He chaired the board of Economists for Peace and Security from 1996 to 2016 (www.epsusa.org) and directs the University of Texas Inequality Project (http://utip.lbj.utexas.edu). He is a managing editor of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics.

In 2010, he was elected to the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. In 2014 he was co-winner with Angus Deaton of the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economics. In 2020 he received the Veblen-Commons Award of the Association for Evolutionary Economics.

By this expert

The Dollar System in a Multi-Polar World

Article | May 5, 2022

The multipolar financial world is here. The United States can survive it – but only with major political and economic changes at home. It’s time to start thinking about what those need to be.

China and the Supply Chain: A Comment on the June 2021 White House Review

Article | Jun 23, 2021

Contrary to rhetoric from Democrats and Republicans, the U.S. has an economic interest in trade and peace with China

Cold Truth: The Texas Freeze is a Catastrophe of the Free Market

Article | Feb 18, 2021

Texas’s electricity market “reforms” made the current crisis inevitable

Featuring this expert

The Best Way to Measure Inequality

Video | Jan 30, 2019

Thomas Piketty and his colleagues have insisted that tax records are better for measuring inequality than income surveys. They’re wrong.

Glasnost and Perestroika in Economics

Video | Jul 25, 2018

James Galbraith says academic economics is in need of radical reform

Lazonick links stock buybacks to America’s jobs challenge

Video | Nov 4, 2016

In an Al Jazeera documentary “In Search of the Great American Job”, Institute scholar William Lazonick offers some arch insights into the relationship between financialization — particularly the “shareholder value” ideology in corporations, which drives the transfer of profits to shareholders through stock buybacks — and job creation and inequality.

Austerity without debt relief courts new unrest in Greece

Article | May 9, 2016

Economist James K. Galbraith warns that ‘unrealistic expectations’ by Athens’ creditors is a recipe for turmoil