MONICA PRASAD is Associate Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. Prasad studies how societies create and regulate markets, beginning with the state regulations of the Progressive Era up to the fair trade and carbon taxes of today. She is the author of The Politics of Free Markets, the 2007 winner of the Barrington Moore Book Award, which investigates why the movement to minimize government regulation of markets – “neoliberalism” – was so much stronger in the U.S. and Britain than in West France and Germany. Prasad’s current projects include an edited volume on the sociology of taxation; research on the origins of progressive taxation in America; a comparative study of tax progressivity; and a comparative historical investigation of carbon taxes.

Hosted April 1, 2011. Miller Center, Charlottesville VA.